Exercise in business agility
How can IT help businesses transform themselves in an ever more unpredictable world? Fleur Doidge reports
When a law of accelerating returns prevails, life gets ever more complex for business. Last week CRN looked at the phenomenon of exponential change; this week we look at some ways the channel can help businesses become more agile to cope with these changes.
Carsten Bruhn, general manager at Ricoh Global Services Europe, says Ricoh is not only working to transform itself, but devoting more funds and effort to developing its managed document services (MDS) aimed at fostering and sustaining agility in customers' businesses.
"We see information as the most vital asset for business. The priority is the management of information capital," Bruhn says. "Yet 1/3 of the global workforce is expected to be mobile by 2012, for example."
Bruhn says Ricoh's MDS aims to combine hardware, software and delivery methodology while working to change end user behaviour - and mitigate consequences of those changes - around printing, filing and sharing of information. Automation, consulting and reengineering would improve business processes.
"Information must be retrievable anywhere, any time, and on any device in a secure manner," Bruhn says.
Partnerships are key. Ricoh is working with Volvo Group's IT division, for example. Hans Ristner, telematics vice president at Volvo IT, says it has been deploying shared services for the City of Stockholm - the second largest Windows 7 roll-out in the world, with 50,000 staff and about 5,000 output devices.
"I can assure you it is a challenging environment," Ristner says. "And we can't do it without having extremely solid, trustworthy partners."
Workers and customers are continually frustrated by inefficient processes, data conflicts, and redundant information. Integrated information management, resulting in business process improvement, is crucial. Everything could be connected. For example, hosted apps can enable different apps to be bridged so information can be shared.
Business processes must be managed and optimised - often an ongoing task -- so all an organisation's aspects are aligned with the wants and needs of clients.
IBM recently started a UK project with the Bank of China that should help it cut paper consumption 95 per cent while improving the efficiency of its financial transactions over the SWIFT interbank system.
Shanker Ramamurthy, general manager of banking and financial markets business at IBM, says financial services have been under intense pressure after the economic crisis and in the face of increasing regulation. So they need to reduce risk and boost efficiencies.
"Smarter banking is about transforming processes to improve agility and get more visibility into data to make better business decisions," Ramamurthy says.
IBM deployed role-specific authenticated access to messages through online search, allowing the Bank to monitor transactions as they are sent and received by the bank - instead of having to print them out every day. Transactions can therefore be processed faster.
Similarly, Microsoft's new Dynamics CRM cloud service has been tipped to help government bodies and private sector alike cut costs, streamline services, improve citizen engagement and raise transparency.
According to Microsoft, several partners and customers are already building customised solutions using Dynamics CRM Online to address key challenges facing government agencies.
Channel eyes shared services push in light of budget cuts>> www.channelweb.co.uk/1883079