Navigating the New IT & Business Agenda

Featured article by Chuck Pol, President, Vodafone

Enterprise business leaders are challenged on a daily basis as technology evolves and changes the way we do business. The more laptops, smartphones, tablets, cloud applications, and wearables that enter the enterprise, the greater the challenge for IT and businesses as a whole to balance the needs of a mobile workforce while controlling costs and security. With new technologies entering the market, it’s developed an entire new IT and business landscape. Even with these challenges, organizations need to be constantly focused on growth and opportunity, while keeping an eye on the bottom line.

Trends Setting the Agenda

In order to navigate the new IT and business agenda, enterprises need to be ready for three major disruptions:

1. The dual global economy

In order to compete on a global scale, enterprises need to follow a dual strategy to adapt to today’s two-speed global economy. Slow growth in Europe means organizations need to contain costs, but also expand their presence within emerging markets to balance flat growth elsewhere. For example, economies in the East and Africa have benefitted from a growing consumer population and have become increasingly valuable to global economic growth. When driving growth in emerging markets, businesses have to be prepared to deal with a fundamental impact on IT infrastructure. They may need to rebalance their IT investment, resources and strategy to support this growth in emerging markets. Businesses need to be ready to react to these changing markets – and that means having an agile infrastructure to expand global operations around the world in a scalable and cost-effective way.

2. Rise of the end user and BYOx

With so many devices entering the workforce, enterprises struggle with how to ensure global consistency over the whole estate. Adding complexity to this issue is the fact that there are currently four generations within the workforce, each with different expectations for connectivity and mobility. In fact, by 2015, Generation Y will outnumber Generation X and Baby Boomers in the workforce. BYOx (Bring your own everything) will be an inevitable change as the mobile generation brings their own devices, applications, cloud tools, and social media platforms into the enterprise. Businesses need to enable a mobile workforce by providing the tools and technology that allow workers to work how they want, where they want, and on the device they want. In doing so, organizations will ultimately provide a greater experience for customers.

3. New security challenges

The growing number of new devices entering the workplace also contributes directly to the increased need for security across mobile, fixed and more. Not only do organizations need to protect corporate data, they also need to protect customers’ data. This is a key concern for 72 percent of businesses globally today, according to a 2015 Vodafone Total Communications Research survey. Security threats also top of mind due to emerging technologies like the Internet of Things and the impending ubiquity of BYOx leading to increased incidences of corporate data residing on personal devices. Organizations have to be prepared for these changes with a globally consistent and secure infrastructure.

Putting the New IT into Action

To survive and thrive through these major shifts, organizations not only need a flexible IT and communications infrastructure, they also need to embrace innovative technology that transforms business processes. For example, Ryanair, both the world’s largest and busiest international airline, operates from 195 airport locations in 31 countries. The organization took a total communications approach and partnered with Vodafone to implement innovative methodologies and systems to transform how pilots and crew work, and improve the customer experience. Ryanair implemented a new paperless cockpit solution of 3,750 Apple iPads with a machine-to-machine (M2M) solution – eliminating the need for pilots to carry briefcases with daily printouts. They also implemented a new on-board electronic point of sale (EPOS) for crew members to improve in-flight customer experience. Vodafone also functions as an outsourced telecommunications department for Ryanair, and are always present and ready wherever a Ryanair aircraft lands or where the company has an operational base.

Most importantly, these new methodologies and systems are enabling nimble growth, allowing Ryanair to expand to new locations and go live in weeks, rather than the industry-standard months.Ryanair is continuing to grow at a rapid pace, and will have an additional 180 aircrafts coming on stream in the next five years, and 200 more in the five years after that. It is growing at an unprecedented scale and will double its traffic to 180 million customers annually by 2024. That means it is going to need to continue to expand quickly into more spread-out locations – and its total communications solutions will ensure its IT needs can keep up with its business growth.

Our constantly changing world is presenting new challenges for global companies every day. But, by embracing innovative technologies in a holistic, total communications approach, all organizations can take on, and even use to their advantage, the disruptions that are setting the new IT and business agenda.