Oct 25, 2013 By Bob Brenner

The Critical Role of Technology in Business Agility

in Cloud, Dreamforce

Thanks to advances in technology, the landscape of business is rapidly changing. Customers are now in control, competitors can more easily enter new markets, timeframes to react are shrinking and the half-life of a great idea can be weeks or months.

Organizations who haven’t come to grips with this new reality are quickly being left behind. Because these changes are so mission critical, your company must ensure a coordinated effort toward the increased agility that is rapidly becoming table stakes in the new world order.

Strategy: Shorter timeframes require a focus on taking action, not planning action
Process: Customer-centric design trumps design for internal efficiency
People: Less hierarchy, more flexible and modular roles
Technology: Innovation at the edges, utility at the core

Of the myriad of changes that you must manage, leveraging new technologies effectively will be key. As you move from the old world of long range planning and execution to the new connected, real-time world; more accessible, responsive and scalable solutions will be critical.

Key Questions

Do you have the ability to instantly and effectively sense changes in your market?
Can you rapidly adjust your technology to respond?
Are you actively listening to assess the impact of your responses?

Learning from Others

If we take a page from the electric industry playbook and apply it to modern information technology, the landscape would look a bit different:

The generation and distribution of the electricity is left to highly specialized entities, both private and public
These very large and complex infrastructures are largely automated, very tightly monitored and managed with minimum human intervention
Companies and consumers spend no time thinking about or dealing with electric power

So why do many companies still own and manage servers and their own networks, write their own applications, etc.? These activities and the resources they consume are doing nothing to address the challenges and opportunities discussed above.

Sense, Respond and Listen to Customers

So what should you take away from this? In order to survive and thrive in the new world, your organization must be primarily focused on sensing, responding and listening to your customers and the market. Technology is the ‘utility’ that you need to accomplish these objectives. The appropriate technical solutions for your organization involve a broad embrace of cloud-delivered solutions including infrastructure, platforms, software and business processes.

Learn more at our panel discussion super session on Business Agility at the Lam Research Center (previously known as the Novellus Theatre) on Tuesday, November 19th at 4:00pm PST. Speakers include:

Srini Koushik, CEO of the NTT Innovation Institute, a R&D center engaged in accelerating the development and provision of information-security and cloud-computing practices
Greg Lueck, SVP of Global Sales & Marketing, NTT Centerstance
Alistair Firmin, VP of Customer Service, Standard Insurance
Treb Ryan, CSO, CBU Dimension Data
Marv Mouchawar, President - Cloud Services, NTT DATA
Gary Sidaway, Director of Security Strategy, Integralis

Hear more at the NTT Group booth #N1621 in the Moscone North Hall and learn more about the NTT Group here. Learn more about Sense and Respond here and Human Computer Cooperation here.