InetSoft Webinar: How Do You Grow Your Business?

This is the continuation of the transcript of a Webinar hosted by InetSoft in May 2018 on the topic of "Business Intelligence Agility" The speaker is Mark Flaherty, CMO at InetSoft.

In this environment the question is how you grow your business? How do you take all this information from all these technologies that we’ve been really looking at to look at new opportunities? Going forward there’s only going to be two ways you’re going to do that. You’re going to take market share, or are you going create new market opportunities. That’s really what we’re looking at trying to go forward.

In this environment, right now we’re in the fast lane, and the whole point of this is that change is the new norm. It’s not going to go away. The level of complexity is continuously increasing. So the way we look at this is, change is the new norm, but complexity is on the rise, and you’re always in a state of uncertainty.

You never know what’s going to be around the corner. You are perpetually in a state of uncertainty, and when those events happen, the impacts are much more dramatic. Look at how only two of the world’s largest countries that were in the top 10 listing in 2000 are on the list today. That is uncertainty. That just shows you what’s happening in the marketplace.

The level of complexity is high, whether it be using partners from an outsourcing perspective, or the shorter lead times that we all have, or the magnitude of devices and information that we’re trying to harness. It magnifies this thought of consistent and constant change. Now, with all these ideas in mind, the goal is to take advantage of them.

The rise in expectations of how your customer perceives you and the transfer of experience across industries are examples of these dramatic shifts that we have to think about going forth. Another point is that competitors and partners can arise from anywhere. Indirectly competitive companies today can be formal competitors tomorrow.

You can’t just look at those companies that are already in your industry today, but you have to think about those that might enter in the future. The last factor to consider is that the velocity of change is being magnified through the use of technology. We used to talk about how some client server and enterprise applications in 2000 would help us get a better understanding of automating more of our processes. But we found out that model was too rigid. There was too much inflexibility.

We started looking at our technologies as well as our processes as a set of services. With the question of this velocity of change, we have to make sure we harness it. We need to have more flexible processes and systems going forward. What’s the warning that we got to take a look at here? Is this where are you headed? How are you taking advantage of this? How are you looking at these challenges?

The challenge is do you understand the needs of your customers? Do you understand them, and can you identify them? Are you harnessing information? Are you able to use it to continuously drive the next level of products and services? Are you constantly innovating? Innovating means continuously focusing on your processes and the information behind those processes.

Another necessary step is to connect all parts of your technological eco system. That eco system ranges from the back end applications to the human interactions outside of your organization and in so doing are you thinking of the integrity of those interactions? If something happens downstream, are you able to accommodate those changes and those issues that are happening, so you can make sure you represent that consistent view?

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Is your data updated? Is the information accurate? And are you representing it back to your customers or constituents in the right fashion? And lastly, are you taking a look at harnessing that information?