INTELLIGENT BRANDS // Software for Business
Why ‘out of the box’ should be
left on the shelf when it comes
to digital transformation
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Glyn Yates, MEA Regional Director
at Axios Systems, a leading global
enterprise software vendor, explains
why bespoke solutions are best for
digital transformation as the shift
towards prescriptive solutions often
creates self-defeating inefficiencies in
many enterprise environments.
W
e know that the role of the CIO
is changing (quoting Gartner
among many analysts) and
there has been a shift from IT-outcomes
to business outcomes, from supporting to
collaborating and from cost-controlling to
revenue-building. This increases the focus
on business/digital transformation and
optimised operations.
Digital transformation and the subsequent
service strategy is a double-edged sword,
with the benefit gap between excellent
and inadequate becoming greater day by
day. Those that have the agility to respond
quickly to changes in organisational
direction or the voice of the people will serve
the needs of their society far better than
most, whether by generating revenues or
delivering service excellence.
www.intelligentcio.com
This drive towards the need for flexibility
and agility has organisations looking at their
incumbent software/systems to understand
and test if it can provide and support the ever-
increasing demands of the business to deliver
a greater breadth and depth of services more
efficiently, more effectively and with greater
satisfaction from service consumers.
It has been a frightening assessment, with
many customers using legacy systems unable
to support flexibility within the complex
application estates of their large organisations.
This is primarily due to the legacy system
architecture/design and the need for
extensive consultation and programming
to make relatively minor changes. Those
that have taken vendor technologies and
developed them in-house to cater for bespoke
FORTUNATELY, NOT
ALL CIOS WANT TO
BE MANOEUVRED
INTO A POSITION
THEY DIDN’T
CONSTRUCT.
requirements are now finding they not only
have lock-in but are also handcuffed, with
the only answer being to throw more money
and efforts into development work – an
ever-perpetuating situation. I know of many
companies that take several weeks to be able
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