Convergence at work

In previous times the compass, steam engine, the model T, structural steel, moveable type and even the atomic bomb sent shock waves through the social and economic worlds of their time. These are inventions and convergences that have a much wider effect than their intended use. Today`s impacts spring from the fast rate of invention and convergence in the digital world.

The primary forces at work are both digital and economic. The technology at play is the transformation of information into digital form, where it can be manipulated by computers and transmitted over networks. The force behind this is the remarkable invention and growth of semiconductors, which shifted the world from its industrial to an information base in the last 25 years or so. Unrelenting, exponential growth in speed. size and cost continues to feed this wave. Moore`s Law essentially encapsulated the driving force of "faster, cheaper, smaller".

The other critical wave is that of communications which spawned a new law known as Metcalfe`s Law, who observed that networks, which includes telephones, computers and people, dramatically increase in value with each node or user that is connected to the network. The Internet must be the most powerful example of this law; once a standard has achieved critical mass, the value to everyone multiplies exponentially.

It is very obvious that Moore`s Law and Metcalfe`s Law are operating together in powerful ways. Moore`s Law makes it possible to potentially digitise every device that we can think of - toys, microwaves, cars, buildings and a plethora of personal computing devices. This led to the drive for a unifying force to tie things together - enter the networks and in the last few years the Internet. With the Internet reaching critical mass the value of each additional node is now exerting something like a gravitational pull which is consuming every device and network in its path.

So here is a major and very powerful convergence at work. The global, critical mass and affordability of both the Internet and the many digital devices that can be connected, making it easier for people and devices to find, use, share and add to the information base has created a new "market space". New computing devices such as home appliances, video games, personal digital assistants and mobile phones are being built with Internet connections. The Internet has developed into a truly commercial environment and an open market in the true sense of the word. Clearly this has a profound effect on business.

There is another profound convergence going on which is also driven by the digital revolution. Just as the advent of the railroad caused much economic growth but also much unrest and social and political upheaval by connecting previously disconnected geographies and communities, the Internet is having a similar effect. It has already wreaked havoc in financial services, retail and telecommunications industries. It exerts considerable stress on entities that are slower to change. It is tearing apart industries through revolutionised new practices made possible in this digital world. In older, more mature organisations and industries we have looked at the alignment of business and technology and we even talked about the convergence of business and technology. In this revolutionary new world we are seeing the new entrants who are fully converged where the business is conceptualised and created as essentially a business/technology hybrid.

The digital revolution will have as much disruptive ripples in the fabric of society as its predecessors in the industrial age. There is a distinct and growing gap between the rate of improvement in social systems and the rate of development in technology. The trends are already accelerating deregulation and globalisation of markets, creating another leg of the convergence trend.

The convergence of industries, disciplines, markets, people and global communities empowers customers, employees, suppliers and new entrants to markets, upsetting the order of things, the way things worked before, the careful cultivation of competitive advantages which disappear overnight. This invalidates in an incredibly short space of time the value and assets of the "unconverged".

We are experiencing major convergences on all fronts, technology and business, technology, business and telecommunications, diverse technologies blending together (computers, telephones, game consoles, pagers, personal digital assistants, television, stereos, camcorders) industries and markets, disciplines which were previously well defined, work and leisure. Digital convergence and cyberspace are creating a "virtuality" to things which bridges time and geography and affects the social, economic and political fabric of society. It is fuelled by cheap computing power and exponentially increasing bandwidth and lots and lots of free stuff (software, information, etc).

Convergence will possibly touch life as we know it. Bio technology is a fast emerging and growing field and we can already witness its impact on our world and we can certainly see its convergence points to technology.

Convergence calls for big leaps forward in our understanding of the world and looking into a crystal ball to see what is coming at us. It requires a fearless leap to bridge the gap between incremental change into exponential change. Convergence implies in every sense of the word that something new and different emerges which does and will change everything.

There are some interesting convergence trends that can be observed in the area of software and services, clearly spawned by convergences within the business sector.

Data warehousing emerged as a huge trend over the past several years and was a manifestation of the business requirement for access to its corporate information. To start with, it pulled together information from disparate corporate systems, mainly for the purposes of executive decision-making.

Similarly a trend has been building around the topic of customer relationship management (CRM). Originally starting with the idea of a "service desk" or "help line", this trend has seen a number of convergences. Today the concept of CRM has become quite multi-disciplinary. Everything from dealing with customer problems and managing those to conclusion, to campaign management and sales and marketing of increasingly more complex products through direct marketing over the telephone and lately the Internet.

There is now a very clear convergence between the data warehouse and CRM, not only to integrate knowledge about the clients but to make knowledge available to the frontline workers who staff the customer contact centre. Furthermore, as technologies like data mining emerge to support the increasing demands of business to understand their data better and to find the jewels in there, these technologies are converging with the data warehouse, which in turn is supporting more and more of the requirements of the call centre applications.

The data warehouse, which started as a simple integration and reporting mechanism, is evolving into being the hub of information about not only business operations but the clients and relationships that the business manages and will eventually become the knowledge pool of the organisation. As technologies merge into the data warehouse, beyond data management, it is evolving as one big brain, not only a repository of information but an active intelligence to the organisation.

As the trend around "call centres" evolves we are seeing a number of technologies converge to turn the customer contact centre into a vibrant, proactive, highly effective face to the world. These technologies manage the actual management of the telephone call and its integration to the applications systems through CTI, predictive dialing - along with interactive voice response, screen popping, scripting, cross-selling software, call-blending and caller-line ID, it supports the active management of activity in the call centre. In addition, the contact centre is dealing with much more than voice calls, it is becoming the hub for multimedia traffic into the organisation, integrating Internet traffic, e-mail, voice, data, fax, etc.