Thursday 28 Mar 2024
By
main news image

This article first appeared in The Edge Malaysia Weekly, on November 30 - December 6, 2015.

 

Most businesses are aware of the need to digitalise their operations in order to minimise cost, improve the time to market and boost interactions with suppliers, staff and customers.

However, the journey to digitalisation is never simple. Companies need to weigh the costs and benefits of doing so, and it cannot disrupt their day-to-day operations. A lot of issues have to be tackled with immense care — from the cost aspect to security and reputational risks.

There is also the dilemma of having to balance between legacy internet and fast IT as well as between going open source and remaining proprietary or, simply put, public versus private. The path to digitalisation of each business is unique — no one framework can be transplanted to another.

“We are finding that difficult digitalisation choices are becoming the inevitability of doing business. This could be [the result of] increased risk from cyberattacks due to larger digital estates and the associated security risks of having billions of devices or ‘things’ connected to the internet,” says Duncan Tait, executive vice-president of Fujitsu and the group’s head of Europe, Middle East, India and Africa.

“Whether forced to face and respond to these challenges today or tomorrow, executives are making very difficult choices about the future of their organisations.”

According to Tait, Fujitsu takes pride in co-creating digital innovation with its customers from an early stage. By being deeply involved with an organisation from the beginning to the end of a project, Fujitsu better understands their strategy and challenges as well as where they derive their values, he says.

The most important thing in digitalisation is gathering data. It can help organisations look at anything from strategic investment to enhancing cost competitiveness. In today’s digital era, the Internet of Things (IoT) has dramatically increased the quantity of captured data.

IoT refers to a network of physical objects or things that are embedded with electronics, sensors, software and network connectivity, which enable the devices to collect and exchange data — think smartphones, smartwatches, smart homes and smart cars.

Today, there are an estimated 10 billion smart, connected devices in the world and the number is projected to increase to 50 billion by 2020, Douglas Davis, senior vice-president and general manager of IoT at Intel, said on Nov 16 at the Fujitsu Forum 2015 in Munich, Germany.

“We are going to be at a point where there is going to be at least seven smart objects on every person on the planet within the next five years. I see this number going north to 200 billion, certainly more than 50 billion.”

While business digitalisation is not all about IoT, embracing the latter is already half the journey of digitalisation, Davis remarked. Smart, connected devices are not only used by people to connect with each other and transfer data, they can also be used in businesses.

For example, Fujitsu is piloting low-cost, high-accuracy indoor positioning sensors at a Finnish hospital to track staff, patients and equipment. For patients, the sensors can detect falls, or prevent them from wandering offsite.

But can IoT deliver real business value? Yes, it can, according to Tait and Davis, and thousands of other business executives who attended the Fujitsu Forum. Many industries have benefited from IoT — retail, automotive, agriculture, healthcare, aviation and so on.

Industrial manufacturers predict that there will be an increase in revenue of about 27% over the next three years through IoT initiatives. Truck loading time could be reduced to 30 minutes from 60 minutes, Davis said.

In the retail industry, multinational brands such as Marks & Spencer, Hallmark, France-based retail group Auchan and Australia’s Coles have partnered Fujitsu in transforming their processes through the latter’s digital solutions.

These examples and others mean that Fujitsu has quickly become an expert in understanding what success looks like when it comes to digitalisation, says Tait.

“Whether helping to stimulate production in Europe with the creation of a thriving reinvigorated manufacturing sector or helping healthcare providers develop and implement new technology, Fujitsu accelerates the effects of digitalisation.

“I believe that the winners in a digitalised world will be ‘digitally balanced enterprises’ that realise that value will be found through networks that allow us to connect with data and, in turn, derive insight, ideas and digital innovation from them,” says Tait.

Save by subscribing to us for your print and/or digital copy.

P/S: The Edge is also available on Apple's AppStore and Androids' Google Play.

      Print
      Text Size
      Share