Beware of the Digital Trough

The scene playing out in the enterprise space can be depicted by two stories. On one side there’s the digital story – A beautiful romance that we’re trying to embrace and engage in. Then, there’s the horror story – One that prophesizes the armageddon brought about by digital disruption.  

Peter Bendor Samuel, CEO, Everest Group talked about the influx of digital disruption in the industry, and what this means for the end user, the employees, and the partners.

“Firstly, digital is easy – It’s intuitive, it’s accessible, flexible, and it’s all about me,” said Samuel. But what we mostly miss is this – “Not all applications of digital are complete,” he added, “for instance, ­­­buying a dishwasher online would still need to interact with the company reps for installation. Downloading a book from Apple Store is absolutely complete.”

Describing the Digital landscape, he explained, “When we talk about digital, we think of it in three layers – The interaction layer; the enabling layer (stuff like 3-D printing, cloud infrastructure, big data, etc.). Sitting in between these layers, we have an immigration challenge, and where we can have things like Dev Ops and agility.”

Sharing his research experience, Samuel said that more than 30 percent of digital projects don’t meet their objectives, or don’t meet completion. Also, less than one percent out of the 30 percent that succeed create a competitive advantage.

He ended his talk by taking a potshot  at the CMO. “What’s surprising is that the pony-tailed CMO’s bags 24 percent of the Digital budget,” 

You can now catch up with our extensive NASSCOM 2016 coverage.