As American psychologist and authorDr. Martin Seligmanhas said, “It’s not our failures that determine our future success, but how we explain them to ourselves.” Imagine you could tell yourself that regardless of the outcome of a decision, you could learn from it and move forward positively. What steps could you take with your business today?
Most of us have been involved in organisations where legacy processes and archaic systems have become barriers to working more effectively, but no action is taken. In the technology industry, we see this every day when speaking to organisations the world over. And more change is coming. We’re living in a time of political and economic uncertainty—businesses must grasp this opportunity and use this time to challenge the concepts of “normal” and “comfortable” in their organisations.
The term “digital transformation” might be dismissed by some as another marketing buzzword, but it aptly captures the fact that we truly are living in a new world. Businesses have to transform. Comfort means standing still, and standing still means falling behind. When it comes to business technology decisions, the easy option would be for companies to stick with on-premise software, yet the gains in both cost and efficiency from moving to the cloud mean that traditional software will no longer be viable. More importantly, companies that stick with legacy systems may also find themselves no longer viable.
According to IDC, 90 percent of organisations are actively involved in some form of digital transformation programme. At Workday, we’re lucky enough to call some of the world’s largest organisations our customers, such as Dutch bank ING, which hasused digital technologyto reinvent itself several times since the financial crisis. It has evolved both from a technology and culture perspective to keep pace with new, agile incumbents to thebanking sector.
Change in the business world is often viewed as a risk, and that in turn impacts comfort levels. Yet, the number of customers joining the Workday community, and who are deploying cloud-based financial management and human capital management on time and on budget, speaks volumes for the risk versus reward debate. I predict that as more leading brands join our customers on the journey to digital transformation, the industry appetite for challenging comfort and conformity will also grow.