Published on the 20/11/2015 | Written by Beverley Head
Enterprises which want to transition from traditional operations into a digital business need the CEO and board to drive the agenda, or they will likely fail…
Software AG chief customer officer Eric Duffaut, currently visiting Australia, said that “In every company that is accelerating the pace it always comes from the top – from the CEO and board who are IT and software aware people that understand technology.”
But Duffaut sounded a word of caution, noting that although the push for more digital businesses had to come from the top. “The more hierarchical the company, the less innovative they are.”
Getting the cultural and structural settings right was very important to long term success.
In contrast those organisations and managers which continue to view IT as a cost centre and have outsourced much of their computing; “Have lost control and are in big trouble.”
Duffaut (a veteran of both Oracle and SAP) said that having spent decades standardising back and front office systems which essentially automated conventional business processes, forward thinking companies and governments were now looking to design new processes or services, harness data to become a more real time enterprise, and integrate that with existing systems.
“Last week I was with a large bank in Europe, meeting with the CIO and the head of retail banking and they said we are now a software company that happens to do banking,” said Duffaut.
It’s music to Software AG’s ears. The Germany-headquarted company, which has revenues of around $US1 billion and 4,300 employees, still sells the mainframe based software that it first launched in the 1970s, has built or acquired software to construct what it describes as a digital business platform to support companies by providing layers of middleware that allows them to integrate existing systems, design new systems, manage all their platforms, develop new processes and make better use of real time data.
Duffaut said that “Everybody around the world recognizes that you go digital or you go out of business. Classic industries understand that digitization is not an option.”
James Wooster, who was appointed ANZ vice president at the beginning of the year, said that antipodean enterprises seemed to be ahead of many of their counterparts in Western Europe in terms of embarking on the journey to digitize their business. In particular, he noted that Sydney-based banks are attempting to flatten hierarchies and collaborate with third parties to design new processes and services.
