Customers already expect more of technology today – and the next generation of users will want to use technology that delivers innovative, creative solutions for needs the market doesn’t realise it has yet.
This is the word from Mohamed Cassoojee, country management and vice-president of Software AG South Africa, who says local businesses need to change the way they think about technology. The future is unpredictable but what is certain is that customers’ expectation of the role technology plays in their everyday life will continue to rise.
“Businesses need to get systems in place today to anticipate the demanding needs of a connected society tomorrow.”
Businesses need to move away from the concept of mass production towards mass customisation. “The days of categorising customers in groups according to some common metric like their incomes, have passed. Clients must be seen as individuals and that is why the approach of segmentation must be replaced with the segmentation of one,” Cassoojee. Says. “There is no shortage of information to do this; there is shortage of insight from it.”
South African businesses have reached the point where information is effectively extracted, but companies will only achieve competitive differentiation by distilling the information, creating automated responses and reacting in real-time.
Karl-Heins Streibich, Software AG’s CEO, shares Cassoojee’s vision of the Industrial Internet and how it will bring massive efficiencies across industries. In his recently-published book, The Digital Enterprise: The Moves and Motives of Digital Leaders, Streibich gives tangible examples of global companies that innovatively met anticipated customer needs through a wide range of technologies.
Because these companies had a vision of the future today, they are now at the forefront of transforming into Digital Enterprises.
“Software AG’s mission is to provide South African businesses with systems of engagement,” says Cassoojee. “We enable businesses that strive to be customer-centric tomorrow, today. If companies can dream it, Software AG can realise it.”
