UPDATED 09:44 EST / JULY 17 2015

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Defining the digital business journey | #IBMDigitalBiz

What does it take to be a truly digital business? What does digital business mean to your customers and your company? Answering these questions might prove key to competing in this new online world.

On July 14th, IBM Big Data hosted an online discussion through the CrowdChat website on the topic of “steps along the way in the digital business journey.” The guest list included IBM’s James Kobielus, Big Data evangelist; Jonathan Sloan, senior certified executive software IT specialist and team lead for data analytics on the IBM System z platform; and Mark Simmonds, enterprise architect and senior product marketing manager, IBM Software Group. A number of other voices from the tech community also attended.

The discussion was based around seven questions put to the guests and the audience about digital businesses and how they work.

How do you define a digital business?

While the panel of guests and audience had their own ideas about what it means to be a digital business, the consensus opinion focused on data. The gathering, understanding and use of data to engage customers and optimize business practices seemed to be the hallmark of a digital business. As Jonathan Sloan said, “The digital business can take advantage of all this content to provide customized offers/solutions/products which a person would be interested in at that point in time.”

Chat attendees also stressed the importance of being connected to customers through social media and to employees by internal communications. “How do you define a digital business? I guess I would have to say it is the interconnected business,” Mark Simmonds said.

What are the pros and cons of being a digital business?

The group was almost unanimous in their opinions on this question. They saw the advantage of a digital business in being able to anticipate and react to a customer’s needs and wants in real time.

“The pros would be understanding your customer’s needs and wants more holistically. Because we can get closer to predicting what customers want and need more clearly,” said Mark Simmonds.

Likewise, they felt equally clear on the disadvantages. Going digital represents a huge shake-up to business culture and involves a lot of rethinking and reinvestment. However, only companies that are able to manage the transition to digital will be able to compete in the future.

“The cons: You need to rethink your business from top to bottom to do digital business most effectively,” James Kobielus said.

What will need (or have) to change in order for your organization to become a digital business?

The discussion on this question centered around two factors: infrastructure and people. On the technology side, the group felt it was necessary to have a solid infrastructure that could handle the vast amount of data that goes into a digital business.

“An organization’s IT infrastructure needs to [be] real-time, secure, always-on, unaffected by the unexpected, accurate, autonomic and unceasing,” said Kobielus.

And according to Jeff Frick of theCUBE, “Changing people’s behavior and attitudes, always the most difficult part of the equation.” The panel agreed, citing a strong need for the company’s management to understand the nature of the digital transformation. They also saw communication within the company as vital.

Can your current infrastructure cope today with the demands of being a true digital business?

This proved to be another question where the group was in agreement. Traditional infrastructure, they felt, was not up to the task of running a true digital business. “If you have siloed data platforms, you can’t be a true cross-channel digital business. You must incorporate systems of insight, systems of engagement, and systems of record into a unified architecture with common governance,” Kobielus said. However, they acknowledged the perfect digital business isn’t easy to build. “That Real-Time, Low-Latency, Always-on, Ubiquitous is great, but very expensive,” said Kirk Borne, principal data scientist at Booz Allen Hamilton, Inc.

What is the role of analytics with regard to the digital business?

Given the question, everyone agreed that analytics were at the core of digital business. “Analytics is the new competitive differentiator for understanding and interacting with your customers; it is required at all levels of the business,” said Annette Zawacki, senior product marketing manager – Analytics on zEnterprise. The other guests continued on that theme, discussing how analytics could improve a business. They were especially interested in using analytics to make decisions on a corporate level. “It’s a game-changer for brands to innovate faster, scale and ultimately provide new unique experiences in real-time at the right time!” said Brian Fanzo, chief digital strategist and partner at BroadSuite.

How will the digital business impact security, and what will need to change?

“Digital = Data = the target of cyber-enemies. Proactively preparing for this is critical to your survival,” said Borne, and this sentiment was shared by the others in the discussion. They stated that security wasn’t just important, but necessary, for a digital business. The major concern was that companies would transition to digital without a sufficient investment in security, opening them up to great liability should their data be stolen. The group also mentioned the issue of duplicate data as a threat to security. “Organizations will need to find alternatives to minimize the movement/duplication of sensitive data to reduce security risks,” said Zawacki. Besides the security threat, they noted that duplicate data also posed a problem for accurate analytics as out of date or incorrect data could be worse than no data at all.

Will society know or even care?

There was a good deal of debate among the group on this question. Some of the speakers felt that society was becoming much more aware of digital security thanks to well-publicized attacks in the news. Others thought people would see it more as a privacy issue. “Ensure that you’re distinguishing between privacy and security. Society is more concerned with the former than latter,” said Tim Crawford, CIO strategic advisor at AVOA. Beyond security, the guests saw people coming to digital business because it provides a superior customer experience. They noted, however, that some customers might feel the technology that feeds a digital business is intrusive and unwelcome. “I think society is already aware of this change and has mixed feelings about its prominence. Think ad retargeting, in-store push notifications, facial recognition, etc.,” said Betsy Miller Daitch, senior marketing manager, Investment Management, at S&P Capital IQ.

Check out the entire IBM Big Data CrowdChat below:

Image source: Pixabay

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