Kevin Benedict is a TCS futurist and lecturer focused on the signals and foresight that emerge as society, geopolitics, economies, science, technology, environment, and philosophy converge.
Any significant business process that can be documented and best practices identified - will be. Any defined process that can be standardized - will be. Standardized processes that can be codified and automated (through robotic software automation), will be - if the volume justifies it. If the process is repeatable across many companies it will be offered as a shared service on a platform in a cloud.
If you agree with these technology maxims, then you are likely to agree that most existing business processes offer little competitive advantages in the long run, and the advantages of new innovations are fleeting so must be captured early. They will eventually become part of a shared services platform followed and used by your competitors. For example, 20 and 40 foot shipping containers offered a competitive advantage for shipping companies and ports that were early adopters, but only for a very short period of time. After a quick few years the entire world standardized on them and the competitive advantage disappeared.
How can an organization with decades worth of accumulated ERP customizations and configurations, IT systems and customized software applications digitally transform fast enough to keep up with the rapidly changing behaviors of digital customers? That is a hard question most organizations are wrestling with today. Often complex custom IT environments served a purpose in a past era, but today where IT speed and agility are required, they serve as anchors restraining an organization from moving forward and digitally transforming fast enough to compete.
Like a CEO that closes down or sells a profitable business unit because it no longer fits with where the organization is going, CTOs and CIOs must rapidly shut down or replace IT systems and processes that no longer support the reality of today, or the vision of the future based on the best information available today - not yesterday. Keeping an outdated IT system or business process for the purpose of achieving a positive return on the original investment is a strategy based on pride, not logic.
I had the honor of interviewing and disrupting the vacation of Hitachi's CTO for Industrial IoT, Rob Tiffany today. In this interview we talk all about IoT platforms, big data analytics, architectures, digital twins and solution stacks for industrial IoT. I learned a lot and hope you will too.
***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.
I have had the opportunity to work for and around a good many start-ups during the course of my career. Often the start-up founders would simply define a problem, develop a solution and launch a company. The marketing department would then do their very best to identify the individuals in each target company that experienced the problem and had a budget to fix it. This was always a challenging task, but it is even harder today.
Today, start-ups must not only identify a problem that needs solved, but they must compete against "digital transformation" initiatives in both the business and IT organizations that are trying to reduce complexity through the elimination of applications, customized software solutions, IT systems, multiple instances of ERPs and vendors.
The goal of many organizations today is to simplify the IT environment, and to make business processes much faster and agile. I see many companies seeking to standardize on a handful of platforms like Salesforce.com, SAP, Adobe, Ariba, SuccessFactor, etc. Too many systems in an IT inventory, means too much complexity and the increased risk that data will be compromised, and that systems will be too expensive to maintain, secure and upgrade. In this age of fast changing digital consumer behaviors, flexibility and simplicity equal organizational speed to keep up with their markets.
What is the answer for start-ups? Start-up solutions must appeal to the digital transformation goals of their target customers. It means their solution must be cloud based and automatically upgraded to stay aligned with customer's core platforms and systems. It means offering artificial intelligence enabled robotic process automation, chatbots and machine learning that can improve predictability, simplify complexity and eliminate troublesome areas of service and performance. It must not result in any additional layers of complexity, rather new solutions need to solve big problems, while at the same time reducing complexity, and increasing agility and the operational tempo of the business.
***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.
I have read several articles recently about projects designed to
teach digital systems to think more like humans.For example one article was about teaching
chatbot systems to communicate empathy to humans.It seems ironic that we are developing
digital systems to think more like humans, while at the same time much of my
work is focused on teaching humans how to think more like and about digital
systems and their capabilities.Let me
explain.
Competitive battles in most industries today are increasingly centered
on digital technologies and digital strategies, and as a result, it benefits
leaders to have a deep understanding of how digital systems work, and how the
impact of new digital innovations will change the behaviors of customers,
competitors and partners.
A few of the areas that I think leaders should really understand
are:
Simple
programming concepts and computer logic
Small World, social
networks and swarming theories
Industry and technology
data exchange standards
Platforms, Cloud
computing, Containers and System thinking
Internet and
network architecture and design
Big Data and
real-time analytics
GPS, GIS and
Mapping
Mobile and
wireless technologies
Sensors, embedded
wireless devices and IoT
Data and device security
and authentication
Databases and
data lifecycle management
Online catalogs,
shopping carts and digital payments
Digital
marketing, personalization and contextual relevance
Digital content
and delivery: websites, blogs, videos, podcasts, social media (e.g. Twitter,
Snapchat, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn, Facebook, etc.)
Robotics,
automation, AI and machine learning
Virtual and
augmented reality
There are many more items that
could be added to this short list, but I hope you get the idea.If we can agree that digital technologies are
fundamental to our future success, then we must understand them, or at least
their capabilities.
***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.
