This is what awaits if we do not embrace the software revolution that is coming. Disrupt or die: Boston CEO Advertisement PATRICK DURKIN Business urgently needs to catch up to the digital revolution or risk losing out to international competitors, says the new Australian chief executive of Boston Consulting Group, Andrew Clark. Mr Clark said that while Australian consumers rate in the top five G20 nations as early adopters of technology, business ranks 15th or lower on various measures of their response, according to a recent report by the World Economic Forum and BCG. “This combination makes Australia a prime target for digital disruptors,” Mr Clark said in an interview. Six industries, representing one-third of the $1.4 trillion Australian economy – finance, retail, media, arts and recreation, real estate, and information technology – are most at risk of being subsumed by the “digital juggernaught”, according to a report last month from Deloitte. The transformation is expected to reduce demand for traditional jobs including postmen, farmers, flight attendants, auditors, paralegals, newspaper reporters and travel agents. “Up until a few years ago, you had Bernie Brookes from Myer saying our customers don’t want to shop online and you had Gerry Harvey fighting tooth and nail against digital, even though that’s the only part of his business growing,” Deloitte Digital head Frank Farrall said. Deloitte pointed to the rapid roll-out of new start-ups Uber, Airbnb and Tesla, and last year’s sale of over a million iPhone5s within 12 hours. “These businesses are not set up with decades worth of legacies, processes, bureaucracy and technology that has just been patched together,” Mr Farrall said. Not agile enough “The way businesses have been working for the past several decades is not agile enough to respond to digital threats and, bit by bit, if they don’t change the core fundamentals of their business, they are not going to be able to respond,” he said. Mr Farrall urged older executives to adopt a “digital mentor” from their younger staff. “I am a digital practice leader in my mid-30s but I am not able to keep across all of the mobile devices and social networks that are constantly streaming out,” he said. BCG last week acquired S&C, a digital advisory firm – renamed BCG Digital Ventures Asia – to help meet growing client demand for digital advice. Head of Digital Ventures, Hanno Blankenstein, said Australia faced a significant shortage of “digital natives” because the tertiary education system fails to address that demand. “The challenge for Australian corporations is winning the war for talent against global competitors such as Google, eBay, Amazon in an environment where there’s no top-notch Australian university or school producing design and digital graduates,” he said. Mr Farrall said big businesses that were adapting – such as Telstra, Westfield and NAB’s UBank – know their customers, have top executives dedicated to a digital strategy, invest in technology and drive cultural change. “You don’t get to deliver a project, declare victory and go home,” he said. “Look at David Thodey at Telstra – he talks about responding to digital disruption and evolving Telstra all the time. Andrew Thornbury at NAB is talking about transforming the bank all the time. They are almost obsessive, and that is what is required.”
Posted on: Wed, 23 Jul 2014 20:13:19 +0000
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