2.3 When technology impedes business: impact of fragmented IT landscapes

This chapter alone would fill a whole book. I will focus however on selected examples from what I personally have seen in various industries in the recent years.

Not industry-specific

• Long process durations leading to dissatisfied customers
• Incorrect data leading to interruption of transactions
• High IT costs with a major share of budget spent for operations (90% and more)
• Inability to innovate, especially in technology-driven processes and models (internet, mobile)

Automotive

• Incomplete data on buyer/owner impedes personalized offerings
• Insufficient transparency over complete value chain frequently leads to unpredictable interruptions in production
• Poor service quality in aftersales
• Struggle to cope with exploding data volumes produced by modern, connected cars

Banking

• Insufficient risk management
• Struggle with compliance reporting, esp. prove of data origin
• Inability to match velocity of challengers (FinTechs)

Entertainment/Media

• For a long-time the threat through social media and mobile processes has simply been ignored
• Unlike other industries Media has to deal with a high share of unstructured data which represents a challenge of its own

Insurance

• In some respects similar to Banking
• Struggle to offer highly individualized offerings
• Challenges in efficient detection and prevention of fraud
• Challenges in correct prediction of claims
• Inability to innovate in new digital products

Public Services

• I can only speak for Germany:
  very old systems (including mainframes) and extremely high degree of fragmentation lead to long process durations, many manual efforts, inability to cope with high volumes (e.g. refugees)

Retail

• Huge challenges to manage all channels simultaneously with one face to the customer
• Difficulties to match new consumer behaviours (micro transactions, mobile purchases, etc.)

TelCo

• Struggle to provide and sell value-add services on top of core communication services

This is not a complete list. And let me emphasize that most of the companies I speak with are well aware of their challenges and are working on it. That is not my point. From my perspective they oftentimes do not ask the right questions and that is the main reason why they won’t get suitable answers which would solve their problems in a sustainable way and make them fit for the future.