Is your business a digital enterprise?

When you hear of General Electric, do the words “digital company” come to mind? Probably not, but the truth is, all companies, in all industries, need digital innovation to succeed.

In fact, GE has recently rebranded itself as a digital company that’s also an industrial company. Businesses are increasingly striving to position themselves as digital powerhouses in their respective industries.

It is not enough to simply embrace digital technology, though. Business and IT models have to change in order to develop, deploy and manage today’s technologies effectively. Oftentimes, that means developing and implementing an agile model that allows technology to align more tightly and be more central to the overall strategies of the enterprise.

An agile model can only be successful if an enterprise is adept at assembling teams that have the ability to quickly and reliably deliver innovative applications that support business priorities, or are themselves those priorities. While this is a necessity, it can seem like a huge undertaking to do in isolation.

An emerging best practice is for enterprises to assemble and engage agile resources and teams based on data and predictive analytics. In this manner, enterprises remove subjectivity from the hiring process and build teams intelligently, with a high degree of confidence in the teams’ ability to deliver on digital projects.

According to a recent Harvard Business Review report, companies who are ahead of the digital enterprise curve are standing out. A cross-industry research study conducted by Dr. Didier Bonnet, Capgemini Consulting’s global head of digital transformation, found that companies staying ahead of the digital movement and who use analytics for their business decisions are 26 percent more profitable than peers in their industries.

Teams assembled based on metrics are more likely to be able to deliver on business requests and priorities, and to drive the innovation and thinking required to lead, quickly and successfully. If your technology responsiveness falls short, or if your technology teams are unable to be core to your enterprise strategy, you risk losing much more than money — you risk negatively effecting your ability to innovate, remain competitive and meet customer (user) expectations. Almost 40 percent of businesses believe that their IT department is “not very, or not at all responsive” when it comes to providing new and innovative enterprise applications. Only 11 percent of businesses consider themselves “very responsive.”

A significant contributor to this responsiveness gap is the IT team’s lack of resources, according to the report. As technology teams are increasingly challenged to do more, and to be more core to the enterprise’s total strategy, important innovation projects are being deprioritized or delaying timelines. This limited resources obstacle can be overcome by building a strong partnership with a provider that offers a broad set of skilled teams and is able to provide those teams rapidly, ideally within days. With such a partner, CIOs and IT teams are able to not only get projects back on track but are actually able to accelerate innovation.

Creating a digital enterprise that uses technology to accelerate and transform business models is critical. Eliminating barriers that hinder the speed and success of a team of technologists by deploying predictive analytics is another key element to enable innovation. Do not ignore the disruption that digital technologies are generating in every industry — it’s time to get on board with the change. Are you ready to become an innovator?