Build for Change: Revolutionizing Customer Engagement through Continuous Digital Innovation

Chapter 5Change How You Think about Technology

Why is technology at the center of how you need to respond to the challenges described in the previous chapters? The answer is simple. Today, you have no chance of succeeding without information technology. It has already become a fundamental part of business, and for businesses that deal with diverse customer bases, have multiple products or services to sell, and do business in more than one location, the idea of going forward without technology is nothing short of ridiculous. Technology—and how it is used—is increasingly seen as the basis for differentiation and success in business.

Accenture Plc, a Fortune Global 500 company and one of the world’s largest consulting firms (with which my own company has partnered commercially), gets it right in its Technology Vision 2013: “Without information and technology, a business is blind in today’s digital world . . . Every business is now a digital business.”¹

The Accenture Vision continues: “The world has already changed around us, and IT is driving much of the transformation. IT is a minimum standard for how we effectively run our enterprise, but it has gone further than that. IT has become a driving force, in many situations the driving force, for how we effectively grow our companies. Every industry is now software driven; as such, every company must adopt IT as one of its core competencies. ...