Embrace the future! Seven suggestions in the digital age of enterprise transformation

A global report from Accenture advises that all businesses need to embrace the digital age and take full advantage of the real potential of technology, whether in social media, cloud computing or analytics.

Whether it's social media, mobile computing, analytics or cloud computing is changing the way companies operate. Accenture Consultancy's 2013 Technology Outlook report said companies using "digital" technology would be better able to seize the fast-changing opportunities and cope with fierce competition. Titanium Media has compiled the essence of the report as follows:

Technology is almost the core of every business, and any company's business is linked to digitization. Not only the CEO, but the company's executives must understand and accept this new perspective, and continue to create value through technological innovation.

Today's software industry, for example, is very likely to change the future of these companies or business models and the industry as a whole.

"Organizations and their leaders need to rethink how they use technology to drive market differentiation, deepen customer relationships, and expand production to increase profits," says Paul Dorti, chief technology officer at Accenture. "Our latest Technology Outlook report also shows that these business goals are likely to be accomplished as long as we can actively adopt new digital technologies and take full advantage of the potential of technology." Leveraging it trends, such as mobile technology and cloud computing, means that business leaders need to understand that software drivers are "broadly linked" to the world.

The report focuses on the future of IT companies, and focuses on how companies can leverage technology and software to improve their competitiveness, operational capabilities and performance, and make seven recommendations.

Using technology to create large-scale digital relationships

While it technology enables organizations to better understand their customers than ever before, most companies do not fully leverage these technologies to build deeper, broader customer relationships to improve customer loyalty. Mobile computing, social networks, and context-aware computing services all improve the relationship between companies and consumers, but in the process many companies have lost the intimacy with their customers. These digital relationships are seen as a communication or trading channel, not as an opportunity to promote linkages.

"These companies are going through a period of transition and adopting new technologies can help them build more personalized customer relationships, not just trading relationships," Doherty said. To build customer relationships efficiently and massively, companies need to really change the approach they take and implement a new approach to consolidating it and business. ”

Using the design analysis method to get "right" data

Most enterprise software applications are now designed for specific functions or to capture specific data. Companies can use existing data to guide strategic decisions. In fact, many times the data and the actual information does not match, because of the design of software, forget to consider some important issues.

In this way, some important data is easily missed. What we need is a way to use the data as a link in the supply chain, not as a repository. We need to think about the needs before the software is designed, such as which problems should be solved first. Then, based on these, "accurate data" can be obtained. The report also shows that "companies that are more aware of this than just the data are better able to use the data as a strategic asset to help them obtain business results." ”

Using the speed of data acquisition

In addition to the type and number of data, enterprises now need to consider the third factor-speed. Mobility and it consumption, so that people demand data faster, more. The current trend of new technology comes from high speed data storage, memory calculation, innovation analysis method, data visualization and Data flow query and so on. These aspects of the update can quickly shorten the time to get information, help enterprises to process data faster.

The data application is more extensive, each company also sees the competitive advantage from "The big Data", if wants the big data to carry on before the opportunity loses, how organizes and analyzes the data to become particularly crucial.

Make the work process social

Social networks and social-networking video tools such as Facebook, Twitter and Skype and Google + handouts have revolutionized the way users communicate with each other. People are becoming more and more accustomed to the comfort and inertia of socializing, and adding similar tools to work can help improve the efficiency of employees.

The last kilometer of virtualization with software network connectivity

Today's digital business, applications, systems, networks and communication channels are constantly changing, how to grasp the flow of information is the enterprise IT technology department's most challenging job.

Although the level of virtualization for servers, storage, and other IT infrastructures is high, there is currently no concept of network virtualization. Software Definition Network (SDN) technology is different from the general hardware management, is to use software to manage the network, so that enterprises more flexible. SDN allows the company to reconfigure system connectivity without changing physical settings, making it easier to manage data changes, integrate cloud services, and network investments.

Become active on security issues

Although security technology has improved in the near future, the digital business security is still facing challenges. As devices, systems, and personnel become more complex and diverse, there are more and more portals that can be attacked, so IT security technology needs to be fully proactive.

The core challenge of it is not only to keep pace with the latest security technologies, but also to be smarter than the enemy. To combine the defense capabilities of the enterprise with the external threats, the security architecture needs to be flexible and "proactive" in responding to the evolving security threat area.

Prepare the Enterprise for cloud computing

Cloud computing technology is already widespread and will continue to develop over time. The benefits of cloud technology are obvious: helping companies to make their businesses undifferentiated, accelerating the speed of products and services to products, and responding more promptly to new opportunities and challenges.

For companies, the problem is not whether to use cloud computing, but how to use it correctly. Many companies are embedding their native systems into cloud services to create a hybrid environment. This requires a clear understanding of the skills, structure, management, and security requirements, and a correct way to determine whether it is an application, platform, or IT infrastructure in the cloud.

Doherty believes that "in today's digital situation, in the growing network software world to rethink their own, is the enterprise is currently facing challenges." ”

"To be successful, organizations must use it innovation to gain insights that optimize the enterprise, take advantage of emerging opportunities, strengthen user loyalty, and achieve better business results." "he added.