Everybody has that voice from the past. Whomever it is, they said something that's found a way to stick with us.
For me it's my high school football coach. And let me tell you, I was more thanreminded of it.
Whether at practice, watching film, or running through the hallways late to class, I was constantly reminded of one thing.
"Son, you get better or you get worse. There is no staying the same."
There it is again.
Maybe I should thank coach, as the saying is so ingrained in my mind that I try to apply it to areas within my life today.
Case in point: the onset of digital business in the workplace.
More and more organizations across all industries continue to adopt today's most innovative technologies to ensure business success and preserve customer satisfaction. A recent survey conducted on business trends, technological adoption and current goals in process excellence expressed now more than ever that professionals are experiencing the value of innovations such as mobile, data management, social collaboration and cloud computing.
According to the survey, 37 percent of respondents cited data and analytics as the most important emerging technology to their business success, with enterprise mobility a close second, coming in at 30 percent of respondents. At the same time,digital transformation is more common in the workforce than ever before (only four percent of respondents expressed digital transformation as not being a priority for their company).
And as we look towards 2015, the future remains bright.More than 70 percent of respondents state that up to a quarter of their enterprise business applications are already mobile, and when it comes to cloud, nearly 40 percent of respondents believe that as much as half of their business applications will be hosted in the cloud this time next year.
But, hold on a second...There's coach again!
Though we are more digital than ever, there is a tall task ahead in finding a way to "get better" and sustain business growth.According to the survey results, nearly 40 percent of business professionals say their company has a "huge backlog" of development work ñ making them slow to implement new technologies. Further halting this development, 60 percent stated employees still do not have access to key enterprise data or core business procedures accessible via mobile platform.
This is in part due to an app-by-app development or "business siloed" approach to enterprise IT.Though each technology mentioned above certainly plays a role in successful business, they alone do not meet sustainable growth and customer needs.A singular purpose app development approach only adds to the poor spending of money that has created a major flaw in the custom application industry.
The solution to business transformation, and getting coach off your back, lies in a modern application platform.
Rather than looking at one-off applications, new platforms have arisen to meet a broad range of needs across organizations. Such an application platform leverages the technology innovations of data, process, mobility, collaboration, and cloud in an all-encompassing approach to radically accelerate application delivery. This is the necessary ingredient to cost-effectively evolve the entire business ñ not just the customer-facing front end ñ across the digital divide.
Find out additional strategies for achieving sustainable business through enterprise technology, and score a touchdown of your own for the old ball coach!
-Mike Ingrisano, Media Relations Manager
