Innovation World, Software AG’s global annual event kicked off in San Francisco today and promised a look into how the reality of a Digital Enterprise will shape the future of organizations.
Karl-Heinz Streibich, Software AG’s CEO took to the stage and set the scene for the conference ahead, stating that we live in times of fast change and big challenges, but also full of opportunities. He went on to describe how moving from traditional and inflexible Systems of Record to Systems of Differentiation will power the Digital Enterprise and allow clients to take great leaps ahead of the competition.
Innovation is about making ideas happen.
In order to achieve this, Karl-Heinz described 5 key elements of becoming a Digital Enterprise:
- Transformation through IT Portfolio Management – By managing a company’s digital assets through an integrated view of the IT landscape, organizations will now have the ability to transform IT better than ever before. They will then understand their IT landscape, and will be able to drive the entire IT strategy, knowing where to invest and where to consolidate at any time.
- Alignment based on Collaboration and Process Analysis – enabling each stakeholder to collaborate and contribute to important process improvement initiatives through innovative collaboration-based solutions and within a virtual environment, wherever those stakeholders are located
- Agility through Integration and Process Automation – the ability to respond faster to change and knowing what is really going on in your business processes and systems at a rapid pace through new agile applications and at the same time taking complete advantage of a company’s existing investments by using “Plug and Play” integration
- Visibility through Human Interface to Data and Information – enabling the visibility to see across all channels – from online, to in-store and within multiple systems and services, the net result result being higher efficiency, better business scalability for easier revenue growth
- Responsiveness through Real-time Solutions – proactively identifying opportunities and threats through real-time analytics based on business data
There were some strong client success studies quoted from Turkcell, Cox Communications, Stat Oil to back up the assertions with real numbers and returns on investing in a digital enterprise strategy. Karl-Heinz finished off promising an inspiring event and I’m in no doubt all attendees will take that message away by the end of the week.
Ivo Totev, CMO at Software AG took to the stage next, thanking all attendees, trusted partners and sponsors.
Our role at Software AG is simply to provide you with the best innovative ingredients and tools, so that you can innovate faster.
Ivo introduced the agenda and what to expect from Innovation World this week and gave a nod to San Francisco as being the heart of innovation here in the US. He then set the scene for the Innovation Awards where US Bank and Ekurhuleni from South Africa picked up their accolades for their own work towards a Digital Enterprise.
Ivo finished off by introducing Erik Qualman, author of Socialnomics to give his own keynote about the impact of social and mobile trends on the customer experience and how enterprises must embrace those forces to survive and differentiate (more on this later)
All in all the messages were strong and clear and resonated with the same themes coming from the Gartner Symposium happening at the same time this week: becoming a digital enterprise is perhaps the biggest goal an organization must face to innovate and beat the competition, and Software AG is well placed to help companies get there.