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The digital value platform

Editorial Type: Feature     Date: 01-2017    Views: 1676      







A lack of platform integration standards will impede digital transformation. Chris Harding, Director for Interoperability at The Open Group explains

It is quite likely that many companies will not realise that the first stage of their digital transformation is already complete. This is because many of their customers have already gone digital. The Internet was used daily or almost daily by 82 per cent of adults in Great Britain during 2016 and 70 per cent of them accessed it using a mobile phone or smartphone. During these online sessions, most of them purchased goods or services.

FINDING DIGITAL VALUE
This being the case, it's time to consider the next stage which is to understand how to make things better for your customers, now they are digital.

When I was young, we used to go on family touring holidays, staying in bed and breakfast accommodation. Booking in advance was not practical as in most cases their only form of advertising was a sign placed in their front window. So as you can imagine, about an hour every day would be spent finding somewhere to stay for the night. It was not uncommon to be told "Sorry, we are full" or "Try Mrs. Jones, down the road." Needless to say, we always found somewhere, but it could at times be quite a performance. Today, we would be able to book in advance using the Internet or on the day by smartphone. That's an example of value.

Understanding what will deliver value to your customers is crucial. Depending on your source, between 66 per cent and 89 per cent of all digital transformation projects fail. Many of those failing companies thought that going digital was of itself business value: it isn't.

THE VALUE DELIVERY SOLUTION
If you are following a well-trodden path, your next steps may be relatively straightforward. For example, a number of e-commerce platforms exist on which you can build a solution to advertise and sell things using the Internet. If you are lucky enough to have a radical new business idea, putting it into practice will be more difficult.

There are now several digital technologies that can provide the basis of new business value. First, there was the Web then came cloud computing, social computing, mobile computing, big data analysis and the Internet of things. Now we are beginning to make use of cognitive computing. There will be more new technologies and each promises business possibilities, but they are often most useful when deployed in combination. For example, public cloud is an effective way of meeting occasional needs to support intensive processing for big data analysis.

DIGITAL PLATFORM INTEGRATION
A typical software architecture is shown in the adjacent image and there is no single platform for all technologies. Different platforms give access to different technologies and they support services which are combined to create business solutions.

When bringing a new business idea to market, time is of the essence. The less software that has to be specially programmed the better. The platforms and some of the software services that they support can often be bought in. The difficulty then is that they come from different vendors and may not work well together. This is why many analysts now say that platform integration is becoming one of the major digital transformation challenges.

Industry bodies and international organisations are working on standards and guidelines to address this. And they are sorely needed if enterprises are to deliver business value more easily using the amazing advances that technology offers.

BRINGING IDEAS TO MARKET
Meanwhile, if you have a new business idea making use of these technologies, persevere and bring it to market. Customers really do gain value from digital transformation and the rewards for success can be high.

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