Cover Story
A quote from Lao Tzu goes “If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading”. Anyone in the business world knows that in the last three years, the pace of change has only exponentially increased. New companies have come up with completely new business models, challenging the old ways of working with the same underlying resources. Enterprises recognize that the lifetime to obsolescence for anything new has significantly shrunk. Rapidly adapting the organization to these changes is easier said than done. Yet, only those enterprises who can do so quickly and with ease are going to be successful in the long run.
Technology is transforming enterprise processes in unprecedented ways driven by ubiquitous mobile connectivity, on demand computing, robotics and a new class of connected things. Amid the huge influx of data, analytics and cognitive technologies, the intelligence from software applications is helping devices and people to think and respond better. Just like Netflix offers suggestions to a viewer based on their past choices, within enterprises virtual agents could run enterprise processes automatically. Managing enterprise strategy is now starting to include aspects of self-tuning algorithms that can apply the underlying principles to adapt product offerings, improve processes and bring the enterprise closer to their ecosystem. In an intelligent enterprise, these algorithms can support the enterprise to adjust their business models to suit the new picture, consequently allocating resources and making changes to structures without a long and iterative change management cycle time.
The amount of information within an enterprise has become quite overwhelming. The challenge is to identify where the information lies and bring it all together into an intelligent enterprise platform that form the basis for real time decision making. Enterprise infrastructure and resources is now increasingly connected where workers, plant, building, machinery, inventory, warehouses, and the entire supply chain provide information almost in real time.
These are truly exciting times. Enterprises are investing in a wide variety of technologies to gain visibility and transform processes. Frictionless workflows, wearable technologies, information management solutions and technologies that provides real time insights are all becoming an integral part of enterprise processes.
With the next generation technologies, a service oriented architecture that abstracts software capabilities as reusable services are imperative to support flexible business processes and build an agile organization. Enterprises have been investing in SOA for a very long time. But the true benefit of SOA will be realized in this digital world where business drivers of cost optimization and process agility will truly drive the returns for such initiatives.
A sample of what an intelligent enterprise looks like
- Fully automated operational processes that supports stronger collaboration within and outside the enterprise with high operational efficiencies.
- Fast turnaround time for customer response. Always being on top to provide customers even before they recognize the need.
- Intelligent supply chain – connected warehouses, fully automated warehouse operations to maximize efficiency and enhance customer satisfaction. Packages and containers marked with intelligent tags. Interconnected network that binds together suppliers, contractors, customers, service providers etc. Smart objects and systems in this network with embedded intelligence.
- Better visibility across the enterprise. Analytics that provides insights into how resources are being utilized that forms the basis of investment decisions, predicting likely issues together with causes and providing alternate plans to mitigate risks.
- Smart manufacturing that integrates all manufacturing data across various plants paired with computer simulation and modelling providing manufacturing intelligence that enables flexible manufacturing, optimal production rates and product customizations.
- Mobile digital technology for sales force automation.
- Personalization and customer journey analytics to better engage with customers.
There is however a re-thinking on SOA – rather than a complex technology or processes, a new notion of microservices has come into play. Microservices contain everything from the operating system, platform, framework, runtime and dependencies packaged as one unit of execution. These applications are therefore somewhat like self-contained units which are autonomous and independent.
As we approach towards 2020, we’re more likely to see a cobbling together of multiple solutions and platforms that allows to share data more broadly. One off solutions and a siloed, fragmented approach is not something that enterprises would like to continue to have especially in the areas of IoT and mobile applications. Companies are pushing the envelope for technology to mimic human brains. With Facebook’s deep face software for example, technologies like AI and deep learning will help identify patterns of similarity between two faces to determine if it is the same person with close to 98% accuracy. There will be more tools available for enterprises to deploy blocking and preventive mechanisms and leverage comprehensive protection to decrease the probability of any attacks. Autonomous machine learning will not only collect information but also learn based on it. Enterprises will increasingly rely on 3D printing materials in the manufacturing or product design process. Devices and sensors will collect more contextual data and they will organize our lives even without our cognizance.
There is a whole new array of business opportunities waiting to be captured by enterprises. Some of this is recognized but a larger part is really hidden. This is really the CEO agenda where digital is laid down at the center of corporate strategy.