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Q&A: Dealing with the digital mesh


Johannesburg, 31 Mar 2016
Lourens Swanepoel of Avanade
Lourens Swanepoel of Avanade

Lourens Swanepoel, market unit lead for cloud and digital at Avanade, talks to ITWeb's Ansie Vicente about the recently releasedAvanade Technology Vision 2016.

ITWeb: The report talks about "Solving problems in new ways will be key to helping businesses thrive, as the coming years witness the explosion of cognitive computing, immersive experiences, and a digital mesh that connects people, things and entities." What can companies do to come up with the "new ways" in which they should be solving problems?

LS: The key to solving problems in new ways lies in the ability to drive change within the organisation. New technology is one part. Applying a Design Thinking approach to the way that we "solve" in the organisation will help drive new ways of approaching challenges.

Equally important is to identify the interventions necessary to enable that the people change. This will ensure the technology is adopted, and then apply a Design Thinking approach to how we design and enable these interventions.

ITWeb: Avanade suggests that companies have to "mind the ethical fault line" because they leave digital footprints wherever they have touchpoints with clients and their data, across many platforms. Is this a problem for only marketers/communicators to be concerned about, or is there a role that the IT department can play?

LS: The IT department has a key - even leading - role to play in putting the "guard rails" in place within the organisation when it comes to the ethical fault line.

The IT organisation is a key participant in defining the strategy, approach and enabling the solutions that will help the organisation mind the ethical fault line.

ITWeb: The report suggests that 'Digital ecosystems and borderless platforms create opportunities for businesses to take advantage of a "mesh of interactions" that connects people, things, algorithms and other entities.' Please give some practical ways/suggestions for CIOs who might be concerned that being "borderless" is being "security-less"?

LS: In a hyper connected world, characterised by a mesh of interactions between people and things, the digital identity is blurring the line between the personal identity, your business identity and virtual identity. A key question is: where does the online "you" stop and the real "you" start?

For CIOs, central to managing security in this borderless environment is the ability to accurately define and understand the "identity" of our users and customers.

Once we have properly defined the digital identity, the organisation will be able to apply contextual security to the identity, unique and aligned to the way that the specific digital native interacts across the digital ecosystems.

Businesses that do nothing to rewire their approach to managing ethics and identity in the digital context risk losing customer faith and trust.

ITWeb: Please explain a bit more around what is meant with the concept of "data currency" and how that interplays with the commodification of data?

LS: Data has an economic value that can be bought, sold, and traded. We know that 90% of the data in the world today was created in the last two years. Between now and 2020, the global volume of digital data is expected to multiply another 40 times or more. Much of that new information will consist of personal details: where people have been, what products they've bought, what movies they liked, that kind of thing.

Companies are working hard to cash in on the market for personal data. These companies range from large data aggregators such as Acxiom, which hold information on as many as 500 million consumers globally, to start-ups helping individuals control and make use of their own personal data.

Companies and individuals use this data to create valuable products and services through a number of ways such as building databases of consumer preferences and behaviours, giving advertisers and consumer goods company's new insights into target audiences.

Through viewing data as currency, organisations are able to commodify data.

ITWeb: Please explain how Avanade sees "the augmented workforce/smart technologies/smart machines" play out in a country like SA, where much of the labour market is unskilled, and there is a lot of pressure on companies to increase job opportunities?

LS: Most South African organisations are under severe cost pressure. To ensure organisational survival and to compete effectively in the global market place, they are forced to look at innovative ways to do things smarter and to automate a lot of the labour intensive processes in the organisation.

In the short terms, this can put pressure on job creation in the organisation - if the organisational change required to re-align workers in these roles are not managed correctly.

Organisations should focus on how to re-skill these employees and apply them to support key and new areas of growth within the business.

In the long term, we will have to - through proper education and enabling the learning organisation - transform and lift our skillsets within South Africa to remain competitive globally and to enable sustained job creation to take place.

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