Consumerization Reordering Global Business

Consumer technologies are bringing about a paradigm shift in global business engagements and transactions

iPhone 5s, iPad, Galaxy Note 3, Pinterest Dropbox, ...what's the single thing that binds them? All are revolutionary medias in their technological sphere and are creating a phenomenon called ‘Consumerization of IT'

All these technological advancements in post pc era are products where `personal' has now become the `personalized'. Take for instance a smartphone or tablet...It's with you on the go, anytime and any place...customization is the name of the game with user intuitive apps becoming popular. A user can now check a friend's latest twitter feed along with answering his phone call and simultaneously work on a document. Technology is thus transforming and increasingly connecting people's lives in a way never seen before.

In the past, the consumers were the last mile of any IT advancements before going through the large corporate and the SMB setup. This is no longer the case. Users - be it consumers or employees -- are increasingly determining the sum and substance of IT tools and apps, a trend that is likened as Consumerization of IT. As a result, technology firms are now concentrating on tools and apps that directly cater to consumer markets first.

These consumer technologies, due to the advantages of affordability, usability, accessibility and reliability, are fast becoming a change agent in the enterprise world.

Consumer-driven technologies like mobility, BYOD, Personal Clouds social networking, among others, are reshaping how all enterprises are seeing business value in consumerization. Guided by the importance of channeling the productivity and creative energy of the new generation of mobile workers growing exponentially.

A recent Wipro study shows that an increasing number of Workers are bringing personal devices into the enterprise, to the extent that 40% of the devices they use to access business applications are personally owned. Workers have also taken to social media applications, blogging and micro blogging in a big way.

New Paradigm, New Thinking

However, consumerization is not to be understood as just usage of digital devices at the workplace. It is really about developing a whole IT ecosystem, that enhances consumer experience and enables shifts in a business or value chain of a process. For instance, a notepad, watch or calendar is no longer just a physical product. These physical products have now evolved to become software, which are converged and connected. The set of such apps that transform the consumer experience are growing exponentially.

To give another example, there is no real value for an app enabled on a mobile, but enabling mobility into an enterprise by transferring how you work today into a handheld or create a mobile office - that's a consumerization shift of the process. Elements like Cloud computing, mobility, on-the-go bandwidth enabled by 4G and public wireless environment and more M2M interactions are powering the pace of consumerization.

Concepts like this mean that how you deal with your suppliers, partners and customers is likely to change because of consumerization. This trend is prevailing upon CIOs and IT leaders to adopt a new mindset. Traditionally, IT leaders only went with standard hardware, software and network connections.

Consumerization has placed these very tools in the hands of employees and consumers, no matter where they are. Therefore, CIOs and IT leaders are adopting new IT frameworks and practices to be aligned with the new trends. For the CIO, the challenge is in getting the best out of consumerization. Emerging trends suggest that commoditized business transactions and processes are progressively moving into enterprise-grade consumer clouds that ensure performance and security. Thus, consumer market and demand are also driving enterprise technology advances and its deployment.

IT All Adds Up

Consumerization on the enterprise side essentially has three key aspects. They are:

Collaboration:

The idea of decentralization of IT has been spoken about for some years now, but the consumerization wave has actively disrupted IT. One of the important areas it has impacted and given wings to is in collaboration.

Organizations are now leveraging consumer technologies like social media and web 2.0 to transform the way IT is perceived and provide a democratic model and more IT choices. Intranet platforms similar to Facebook or Twitter are now in place in several enterprises. Using the ability of one-to-many reach, they are encouraging their employees and consumers to improve business processes through meaningful engagements and contextual collaboration. The result has led to leveraging collective wisdom to create innovation, value and competitiveness.

Business Process Simplification and Disintermediation:

Consumer technology is having a profound impact in simplifying business transactions and connecting the value chain. It is changing the way organizations address various stakeholders in business, including suppliers, customers and partners.

Consumerization is facilitating numerous enterprise transactions. For instance, employees can gain instant access to HR support systems and be able to conduct their interactions through mobile-enabled self-service applications. Customers can have instant price look-up and competitive information at the point of purchase. Patients can have their medical records on their iPhones and expect healthcare providers to be able to utilize this information

Deliver New Customer Experience:

Organizations are using a combination of context, location and service to deliver new customer experience. In B2B, enterprise purchases can be made as simple as consumer purchases through expanding the use of mobile to include Cloud and analytics. The B2B2C industries like banking, insurance, telecom and automobile are connecting with their end-consumers using similar technology. Examples in this include the digital wallet concept launched by some banks and companies like Paypal and Google, retailers offering real-time coupons based on location and purchase made, and Apple delivering text messaging off-the-network via iCloud.

On a larger plane, these developments will impact a firm's structure, controls and completive models, sales channels, and governance. Consumerization will eventually be the driving force for business change in areas as diverse as innovation, smart products, co-creation, education, support, marketing, security, privacy, trust and compliance.

Way Forward

Looking ahead, end users will clearly have more influence over enterprise IT direction in the future, but the organization must balance this with security, cost, business process requirements, delivery models and flexibility requirements. These organizations need to modernize their IT environments to secure critical data, handle the manifold increase in transaction load that these new interactive experiences will impose on the IT infrastructure, and attract and retain the new generation of workers entering the workforce.