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John Keells Hodings
Sustainable Growth in IT Services and Market Disruption through Digitalization
Buddhike Perera
Digitalization has created a new kind of democracy for the 21st century to permit consumer expectations to determine who gets to stay in and who is made to drop out of the fast paced IT services industry. Inundated by growing competitive business processes combined with evolving consumer demand, companies have no luxury in doing business at their own will. Consumers shaping the business eco systems and brick and motor business are no longer viable in the era we live in. As growing digitization and evolving consumer demand rapidly change the marketplace, we must find new ways to innovate for business advantage by embracing digital transformation. Thus, the use of new technologies which are the weapons of mass disruption (WMD) are cloud, mobile, Big Data, and social networks. Companies can capitalize on new opportunities and optimize existing opportunities to achieve significant business improvement. To outpace today’s market disruption, business must equip with Smart and Simple technologies that will help them adapt quickly to change. Two percent (2 percent) of design time with ninety eight percent (98 percent) time spent on execution will derive a tsunami wave that will disrupt the market through rapid transformation. Change is inevitable and companies are successfully changing the way they business by adopting smart IT services which bring smart value creation to the organizations.
Technology innovation through Digitalization is changing the playing fields for businesses, industries, and markets in a remarkable way. At the heart of this digital transformation is a host of new technologies that are disrupting the deep-rooted ways of doing conventional brick and motor business model. Consider the power of the Smartphone, a single commodity device, which didn’t exist years back. It has disrupted dozens of companies and strong brands across the world in a variety of industries. It has engendered millions of apps and blurred the line between home and work. The Smartphone changed the way of running businesses and transformed the way businesses engage with customers.
There is no doubt that Information and Communication Technology has found its niche in every sphere of human touch point’s polity. Information and Communication Technology enabled service has been demarcated as a broad based technology that supports the creation, storage, manipulation and communication of information. With the rapid Digitalization, which is the new world order,
“As growing digitization and evolving consumer demand rapidly change the marketplace, we must find new ways to innovate for business advantage by embracing digital transformation”
‘Digital Darwinism’ is what the world is now facing at the threshold of an era where technology and society are evolving faster than businesses can naturally adapt while early in its evolution, digital transformation represents the next big thing in customer experience and ultimately how business is done in this. Those companies that ride the killer wave of disruption and invest more in learning about their digital customers’ behavior, preferences, and expectations will carry a significant competitive advantage over those that figure it out later. This gave birth to new leadership, a new generation of business models, charging behind a mantra of “adapt” or “extinct” from the market eco system. Whereas disruption turns an industry on its head by offering customers something that previously didn’t exist, innovation merely makes an existing value offering better, cheaper or faster. Do you see the difference? One can call these as Kamikazes of business transformation and end of brand loyalty. Changing the way, we travel with ‘Uberization’, changing the way we watch movies with Netflix, changing the way we experience hospitality through Air BnB are some of the success stories of how business disruption through digitalization has changed the way we do business through a disruptive business model purely driven through Digitalization.
According to Harvard Business School, there are two major types of disruption: new-market disruption and low-end disruption. In a new-market disruption, the unserved customers are unserved precisely because serving them would be unprofitable given the incumbent’s business model. In a low-end disruption, the customers typically lost are unprofitable for the incumbents, so the big companies are happy to lose them. Either way, a disruption ends up benefiting both customers and the new businesses.
Companies need to set up their organizations around innovation and establish appropriate processes and metrics to integrate innovation into the nerve system of corporate culture. So, how do you organize yourself around innovation? Who drives it and is ultimately responsible in the organization for innovation? Where does that person sit, and how do you define processes and mechanisms around innovation?
Once the right strategy, processes, and organization are in place to embrace new ideas and initiatives, there is an opportunity for CXOs to leverage technology to enable innovation. In fact, higher percentage of highly innovative companies agree or strongly agree that their IT investments are made primarily to support growth initiatives and leverage emerging innovations such as penetrating via mobile devices and social media.
More than ever, consumer expectations matter. If a customer doesn’t like the product they will move in to the next available option to experience new expectations. Consumers are addicted to what is commonly called the ‘WOW factor’ – an overwhelming sudden newness that derives a very positive reaction. And the fact that this offering should indulge them and retain them is a daunting task. In our end user–centered world, enterprises must recognize that both customers and employees have rising yet mercurial expectations. Strategies that gave proven results a few years ago won’t fly today, nor will those of today be effective tomorrow. Even B2B companies must make decisions that satisfy their customers’ customers in order to survive in the everything-as-a-service economy.
To capture future growth and position on the winning side of the fast-shifting IT services marketplace, IT and business service providers need to not only understand new delivery paradigms, but also embrace the clear opportunities that Digital Business signals. Thus having a sustainable IT services leads organizations to embrace and transform through Digitalization as a paramount requirement in the race for survival, or face being pushed to extinction forever, from the undeniable phenomenon called consumer need hierarchy.
Established in 1870, John Keells Holdings PLC (JKH) is Sri Lanka based firm, specializing in IT services and BPO, Airlines & Aviation, Food & Beverages, Real Estate, Financial services, Holiday & Tours, etc.
