Does your business have a digital mindset?

I find it fascinating that in recent years, as many enterprises have been executing business strategies focused on simplification and ensuring focus on core business, they have simultaneously reduced investment in technology, in many cases relegating it to ‘back office’.  During this period, technology has, and continues to develop at an astounding rate, changing the world around us.

Our personal and working lives are dominated by technology, and there is clearly an expectation from the workforce that their digital experience at work should not be inferior to their digital experience in their personal lives.

As Accenture eloquently put it in their 2013 technology vision, ‘Every business is now a digital business’. The organisations that have embraced technology in their overall business strategy – seeing it as an aide to productivity and providing better services to their clients – are really on the front foot as we enter this new era.

In today’s digital world your technology infrastructure underpins absolutely everything that you will look to achieve within your business strategy over the next 3 to 5 years.  I would actually go further than that, in saying it will not only underpin, but it will become the driving force in what forward-thinking organisations try to achieve and actually be a determining factor in whether they are successful.  Software is absolutely integral to how we currently run our businesses and will remain so as we visualise what they will look like in the future. And because every industry is now software-driven, every CEO must make IT a key competence (if it is not already) and make sure there is a key seat at the boardroom table with the CIO’s name on it.

Whether you are looking to develop new solutions and products, or provide better service to your customers, technology will be a key enabler in helping you achieve these goals.  Also, making sure you have access to the right data and being able to do something useful with it to provide intelligence and answers to business questions will be crucial in remaining agile and staying ahead of your competition.

Cisco have announced this week their new pervasive conferencing capabilities which will drive the next generation of seamless communication, and in the process have made the bold step to embrace integration with a wide range of devices and competitive end user collaboration platforms.  Like I have said, it is a bold move, but one that is true to their strategy of ensuring they focus on developing the intelligent technology architecture and applications that will drive organisations forward in this new digital world.  What is most intriguing about Cisco’s collaboration announcement for me is that it opens up a great opportunity for us all to get more personal and intimate with our clients again; the only difference this time is that those personal relationships will be underpinned with technology.

It’s both an interesting and exciting time to be involved in technology, and one where I believe that the quicker you adopt a digital mind-set, the faster you can get ahead of your rivals.