Most businesses didn’t anticipate having to handle the supply-chain impacts of several disruptive forces at once: an ongoing pandemic, a severe crunch for talent and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
B2B companies are currently up to their necks in “digital transformation.” They're moving at a rapid clip to enhance the customer experience through technologies that automate processes while focusing on marketing, sales, and e-commerce. While this was percolating before COVID-19, it’s now all-encompassing and tied into the overall business strategies. On the back end, ERP providers and their VARs are scrambling to keep up. Maybe, just maybe, it’s time to take a step back and look at this through a different lens.
The world is growing increasingly complex. As such, agile capabilities and the ability to quickly adapt to changes in global environments are becoming more and more important. Events like the rise of extremist terror organisations and the dissemination of technology across the world have significantly changed the way in which enterprises interact. Businesses are quickly waking up to the rising demands placed upon them by this new international marketplace. However, too often changes caused by worldwide events catch organisations off guard.
Wandering around the Gartner Symposiums at the end of last year, listening to the keynote speakers and chatting with CIOs from some of the world’s leading brands, it is clear that the year’s theme was very apt. “Rise to the Challenge” reflects both the exciting opportunities and the daunting demands on IT departments. At a time when budgets continue to flat line, CEOs are looking to digital transformation as a crucial step to their future business success, and they expect their CIOs to pull out the proverbial IT rabbit to support this goal.
