The Digital Tipping Point

Digital has been a talking point for some time, where are we in terms of this transformation? Is enterprise IT organizations embracing digital in a big way?

- Shrikanth G

In a book in early 2010, titled the “The real Value of IT” by richard Hunter and George Westerman, they aptly said, “The cost of IT is not the value of IT. It’s time to start communicating in clear, measurable terms nontechnical managers can understand how IT improves business performance. Nearly half of all capital spending by businesses worldwide goes to IT, yet many business leaders remain skeptical about whether their IT investments are paying off. Frustrated—even angry—with their IT departments, the only input they seek from their CIO is why IT costs so much.”

The panacea the authors advocated: “ The escape from IT’s value quandary begins with something as simple and profound as a change of paradigm for the IT organization. We can sum up this paradigm change as rule number 1: it’s not about IT. It’s all about business outcomes and business performance, whether you’re communicating IT’s internal performance or IT’s impact on business operations and financials.”

If one contrasts this insight to this day and change, the transition to digital is to enable the enterprise to be agile enough to meet the demands of the new economy. Digital means rules need to be rewritten, skills need to be recalibrated, mindset need to be changed, and the old tech should give way to the new.

If we look at the APAC region, have we reached a state where we can say that enterprises are aggressively embarking digital? A recent survey from Gartner says so.

THE DIGITAL JUGGERNAUT