Digital Partnerships

In the Way of DAU it was mentioned that most Digital Businesses need to develop partnering as a key capability and competence. In fact part of the underlying modus operandi of digital is that an enterprise is building on an industry ecosystem of partnerships which deliver highly commodotised digital components which can be used to construct the technical aspects of a digital business. 

Recently Singapore Airlines (SIA) announced digital partnerships with 4 public sector bodies as part of its "digital innovation blueprint" initiative. The partners include National University of Singapore (NUS), Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR), Economic Development Board (EDB) and Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore (CAAS). This ups SIA's game in what is already a well weaponised area of digital business, the air travel business. SIA seeks to improve operational efficiency and effectiveness, as well as gain better insight into customer behaviour and tune its marketing appropriately.

PWC has published its thoughts about how to approach building a digital partnership. Key features include:

• Clarity about shared goals;
• Agreeing mutual plans for time frames, milestones and outputs;
• Cultural alignment and trust building;
• Definition of essential service or success criteria;
• Agreeing mutual conventions around data ownership, privacy, protection and hosting locations;
• Shared partnership management and governance frameworks;
• Building Agility into exploitation of mutually developed capabilities, products and services.

Interestingly enough, as pointed out in a recent report by the Economist Intelligence Unit, cities are getting in on the act, partnering to provide the best digital business environment and infrastructure. Ratings by local business leaders have established some interesting global leaders and laggards with Bangalore and San Franciso topping the list. London, Madrid and New York are neck and neck sitting at 9th, 10th and 11th in the survey's league table, with Berlin lagging at the bottom in 45th place. Paris, which has been setting itself up to rival London post Brexit sits at 20th.

IoT Adoption Drag

IoT Makes Slow Progress

Despite all the hype and general acceptance of its possibilities, IoT is making slow inroads into enterprises and can still be regarded as being in the early period of adoption in many businesses.

I have talked about CxO behaviour and culture in previous blogs as well as security and other issues, so what is holding IoT back?

Business Leader Perspective on IoT Adoption

A recent survey by the Economist Intelligence Unit (sponsored by IBM and ARM) involving over 800 executives around the world looked into the issue. This suggested that fewer than 10% had extensive IoT implementations, although many had dipped their toes in the water.

More positively, around 25% stated that IoT adoption was sparking innovation within their organisations with 22% indicating that IoT offered new opportunities, 20% saying it was changing business models and 16% believing that it was enabling entry into new markets and initiatives. So the overall picture is quite positive about its transformational potential.

Only 15% believed that IoT would significantly reduce costs, suggesting that IoT adoption is more about re-imagining their businesses than old fashioned cost cutting.

Interestingly enough, few executives saw technical issues as blockers to adoption. The key constraints cited were the Size of Investment needed (29%), Security and Privacy concerns  (26%) and lack of CxO Knowledge and Commitment (23%). 

This points to a smoking gun around Cost and Executive Behaviour / Team Buy In.

IT Leader Perspectives

Interestingly enough the British Computer Society's (BCS's) survey on Digital Leadership shows some mismatches.

Over the last 4 years the principle concern of IT Leaders in the Digital Space has been Security (averaging 60% of responses, plus or minus 2% over this period). The second most important concern has been Cloud (at 50%). In the last 2 years, Governance has moved into third place at 35% followed by Agile and Big Data at around 25-30% each. IoT was only cited by respondents as a major interest by 18%. Although Cloud, Agile and to some extent Big Data are involved in IoT adoption.

This suggests 2 things. Business Executives are over confident about implementation issues and that IT Leaders have a mismatch in alignment and understanding with business aspirations.

IoT Success Factors

So it appears that CxOs need to get together and agree a common vision and set of priorities. IT Leaders need to build IoT into their plans and there is a need for education and collaboration to get a coherent approach in place.