Amid all the changes wrought by global trends one thing is constant: your business will change.Numerous challenges face businesses today. Among these challenges you can count globalisation, deregulation, competition, the advances made in technology, mergers and acquisitions. These all add up to the creation of a fluid and ever-changing environment for businesses that have created challenges for companies and which impact on company IT strategies.
Some of the elements that define the business environment today include:
- Globalisation : More international companies are starting to operate in SA, and some are offering their products to the local market. At the same time, South African companies are reaching out internationally and establishing offshore interests.
- Deregulation : In a few years SA`s telecommunications monopoly will be shattered, introducing changes in the business telecommunications environment and lowering costs, while adding new services. This can only be seen as beneficial as businesses will have more choice about the carriers they can use, and they will be able to exploit the new technologies, like voice over Internet protocol (VOIP), more effectively.
- Competition : As markets open up, there is increased competition. In commodities markets the only quality that will differentiate you from your competition is the level of service that you deliver to your customer. You can leverage your customer-base to ensure your future successes by making sure that every customer counts.
- Technological advances : From converging networks to VOIP, there`s a glittering array of new technologies and approaches that you can use to streamline your business and make your operations more cost-effective and efficient. A key trend is recognising the importance of information delivery for companies that wish to track their future. At the same time, businesses need to decide on their business priorities and to regard technology as a business-enabler.
- Mergers : There has been a move in the last few years towards mergers, and giants are joining hands across the globe. This poses challenges for their competition and for companies that are involved in a merger, especially as far as harnessing the information value from disparate information sources.
- Rapid change : Meta Group says that one of the key changes is in the accelerating rhythm of business. Product lifecycles have become truncated, and we have moved away from mass production towards mass customisation and target marketing.
If you`re in command of your company`s information you can spot trends that will enable you to make snappier business decisions in response to events and global markets. Harnessing your information also means that you can make more accurate predictions, or respond immediately to a problem as it arises.
Enabling rapid change
Shrinking cycle times are a challenge to IT architecture`s degree of flexibility as IT systems have to be designed to keep up with the rapidly changing business needs. This has affected all industries, especially the Global 2000. And it`s not just impacting the private sector - the public sector is equally affected by the rapid rate of change in business and administrative processes.
Other issues that face businesses today include the move towards self-service and disintermediation. Customer interaction centres, electronic commerce and re-intermediation are becoming the order of the day. More virtual corporations are emerging. Information supply chains are challenging the traditional physical supply chains.
A meta trend that has been identified through to 2002 by Daniel leBourhis, VP in Meta Group`s enterprise architecture strategies, is that the primary design point for enterprise-wide technical architecture is to enable rapid change in business processes and the applications which enable those processes. By implementing these adaptive architectures, he believes that companies will create sustainable competitive advantage.
He adds that companies will also turn to information delivery applications to cope with the turbulent business environment for rapid and better-informed decision-making. It`s always been important to have an overview of the past history of your company, but now companies also need to track their future.
Can information delivery help your company overcome the environmental challenges and set a winning course for the future?
Next week:
Winning courses: The information delivery vision
[SIDE-BAR] Over the next six weeks Trivella will look at the business environment, information delivery vision, the technologies and enabling tools for information delivery, necessary architecture, methodologies for delivering a solution that works, and some examples of information delivery applications.
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