The Future is Here – and it’s Digital
With the recent global economic downturn, organizations are now, more than ever, faced with heightened pressure on financial outcomes and the need to derive potential value from every avenue. This new normal is forcing technology leaders, including CIOs, CTOs, and chief data officers, to look to new trends to deliver solid business outcomes today and beyond. And it all starts with investing in the right digital initiatives.
This SAP-sponsored whitepaper from IDC on the Top 5 Tech Trends to Deliver Business Outcomes outlines how organizations can define the future of their business and deliver on future outcomes by focusing on specific game-changing trends and shifting to new technology architectures.
Integrated Technology Architectures
In today’s digital world, technologies like Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and the Internet of Things (IoT) are no longer just buzz words, they are a new reality. They are the technologies that organizations should look to for new and value-added revenue streams. Unfortunately, the complexity of integrating an existing legacy system with new technology often creates miscommunication and ultimately leads to an IT disconnect, which scares many away from even considering implementing emerging technologies.
The solution? Implement a platform-oriented technology by integrating multiple technology environments into one hybrid platform that unifies the back and front offices.
“IDC predicts that by 2025, 82% of the revenue derived from digital business models will be platform-enabled.”
But this is no easy feat. Realizing and leveraging the following key best practices, enables organizations to create and maintain a successful architecture:
Integrate aggressive core modernization to drive business agility
Embed intelligence into core processes
Leverage integration as a key enabler to drive value
Utilize cloud analytics to deliver transparency, insight, and predictive functionalities
Transform Data into Intelligence
We’ve all heard the saying “quality over quantity”. This statement is particularly true when it comes to data. Data alone is meaningless until it is transformed into knowledge and ultimately into value. By interacting with data in an intelligent, meaningful way, organizations can uncover alternative possibilities, identify trends, and promote better decision-making in the future. Organizations that are not focusing on creating a solid data management strategy will simply be left behind in today’s data-driven world.
According to IDC, digital moneymakers, or companies that are delivering net new revenue streams from digital investments while reducing costs, follow these key best practices when developing a data strategy:
Construct a solidified data management architecture that delivers real-time business outcomes
Transfer data-intensive workloads off-premises to drive a “cloud-first” approach through business agility
Implement an enterprise-wide data strategy that conveys feedback from the external ecosystem to internal processes
As organizations race to implement a unified data management solution, more companies are turning to Software as a Service (SaaS) models like SAP Analytics Cloud (SAC). SAC combines Planning and Predictive analytics, business intelligence (BI), and augmented insights into one comprehensive platform, creating data transparency between all sectors of your organization, eliminating inefficiencies while enabling faster, smarter decision making. With a cloud solution like SAC, organizations eliminate the hefty expense of installing dedicated servers and are able to adopt and leverage new features at a faster rate and lower cost.
The Future of Digital Innovation
Digital innovation is no longer the talk of the future – it’s here to stay and is accelerating at an unprecedented rate. Consider this, according to IDC, from 2018 to 2020, approximately 500 million new apps have been created. This is equal to the number of apps built over the past 40 years. To keep up or get ahead of the competition, having a cloud-based application development and deployment in place is critical. As digitization accelerates and business needs change, organizations can scale the delivery of their services and products as needed, faster.
Platforms to Modernize the Core
“65% of organizations will aggressively modernize legacy systems with extensive new technology platform investments through 2021.” – IDC
As organizations shift towards new digital structures, it’s important to consider modernizing the core of their legacy systems to get the most out of their digitization efforts while supporting advanced security concerns. By integrating the core with all of its processes and people, the organization could achieve a truly agile solution that grows with its business processes and requirements.
New Technology Leadership
As companies continue to outline and move forward in their digital transformation journey, they’re not only leveraging new digital platforms but as a result, changing the roles of technology leadership. New outlined business initiatives that are enabled by technology and in some cases can only be achieved through emerging technologies, will redefine the traditional roles of CIOs, CTOs, and CDOs, enhancing their capabilities and potentially combining roles.
Final Thoughts
Surviving and thriving in today’s digital world requires a new approach. In order to differentiate as an industry leader, you must invest in new digital strategies and emerging technologies that offer the functional capabilities you can utilize not only today but ones that are flexible enough to evolve over time with the changing needs of your business, industry, and market.
Download the IDC whitepaper 5 Tech Trends to Deliver Business Outcomes to discover how investing in digital innovation can help you eliminate inefficiencies, streamline data for heightened decision-making, and future-proof your operations.
To learn more about how Analysis Prime can help your organization embrace the future of Digital Transformation, request a live demo of SAP Analytics Cloud today or contact us for additional information.