In order to stay competitive, modern organisations have to:
Continually improve business performance − by removing non value-added costs; increasing quality; speeding up time-to-market; keeping clients happy through their entire engagement lifecycle
Continuously innovate by finding, selecting and implementing the best opportunities to create ideally disruptive or at least differentiated products and services, and equally innovative business models.
The plan / review / forecast cycles are getting shorter, and all key stakeholders expect clearly differentiated results in a shorter period of time. The above set-up creates a set of complex challenges for both private sector as well as public services. When we dive deeper in business innovation, there are four key forces shaping the innovation landscape and potential from a technological perspective:
| 1 | Big Data – data explosion is evident and has effectively recently created innovations in database management space, where up until recently technology did not produce any significant conceptual model for last 40 years. |
| 2 | Mobile technologies are the new norm. Communicating and staying connected on the go is a global standard, both for individuals and corporates. Mobile presence is sine qua non of new generation applications, whoever wants to flourish in a global market |
| 3 | Social technologies are equally the new Internet-within-Internet of communication between various interest groups in a fast-paced global environment |
| 4 | Cloud is the new standard for service delivery. Subscription based service consumption is a great proposal for clients and strong technology players are investing big money into cloud infrastructure and trying to shift their client base from project-based approach. |
Clouds can be private, public or hybrid. Conservative industries, such as financial services, are intensively opting for private cloud technology, on their premises; sometimes using specific hybrid services, combining private and public cloud services (e.g. for backup / disaster recovery data services).
In all of the above technology-driven change forces which cannot be ignored, knowing business processes is essential to keep control over your business. Otherwise the business may try to consume the new technology trends by copying competitors – seriously, this cannot bring serious advantage or even above-the-average competitive position for a long run.