CAFFCO'S OPPORTUNITY WOULD BE 10% OF IRP REVENUES = $100 MILLION. THE REMAINING REVENUES WOULD FALL TO IRP ENTITIES.

Many disruptions to business are occurring as the internet one decade, post the dot com bubble, has taken hold. Retail Globally is being challenged by consumers buying from the web. Stores Logistics Bankers are all having their business models disrupted. Aivars Lode Avantce

CAFFCO'S OPPORTUNITY WOULD BE 10% OF IRP REVENUES = $100 MILLION. THE REMAINING REVENUES WOULD FALL TO IRP ENTITIES.

We live in a world of engagement. Thanks to the consumer technology and social media revolution, we now have more ways of engaging with our customers and with our employees than we could have dreamed of even a few years ago.
Engagement matters.

According to the Gallup Organization, organizations that have optimized customer engagement outperformed their competitors by 26 percent in gross margin and 85 percent in sales growth. The percentage of engaged employees in world class organizations is double that of average organizations. In the U.S. alone, Gallup estimates that the cost of disengaged employees in lost productivity is $370 billion per year.
In the old world, what are known as ‘Systems of Record‘ focused on putting technologies in place that essentially replaced paper bookkeeping. Sv In this world, we expected technology innovation to start with large organizations and eventually trickle down to consumers. We used technology to “push” messages to engage our employees and customers.
In the new world of ‘Systems of Engagement’ this innovation model has been turned on its head, creating unprecedented opportunities — and challenges — for businesses that seek to embrace the future and drive customer and employee engagement. The consumer technologies that are driving this revolution (social, mobile and the cloud) have largely emerged independent of the old world of Systems of Record.
The new world of engagement is one in which customers and employees use technology to “pull” the business to them, rather than the other way around. Think about how Facebook keeps you informed about major updates among those in your personal network, allows you to fine tune how much or how little you want to receive from this network and delivers these updates on any device, anywhere. Does your business have this capability? Why not?
But many businesses are caught between a rock and a hard place.
CEOs want to embrace this new world of engagement. They want to pay for these new technologies by driving down the cost of legacy Systems of Record. In the 1990s, efficiency in maintaining these Systems of Record created competitive advantage. In the 2010s, these systems are a necessary but insufficient condition for leadership. Moreover, the modern world puts pressure on them to become significantly better, more fluid and adaptable.
IT departments are reluctant to give up the control they enjoyed in the old world. They understand that unless ways can be found to bridge the gaps between the new Systems of Engagement and the old Systems of Record, brand new information silos will be created. They worry that all of the increased transparency created by social systems will expose the weaknesses of these linkages and their clunky back-end infrastructures. Many organizations have started paying attention to social systems, but few have integrated these listening posts with their back-end customer and information management systems.
A recent experience illustrates the challenge facing businesses. I recently sought to refinance my mortgage. I was promised by my bank that the process would be simplified by working through it. Fast forward 87 days, and after an exhaustive exchange of paper documents, I was still no closer to settlement. Fearing the process would never end, I shared my frustration with my 6,319 Twitter followers. The good news is that someone monitoring the Twitter stream contacted me within five minutes. The bad news is that the person had no access to my records, no access to my customer history, and no awareness of the trail of frustration that led to my Twitter outburst. The even worse news — and a fitting final tribute to the world of Systems of Record — is that the final settlement process featured 174 pieces of paper.



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While addressing this kind of challenge requires technical skills, it also requires process and customer acumen more often found in the business than in our IT departments. It requires a new type of information professional, whose expertise includes technical and domain knowledge, but who also has an idea of how the pieces of a process that spans the worlds of Systems of Record and Systems of Engagement should fit together. Gartner estimates that the demand for this new breed of information professional will grow by 50 percent by 2015.
These challenges require that business executives reassert leadership over IT initiatives. The business must demand that IT focus on five key initiatives:
Commit to the cloud: Break down monolithic enterprise solutions into more app-like solutions that can be deployed quickly, independent of platform and in the cloud.
Mobilize everything: Define processes to take advantage of mobile devices and mobile workforces.
Make the business social: Integrate social technologies into processes rather than create stand-alone social networks.
Digitize anything that moves: Drive bottlenecks out of old processes (especially paper) and make them more suited to the engaged world.
Prepare for extreme information management: Find insights and value in all the information that the business is storing to improve customer engagement.
It’s time to look differently at your business, both from the perspective of how you manage technology, as well as where you place your focus. The skills you need to be successful in the Era of Engagement are different from those you needed in previous eras. The people you need will help marry your technology tools with your business processes and do so from the perspective of the new engaged customer and employee. You will need to lead and help refocus your IT priorities and processes around the cloud, mobile and social technologies.
The planet is being rewired. Your customers and employees are connecting with your business and with each other in new ways that were once unimaginable. It is time for the business to occupy IT and lead the charge in the era of engagement.
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TECH | 6/01/2012 @ 8:50PM |13,928 views
It's Time To Occupy IT
Eric Savitz, Forbes Staff