As we wrap-up and wake up from a long Easter Holiday, we must realize an important fact, we have almost approached midpoint of 2016. The one unchangeable fact about time is its immaculate speed. Time can be on our side and can be our enemy, it depends on how we invest it in reaching our vision and goals.

so, how is it possible to defeat time and have it work as your alley. Should you be pausing time to catch-up on what you are still behind with. For businesses, a single day will make a difference to position yourself on tomorrow’s leaders map or carve your name in an “out of business” list.

Digital Business .. Is it a Digital Transformation Or Digital Disruption? 

With customer experience becoming “enchanted” or digitized, the chances of a sweeping transformation in the coming few years is inevitable, hence we should begin to closely assess how we strategize our business. Moving towards a digital culture is a significant transformation which will not happen overnight.  However, it is not difficult to foretell and pave the way for the future of business and its underlying serving technology when you are observing the business climate meticulously.

The sweeping winds of digitization have shown us their precursors;

Machine Learning: With the world already applying machine learning to utilize huge amounts of historical data to predict the future while we are still struggling with the decaying trend of Data Analytics “understanding and analyzing the historical data”. No one has time now to read and analyze the history in order to predict the future, machines will do it better and faster than us.

IoT: The world is rapidly intertwining into a wholly intelligently responsive platform.. It is beyond rationale that some businesses until today May of 2016 are still struggling with the basic adaptation of their business-technology coupling.  Such businesses will face major risks and time is certainly not on their side.

The Digital Mesh & An Ambient User Experience: With cloud-based applications becoming the defacto of software applications and with mobile devices becoming the prime target of all businesses in 2016 …  it is not surprising that for MeshApp is crawling its way to every home as you read now.

Smarter Data Centers:  with data center infrastructure moving to a more resource-utilization efficient design of SDI – Software Defined Infrastructure, as opposed to the traditional silo-based technology architecture. Virtualization of software applications and usage of a common infrastructure is not becoming a luxurious choice.

We all have a Voice, a Loud one: Social Networking has given us all a voice. Being a writer myself, I have found “magic” in the ability to see some of my articles or posts navigate the world in few hours. Having a voice changes us fundamentally.

Small Businesses are now in the game: Competition will get fiercer because smaller businesses are now connected and will compete with organization ten times their size offering lower prices and perhaps even higher quality since there is less bureaucracy in small companies. They adapt instantaneously faster to changes than their counterpart 500 fortune companies.

Knowledge (Education) Revolution and a socio-economic impact :  The most fundamental change about education and knowledge is that it has become available for everyone and at very low cost. Technological progress will make us more informed and smarter.  Being an Egyptian Feminist I choose to reflect on studies which have shown that Egypt is one of the highest educating countries through the digital world, with 60-65% of the education seekers being women. Can you relate to the implications of this fact on the Egyptian society and economy in the near future. More women will eventually emerge as leaders, business owners and decision makers.

The problem with the coming digital era unfolds as; a) stronger business reliance on technology, b) market demands becoming more dynamic than ever, c) High -conscious and subconscious- user expectations, and d) fierce competition.

The problem is not where we need to go .. it is where we are now !!

When your business is successfully growing now, there is never enough time for certain seemingly non-urgent yet crucial small improvements. Improvements which yield the building blocks for your sustainability in fewer years to come. Business Owners and Executive Leaders will constantly slip into an adaptive/reactive mode to direct the ship in response to short term changes and arising opportunities … but we must notice the future ahead. And I am not a believer of the myth of a detailed five-year plan, these have proven to only be worthy of your finest shelving cabinet. But I am pro continuous subtle improvement, not just operational management but nonstop (progressive) efforts to elevate and strengthen your current business enablers. You need visibility, accessibility, agility and control of your business enablers; business policies, data, operational processes, people and technology to serve the business best now and later.

Finally, I would conclude that being a digital transformation or a digital disruption will be determined by each organization’s positioning and it’s ability to adapt swiftly to a new digital era. Business owners and leaders ought to be working -right now- on the critical, perhaps even the relatively small changes to their current enterprise architecture which will have long term lasting results on competitiveness, cost and ultimately their presence.

Written by Angie Eissa, CBAP, MSc Business Information Technology, Middlesex University, UK

Business Borderlines Founder & Managing Partner