Powering Business Transformation
Look beyond borders to see how organizations harness the power of IT to pursue greater profitability
by John Davies

December 10, 2004

During the recent economic downturn, companies adopted survival strategies to weather the lean market. They reduced spending, conserved resources, and cut costs. At the same time, the worldwide recession forced businesses and governments alike to take a good hard look at their operations—to assess far more than just cost structures and overhead.

Today, businesses are looking at growing their top-line revenues as well—and seeing how they can reinvest bottom-line cost savings into strategic growth areas. Organizations realize that they can't save their way to creating successful new products, providing memorable customer service, or outpacing their competition in emerging markets in Asia, Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Latin America.

In all cases, first movers are using advanced Information Technology to grow in these areas—from equipping their sales forces with mobile devices that give them instant, unwired access to customer and product data, to deploying state-of-the-art grid computing technology that enables researchers to collaborate on new product design and development.

As I meet with customers and partners around the world, one theme surfaces continually: modernization. Whether it's a small winery in China, an oil company in the Middle East, or a large hospital in the United States, industries are transforming their businesses through a strategic use of a whole new generation of IT. These transformative solutions use the combination of innovative business processes and emerging information technology to build competitive advantage.

Business transformation is a continuous process—not just a single event. Organizations large and small must constantly sense and respond to market conditions and opportunities, and adapt their processes accordingly. It's not enough to do a better job at what you're already doing—to apply more or better IT to the same old status quo processes.

One of my favorite examples of organizational transformation is Bumrungrad Hospital in Thailand. Bumrungrad changed the entire health-care experience for the patient by streamlining the registration process, putting patient information at caregivers' fingertips electronically, and automating the billing process. This integrated solution combines both front-office and back-office operations in a single, multilingual database, with wired and unwired access from desktops, notebooks, and PDAs. It has been so successful, and has created such efficient use of their existing resources, that Bumrungrad found it could forgo planned construction on a second building.

Mobility, Mobility, Mobility
Mobility is possibly the best example of how industries and governments are changing the way they do business. Wireless computing is evolving rapidly, allowing deployment of wireless data services on a larger, commercial scale, and maintaining a data connection with a remote network from almost anywhere is a reality. Pervasive wireless computing has the potential to radically change the way people work—freeing them to work wherever they want, whenever they want, and connect to and collaborate with colleagues, suppliers, and customers around the globe without having to plug in to a hard-wired network.

Gartner, a leading high-technology analyst firm, believes that wireless local area networks (LANs) will become truly pervasive technology. Gartner predicts that by 2007 there will be more than 31 million frequent users of public wireless LAN hot spots. The number of mobile users requiring wireless LAN access will rise as more organizations install wireless LANs to avoid wiring costs, or to provide more continuous access to in-house data services from a variety of mobile devices.

Avoiding wiring costs and delays was the prime reason why Huawei Technologies Company, a leading communications product manufacturer in China, opted to install wireless LANs throughout its facilities. Huawei was growing so quickly across so many geographies that its IT staff was finding it difficult to keep up with the constant network wiring and rewiring needed to run the business. The cost, time, and effort of ripping and replacing wires were creating a drag on the business.

To remedy this situation, Huawei equipped 10,000 staff members spread out across its market areas with notebook computers that include wireless capabilities based on Intel Centrino mobile technology. (Note that wireless connectivity and some features may require you to purchase additional software, services, or external hardware, and availability of public wireless LAN access points is limited; some hotspots may not support Linux-based Intel Centrino mobile technology systems.) This investment enables the communications product firm to grow the business in any direction without the considerably higher costs and delays associated with installing fixed IT infrastructure.

Another company, Centrica-owned British Gas, looked to wireless technology to address similar issues. As England's largest residential gas and home services supplier, the company equipped its 8,500 service engineers and managers with powerful, lightweight Panasonic notebook PCs based on Intel Centrino mobile technology, and mobilized by investing in the laptop deployment, service engineers spend significantly more time in the field and handle 250 percent more customer calls. With information at their fingertips, service engineers deliver a better customer experience, increasing customer satisfaction. It's also helped British Gas turn the home services arm from a loss-making enterprise to a key business, contributing 25 percent of the company's profits.

Too often, companies take a tactical approach to IT. They invest large chunks of money in intermittent IT infrastructure upgrades—to eliminate operational pain points or fix a technology breakdown. Merely fixing what's broken, applying stop-gap patches, or implementing stand-alone hardware solutions fails to capitalize on the benefits made possible by an overarching technology investment strategy. In addition, monolithic technology overhauls can be tremendously disruptive to the business.

The Laggards Might Surprise You
This investment-postponement behavior, which was particularly evident during the economic downturn, carried a lot of risk. Over time, IT infrastructure devolved into fragmented systems and applications. Individualized hardware and software configurations crept into the technology backbone and added to the mix of tasks and potential problems facing IT departments. Best practice companies avoid all of these risks by deploying an IT strategy centered around modernizing IT on a continuous basis. This approach enables high agility and adaptability to changing market conditions that optimize benefits and reduce costs over time.

Business today is all about differentiation and comparative advantage. It is about harnessing change and the tools of innovation—from WiMAX and Voiceover IP, to RFID and Grid technologies. For some it's about competitive advantage; for others it's a matter of survival. Even traditional IT "laggards" such as retailers and health-care providers are embracing transformative solutions in fantastic new ways. And emerging markets are "leapfrogging" to the best available technology.

The benefits of business transformation are clear. The savings produced by combining business innovation with IT modernization can run into the millions. More important are the opportunities this powerful combination can generate: better customer care, better products, accelerated speed to market, increased sales, higher profitability, and more productive employees.

Everywhere you look today, leading governments and industries around the world are aggressively pursuing paths to growth, paths to best practices, and paths to greater profitability. Take a good look beyond your own backyard. See how these organizations are harnessing the true power of IT. You'll be surprised at what you find.

About the Author
John Davies is vice president, solutions market development, Intel Corporation. Visit www.intel.com/business for more information.