A reflection on the dramatic changing face of the household names in the FTSE and Fortune 250 index’s is not easily dismissed. Replaced by new businesses that in some cases did not exist 15 years ago. This is no aberration, it is a reflection of a changing of the guard driven by a rapidly evolving digital economy, operating to a new rulebook that is driving unprecedented innovation at velocity.
Business transformation is how businesses stay competitive and has been around as long a business itself. What has changed is the speed of penetration by new entries into well established and mature markets and their ability to take significant if not debilitating levels of market share from incumbents, almost overnight. The balance started tipping with the advent of commoditised computing and the dot net boom, but the lid really came off the Genie’s bottle when it got into its stride in the form of unlimited and instantly scalable cheap mass compute, storage and access to analytics, aka cloud computing. Business transformation is now called digital transformation for a good reason by 95% of businesses who say they are engaged in it (Forbes Insights – How to Win at Digital Transformation), of which 90% (Gartner 2018) are leveraging Cloud computing. The correlation is crystal clear and hard to ignore. With less than 25% of production workloads having been moved so far, we have seen nothing yet. With greater scale and speed to market will come greater innovation, exposing the vulnerability of ill prepared organisations.
With Cloud computing comes some interesting customer relationship dynamics for vendors. It is a new age of Trust in the Cloud. It’s a simple but alarming truth, if a vendor is not talking to customers about Cloud Computing and demonstrating innovation at the leading edge of their service or product space, customers will buy from someone else.
When the hammer drops, it will be too late. There will be little warning for complacent closes minds, customers are malleable to new offerings from shiny ‘Born in the Cloud’ organisations who exude innovation (perversely, whether they are innovative or not!)
Enterprises and individuals alike are now purchasing with an online, browse, click and buy, Marketplace convenience. Echo’s of the Highstreet and why some retailers are booming and others busting, as they harness, or not, a new connectivity and engagement experience with their market that is prioritising user experience and convenient to buy.
Recognise that Cloud resets relationship Trust and whilst it is undoubtedly an opportunity for all, introducing new channels to market, it would be negligent not to recognise this as a risk to be mitigated by established organisations
Nigel Gibbons ~ Welcomes you 
Posted on December 15, 2018
0