CEOs fear Amazon will dominate their space of business

Feature
January 19, 2021 12:41 pm
Luis Ortega, Managing Director for Middle East, Africa, Asia at Pagero,

Today, businesses exchange all documents required to complete a buying or selling process primarily through paper or PDF based documents. This creates significant inefficiencies in regards the manual handling of the data, which is often at risk of errors and inaccurate information being entered into the ERP system. This includes inaccuracies in the analytics provided due to only the header level information being input into the system. 

Essentially, business transformation is the complete migration to a digital world whereby company resources are used to optimise operations instead of handling manual transactional processes, and by analysing accurate data obtained by digital means. To achieve this, both digital migration and profound business transformation is required.

We can place businesses in three categories: growth, risk reduction or cost reduction. Quite often we find that businesses fall within a combination of all three. 

To drive growth, technology plays a fundamental role in creating scalability, flexibility and resilience. Technology too plays an essential role in mitigating risk. It allows businesses to identify potential risks, measure the probability and the possible impact it may have on operations. 

Finally, businesses may invest heavily in technology which, although may seem costly in the short term, in the long term it drives cost reduction across entire operations, replacing manual processes with automation.

Many CEOs today fear that Amazon will enter and dominate their space of business. This means that for many business leaders who are not constantly identifying the transformation opportunities, their organisations will fail to prepare for the next digital disruption. 

Whether this is coming from inside their industry or due to external factors, this is a major factor that needs to be considered. 

Given the pace of change today, businesses leaders should be ready to steer constant change to stay ahead of competition and to survive in an economy that is continually evolving. 

Technology heads in modern day organisations are business-oriented people. They form part of the leadership team and influence business decisions at the same level of those heads in operations or finance. Their role in most cases is to bridge the knowledge gap and to constantly educate colleagues and customers in the art of the possible, with the use of adequate technology tools. 

Keeping consistency in the information communicated across the business is key to successful business transformation.

There are four main reasons for failure in digital transformation projects. These are:

  • Poor vendor advice
  • Organisations not prepared for intelligent future 
  • Challenging to retain talent
  • Lack of continuous improvement culture

In essence, organisations needs to be agile by breaking down their digital transformation strategy into smaller, iterative, digestible pieces where they can find incremental improvements whilst establishing a culture of continuous innovation. This helps to position themselves as a digital challenger within the competitive market landscape.

Luis Ortega, Managing Director for Middle East, Africa, Asia at Pagero,
Luis Ortega, Managing Director for Middle East, Africa, Asia at Pagero,

Key takeaways 

  • Organisations needs to be agile by breaking down their digital transformation strategy into smaller, iterative pieces.
  • Organisations need to position themselves as a digital challenger within the competitive market landscape.
  • We can place businesses in three categories: growth, risk reduction or cost reduction.
  • Technology may seem costly in the short term in the long term it drives cost reduction across entire operations.
  • Businesses leaders should be ready to steer constant change to stay ahead of competition.
  • Technology heads in modern day organisations are business-oriented people. 

 

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