Deloitte's Bill Briggs has a plan to save your business from being bricked by disruption
Bill Briggs, the global chief technology officer for Deloitte Consulting, is responsible for defining the vision for the firm's technology services and helping clients anticipate the impact of emerging technologies.
Briggs will be in India later this week to attend the Deloitte SingularityU India Summit.Ahead of the meet, he spoke to Priyanka Sangani on what companies need to do to remain relevant and why Deloitte is betting on blockchain . Edited excerpts:
IT is now an essential part of a CEO's business agenda. How are organisations dealing with this?
Organisations need to shift their mindset from “information technology“ as an efficiency measure to a broader lens of “technology“. It is a boardroom concern to have a vision of how your customers, employees, business models and even broad industry dynamics can be fundamentally reshaped . And not just imagine tomorrow, but come up with a credible plan to get there from today.
How do you advice clients on dealing with these changes?
The first thing is to narrow focus to a bounded ambition with achievable, measurable outcomes. I am in many client workshops focused on “digital transformation“ which means something different to everyone in the room. Shifting the frame from the individual technology disciplines is the first thing to do. One, ground opportunities in concrete business terms, and two, because these aren't independent, isolated concerns, they need to come together to drive the future of finance, payments, customer loyalty, etc.
A lot of firms are betting on blockchain . How do you see this?
We've been investing in blockchain with much interest. In fact, we believe it's evolving to become the missing link in the promise of digital identities we featured as a tech trend many years ago. The analogy of blockchain today to the early days of the web is a useful way for framing where it is, and what it may become where the internet was the protocol of communication, and blockchain is the protocol of trust. The potential sphere of disruption for blockchain is much broader than the web. It potentially affects every sector that exists. We need to push the boundaries of what's possible with the existing technologies, and resist the urge to wait until standards have been finalised . We would still be waiting to dabble in the “world wide web“ if we were waiting for final ratification of internet standards.
What would you call out as the biggest tech trends in 2017?
An undercurrent of the above is the need for IT departments to fundamentally evolve to deliver more responsive and valuable solutions to the business, while expanding their core skill-sets to be relevant. It is much more than IT evolving from operator to “seat at the table“ it's transforming the very operating and delivery model of IT to take advantage of this fundamental potential. That's why the theme `Tech Trends 2017 the Kinetic Enterprise'. There are two meanings -the first is a reflection on the pace of change, invoking kineticism of how quickly and powerfully they emerge.The second meaning may be more important -moving from potential energy into kinetic energy where change can actually be realised.
Briggs will be in India later this week to attend the Deloitte SingularityU India Summit.Ahead of the meet, he spoke to Priyanka Sangani on what companies need to do to remain relevant and why Deloitte is betting on blockchain . Edited excerpts:
IT is now an essential part of a CEO's business agenda. How are organisations dealing with this?
Organisations need to shift their mindset from “information technology“ as an efficiency measure to a broader lens of “technology“. It is a boardroom concern to have a vision of how your customers, employees, business models and even broad industry dynamics can be fundamentally reshaped . And not just imagine tomorrow, but come up with a credible plan to get there from today.
How do you advice clients on dealing with these changes?
The first thing is to narrow focus to a bounded ambition with achievable, measurable outcomes. I am in many client workshops focused on “digital transformation“ which means something different to everyone in the room. Shifting the frame from the individual technology disciplines is the first thing to do. One, ground opportunities in concrete business terms, and two, because these aren't independent, isolated concerns, they need to come together to drive the future of finance, payments, customer loyalty, etc.
A lot of firms are betting on blockchain . How do you see this?
We've been investing in blockchain with much interest. In fact, we believe it's evolving to become the missing link in the promise of digital identities we featured as a tech trend many years ago. The analogy of blockchain today to the early days of the web is a useful way for framing where it is, and what it may become where the internet was the protocol of communication, and blockchain is the protocol of trust. The potential sphere of disruption for blockchain is much broader than the web. It potentially affects every sector that exists. We need to push the boundaries of what's possible with the existing technologies, and resist the urge to wait until standards have been finalised . We would still be waiting to dabble in the “world wide web“ if we were waiting for final ratification of internet standards.
What would you call out as the biggest tech trends in 2017?
An undercurrent of the above is the need for IT departments to fundamentally evolve to deliver more responsive and valuable solutions to the business, while expanding their core skill-sets to be relevant. It is much more than IT evolving from operator to “seat at the table“ it's transforming the very operating and delivery model of IT to take advantage of this fundamental potential. That's why the theme `Tech Trends 2017 the Kinetic Enterprise'. There are two meanings -the first is a reflection on the pace of change, invoking kineticism of how quickly and powerfully they emerge.The second meaning may be more important -moving from potential energy into kinetic energy where change can actually be realised.
