July 20188 IN MY V EWEVER-INCREASING DATA AND THE CHANGING LANDSCAPEWe are all very lucky to be living in one of the most interesting ages the world has ever seen, some may call it the information age, but I like to refer to it as the age of data and the age of customer. The world has been accelerating at an ever increasing pace since the first real handheld computer was put on the shelves in 2007, this device brought data to the masses and additionally started to create data on a scale never seen before.Due to the variety and sheer quantities of data, the digital landscape is changing fast, it is honestly hard to keep up with it most of the time. With the age of data coming into full swing we are all seeing customer expectations and behaviours changing­their expectations are Choice, Fast, Anywhere, Anytime, Consistent and Free.As the younger generations come through, this is going to become the standard for services. YouTube, games, search engines, social media, online shopping, communication channels, etc. are the ones that are setting the bar for services leading into the customer era. You only need to look at your children to see the change. We went through school using encyclopedias and pens, the generation behind us went through using search engines and word processors, and the young ones coming through today are all for short video and media files. A phone call is now face to face or a recorded message. We need to keep in mind that this journey has happened in the last 10 years alone.With the advances in the ability to store, create, connect and consume data we are seeing major and significant advances in pharmaceuticals, genetics, energy alternatives, transportation, food processing, production techniques and above all else, global connectivity of people and things. Most, if not all of these advances are being driven by the ability to obtain, read, translate and decipher data from new sources on an unheard of scale. Data is probably now the most valuable asset on the planet, overtaking some of the old paradigms of oil and land-based consumables being the steadfast backbones of an organisation or country.I believe it is because of this realisation, there is now a large push by all countries and established companies to enter into the tech race even though it has a little bit of a resemblance to the 2000 dot com boom. Companies that have very few physical assets but are very innovative in the way they assemble, present, consume or transmit data are starting to dominate the economic realm: be it social media, online shopping, payments, reading material or simply gaming. We are creating data at an ever-increasing rate, and all this data can be used for a myriad of things with endless possibilities. It all comes back to imagination.BY WILLIAM JOHN STREITBERG, CHIEF INFORMATION AND TECHNOLOGY OFFICER, HONG LEONG BANK BERHAD
< Page 7 | Page 9 >