DISRUPTER OR DISRUPTED

• Mendix

Is your company leading in the changes – a disrupter – in your market, or is your company being disrupted by others? You have a choice!

Due to rapid developments in technology, the capacity, storage and bandwidth of our IT systems grow exponentially every year. As an example: a data processing task that took 2 days in 2010, now only takes 10 minutes. This is powerful! As a result, our smartphones and tablets become smarter and faster. As we use our smartphones and tablets to communicate directly with supercomputers in the cloud, we now have super-computing-options at our fingertips, regardless of where we are in the world.

THE HARD AND SOFT TRENDS

Rapid changes like this lead to an important change in the way we do business. Remember, innovative technology is only threatening if you don’t know the impact in advance. Therefore it’s important to follow the trends in the current rapid development of IT. If you want to make strategic choices, it is important to distinguish two trends in IT: the hard trends (trends that are sure to happen) and the soft trends (trends that will possibly happen). With this knowledge you can discover new high-impact technologies before they are used by your competitors. After this you can ask yourself the important question: “do I want to be a disrupter (innovator) or be disrupted?”

Frankly, I would rather be the disrupter, using the predictable change in my favor. Because many organisations have a large infrastructure, they are not willing – or too slow – to change and unable to take the role of disrupter themselves. They have technologies that, in some cases, have been used for decades, this is what we call “legacy technology”, but it is not the legacy technology that is the real problem is. It is the “legacy thinking” that blocks the positive and productive changes in the organisation. You should avoid legacy thinking in your organisation by identifying hard trends that will affect you and your customers in the near future, so you get clear view on a new strategy for greater profitability in the coming years.

NOT JUST CHANGE, TRANSFORM!

Often we tend to work hard to protect and defend what we have. This approach is often embedded into our business model. The more we protect and defend what we have, the more we are anchored to our current business model. A better approach is to review our business model based on the predictable changes ahead of us. It is clear that we not only have to change it in the next five years; we really need to transform the way we sell, develop markets, communicate, collaborate, innovate, train and educate people.

A HARD TREND: BUSINESS APPS!

Much of that transformation is possible by working with mobile, integrated Business Apps. In addition to your systems such as ERP, your organisation needs innovative solutions and processes that can help you distinguish yourself from the competition. The needs and requirements for this develop and change rapidly; there is a need for a flexible solution that moves with you. A model-driven software platform makes it possible to quickly develop customised, dynamic and process-driven business applications on our smartphones and tablets.

DISCOVER A NEW BUSINESS IT ERA

The software platform Mendix is widely used to develop Business Apps and to link different systems together. For example, many legacy systems have no ability to communicate with other systems. Mendix works as a software layer on top of these systems and adds new functionality on outdated software. These outdated systems can therefore still communicate with each other and exchange data. The result is that these organisations do not need to replace their old systems to make steps towards a role as Disrupter and thus take a huge competitive advantage.

So it’s time to look at your business model and determine whether you should transform based on the hard trends. If you are to transform, do it fast! Remember, the future is all about speed and relevance. So now you have the speed of mobile working with Business Apps (almost) in your hands, it is time to use it … and fast!

This is a blog from Piet van Vugt, CEO at Pink Elephant

If you’d like to find out more please contact Mia Palatano on +44 (0)7595 205883 or email m.palatano@pinkelephant.co.uk.