The Ledger

Becoming an Intelligent Enterprise: What’s the Rush?

The buzz about intelligent technologies is getting louder, and every day we see proof of how these technologies are dictation the future success of every business. In most cases, industry experts warn that companies will wither without advancing data-driven automation and decision-making.

In its “Technology Vision 2018” report, Accenture observes, “Businesses depend on technology-based partnerships for growth, but their own legacy systems aren’t designed to support partnerships at scale. To fully power the connected intelligent enterprise, companies must first re-architect themselves.”

Read More at The Digitalist by SAP >

Achieving an Agile Business in Two Steps

Finance leaders strive to simplify their business planning and amplify the transfer of knowledge across the organization. The business market rewards agility, while it punishes companies that are too slow and myopic to see what’s coming and to act before they suffer serious consequences. In an era where tomorrow may not look anything like today, agility may well be the defining characteristic of success. It’s not just about responding. It’s about responding in a way that produces the outcome your board, shareholders, employees, and customers will see as successful. What can a business do to attain agility? The answer is two-fold.

Read More at CFO Magazine >

External Data Can Boost the Value of Your Analytics

Today’s business atmosphere requires companies to not only advance their data analytics capabilities, but to also master the process. To boost the business value of their companies’ analytics efforts, leaders can adopt key practices to navigate the complexity of third-party data. Companies know they can gain valuable insights by analyzing the data they generate from their operations. But internally generated information can leave gaps, and companies are increasingly moving to incorporate new, nontraditional, and external sources of data into their analyses.

Read More at Deloitte Insights >

Manufacturers Are Shifting from Being Preventative to Predictive

For many manufacturers today, the focus of their business is not so much producing products for sale as it is delivering better business outcomes for their customers through asset-as-a-service offerings. Leading organizations use an intelligence-based approach, where maintenance teams monitor conditions in real time using an enterprise asset management tool. For asset manufacturers, real-time analytics and predictive maintenance create the opportunity for entirely new business models. In the past, manufacturers made the assets and customers operated them. Today, these boundaries are blurring as manufacturers leverage new asset-as-a-service business models and deliver outcomes rather than just the physical assets.

Read More at Forbes Magazine >