Optimising infrastructure – the way forward

There is no cut and paste template for the digital transformation of a global business. The wrong technology at the wrong time, or failure to get the security right could be an existential threat. But doing nothing isn’t an option as the business will fail to maintain competitive differentiation if it carries on with legacy systems. Digital leaders responding to our first survey cautioned that a reality check may be needed. Digital transformation isn’t linear. Non-tech business leaders need to know that this is a complex expensive project, there’ll be bumps in the road – but that it’ll be worth it. Jeremy Smith describes how he’s tailoring transformation at Avery Dennison: “We see that a cloud solution would be the only way to go in the future. If we can buy something off-the-shelf that will meet our needs that is our preference, but where we need a differentiated product or application, we're really looking to build it cloud native.” Each business will need to make its own case for change. Fergal Power, VP-Sourcing, Aptiv points out: “We need to look at digital change cases through the lens of the financial business case that will be presented to the Board as this tends to evaluate cases not primarily on their technical innovation or sophistication but on factors including the Capital intensity of the case – ie how much Capex is needed vs how much is available vs how it compares to other cases competing for that available Capex.” “The board will be interested in the recurring margin improvement the investment will generate. Intangible or indirect benefits can only get you so far – you need to show where and when it hits the bottom line – this is the real currency for any investment case. It is important to look at how do we scale up the technology deployment to reduce the time between incremental investment and incremental benefit. Also the extent to which the business can potentially exploit the investment across other areas after initial adoption can increase the risk appetite on the initial investment.”