Businesses must continue to invest in strategic research
and development during the recession, says Kishore Swaminathan,
chief scientist at Accenture.
"This is the time to invent new products," he says. "The
recession will change the business landscape. This is the time for
R&D to ignore the current economic conditions in order to sow
the seeds for when the economy improves."
For his part, Swaminathan believes four key technological
advancements will make an impact on business when the recovery
comes:
Cloud and internet
computing
Cloud and internet computing will allow businesses to make
better use of their IT resources, he says. The technology will help
businesses become more elastic, allowing them to rapidly scale up
or down to meet changing business demands, without the need to
invest heavily in fixed IT infrastructure.
Mobility
The second area is
mobility. Swaminathan predicts mobile phone use will increase
rapidly, particularly in the developing world. "By 2013 there will
be more mobile phones than pairs of shoes," he says. An increasing
number of people will take smartphones like the iPhone
on short business trips instead of a laptop.
Collaboration
Third is
collaboration. Community and
Twitter-like communications will take off as
business tools. Accenture uses a business version of Twitter
called Yammer to help different teams working on a project to keep
in touch. The same model is used by the Nasa command centre in Cape
Canaveral during a shuttle launch. There teams responsible for
hydraulics, electronics and other major systems on the Shuttle can
listen in on the conversations of the other teams. This helps a
team to make more informed decisions, especially if an issue in
hydraulics could influence electronics or other systems.
This type of communications Swaminathan terms as "good to know,"
as opposed to the transactional communications between business
people over the phone or e-mail, he says. E-mail is not efficient
for many common types of communications. At Accenture, staff ask
simple questions such as, "are you free now?" more effectively
using instant messaging.
To make the most of social networks, Swaminathan believes IT
departments will need to hire usability experts and people equipped
with sociological expertise. "Social networks are a function of the
front office but few IT departments have the skills to support
them," he says.
Business intelligence
technologies
Finally, Swaminathan predicts
business intelligence technologies will become much more
sophisticated. Venture capital firms are actively investing in
start-ups that allow businesses to visualise data trends in real
time. This differs from mainstream business intelligence tools,
which rely on the user running pre-built reports. He says: "By the
time VCs invest, the risk in a product area is over," which
suggests such tools are set to take off.
But IT departments may find adopting some of these technologies
an up-hill struggle. IT has traditionally focussed on back-office
tasks and reducing risks, he says. This mindset prevents the kind
of innovation that allows IT to add significant business value.
CIOs should look instead at how they add value to front-office
business functions.