Most CEOs and members of company boards have come to expect that technology, specifically the newest available technology, will drive their continuing digital transformation (DX). While people, minus tech, can be slow to change, clinging to safe processes and time-tested theories, technology is always changing. As DX is a continuing journey, an evolution without a set endpoint, it is right to believe that technology can and must drive it.
DX requires opportunism. While the goal is always going to be the same — to evolve and grow — companies must have the nerve, not to mention the self-belief, to move from an old IT operating model based on securing sustainable competitive advantages to a new model that focuses on seizing opportunities as they come up, deftly and swiftly hurtling from one to the next.
The facts are screaming at those who have yet to fully apprehend the present and future of businesses and data intelligence:
- Companies using analytics are five times more likely to make faster decisions than companies that do not use analytics (Source)
- Eighty-five per cent of business leaders believe that big data will change the way they do business (Source)
- Over 40 per cent of organizations have plans to deploy mobile business intelligence (Source)
- Ninety per cent of companies will have hired a Chief Data Officer in place by 2019 (Source)
It is the job of company decision-makers, specifically those who make decisions when it comes to technology and data, to never be surprised. CIOs are in the anticipation game. Data is their life’s blood, as is the prospect of making the right moves based on where they see things going.
Two-and-a-half quintillion bytes of data are created every single day. Boiling that down: you can fit one million trillions in one quintillion. That’s a lot of data, and it carries with it huge implications, especially when you consider that 90 per cent of the world’s data today was created in the last couple of years, and that that rate of data creation is on a steep incline.
Even if half of this growing mountain of data has no business application, you’re still looking at an enormous, potentially overwhelming, pile of information. The expression “in the driver’s seat” speaks well to the challenge currently before CIOs: to get control of their data, and leverage it to make swift decisions that results in competitive advantage. To do so is to be in the proverbial driver’s seat; to fail is to follow, or more accurately to drag along well behind — neither a driver nor an innovator.
IBM for CIO’s “Accelerate” offers business leaders resources about:
- Accelerating data intelligence and innovation
- Driving disruption through agility and responsiveness
- Maximizing the value of your data
- Boosting your speed of innovation with APIs and micro-services
- Applying ingenuity to reshape IT for the future
- Inspiring the creation of smarter apps and services