The age of digitisation has begun, no doubt about it. But where will this road lead us? What will the future look like? No one knows exactly. Businesses—both large and small—need to learn to live with this uncertainty.
With all the promises and considerations of these new technological possibilities it is important to remember that digitisation cannot be a purpose unto itself. Rather, it is simply the means to an end. The objective is to drive innovation and thereby generate new revenue potential, says Dr. Wolfram Jost, CTO at Software AG.
It’s no longer just about competitiveness; it’s about the sheer ability to survive. Businesses need to develop new processes based on modern software architectures in order to compete in the digital world. If we want to fully exploit the innovative power of the clever minds in our companies, we need support from software to cost-effectively implement these ideas in a meaningful way.
Traditional standard software is no help here. Its sluggishness makes it more of a hindrance because it keeps existing processes on the tracks they have followed for years, often decades, despite the rapid changes facing us today. Moreover, these processes must be designed with increasing flexibility so companies can take advantage of new market opportunities in real time.
IT, or more precisely software, is therefore taking on a new significance. The digital enterprise must have an agile IT platform at its foundation to be able to derive new business models from new technologies such as cloud computing and big data.
It delivers a user-friendly development environment with a variety of off-the-shelf, cloud-capable services such as an in-memory database, a CEP engine for processing complex event streams, an integration engine and a process engine. Individual customisations can be configured without major programming effort. This type of adaptive platform can process huge data volumes and is therefore predestined to master the challenges of the Internet of Things.
Businesses build their individual content on this foundation—content that differentiates them from the competition. In marketing, sales, support, e-commerce and any area with heavy customer interaction, departments can quickly develop customised lightweight applications with an agile platform. But what does the road look like along the way?
Collaboration between companies and software providers
At first glance, the road to the land of digitisation appears difficult and paved with stumbling blocks. But even here it’s best to take things one step at a time, and there aren’t really any companies that have to start from scratch. Add to that the fact that businesses do not have to tackle the innovation process alone.
Using a co-innovation approach, companies and software providers work together to quickly develop applications tailored to suit the customer’s needs. Together they reap the treasure that the company already possesses anyway: the data. For example, a real-time evaluation of customer data can bring to light a need for new products or services regardless of the company’s industry.
Sometimes it only takes fine tuning and minor adjustments to the product offering and service portfolio to achieve a major effect. One question stands out above all others: What is the company planning and where does it want to go? The digitisation roadmap must be developed from there—and it quickly becomes clear that IT is becoming a success factor.
A digital capability map is developed in the second step. It defines which digital capabilities the company wants or needs to acquire in the future. Projects are defined based on the roadmap and the digital capability map. The specific digitisation project differs from one company to the next. Digitisation can begin with process design, but it can also start with application development.
In summary: First a digital process model is developed, then the digital capability map, and the digital projects are derived from those two things. To implement the projects, the company needs to receive training opportunities and support from the software provider to enable employees to work with the digital platform until it is in a position to act on its own.
Companies need to take action if they want to defend their position at the top. The storm of digitisation will not blow over. It’s just getting stronger. But talking about a positive wind of change rather than a storm is already an important first step. The message is: Get out of the standard IT rut and into decentralised, flexible, agile programming in collaboration with the software provider. This is the way to successfully transform into a digital business.
The author of this blog is Dr. Wolfram Jost, CTO at Software AG.
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