Today’s food for thought: In 2015, the American Enterprise Institute, or AEI, reported that only 12 per cent of Fortune 500 companies from 1955 were still in the Fortune 500 in 2015.
Companies are founded in a specific context or environment. They are built for a time and place — to take advantage of a trend or fashion, or to solve a problem or satisfy a going need.
Things change over time, however. Unforeseeable external factors inevitably come into play, and most companies that fail (or refuse) to change as the times demand end up being inundated and swept away.
Welcome to the digital era. New tech is the new norm. New enterprises with agile business models are coming on, and suddenly players that once enjoyed success, as if by birthright, are being forced to don a pair of boxing gloves and battle for their survival.
As falling revenues and other pressures drive a company to reinvent itself, its leadership group must come up with an effective action strategy. Some make the mistake of thinking they can just tinker with what they have, wrapping their tweaks in comfy words like “efficiency.” But this is not the right path. This is thinking from the eighties hanging on for dear life.
Change today must be gutsy. A paradigm shift is afoot. The time for tweaking is long gone.
Success in the age of cloud and IoT comes not necessarily to the biggest companies but to those that are agile and adaptable. They key: digital transformation. Avaya is a leader in this space, a provider of customer and team engagement solutions and services in flexible on-premise and cloud deployment options.
This year, IT World Canada, the premier online IT content provider, will be holding its annual Digital Transformation Awards on June 14th. The purpose of this national award program is to recognize excellence and thought leadership in digital transformation in Canadian business. Avaya is proud to be one of only four presenting sponsors at this year’s event.
