Investing for growth

“A recent Gartner report shows how the increasing power and ubiquity of digital solutions has extended their reach beyond the marketing and technology functions to impact the entire business, driven by a desire for organisational growth,” says Benno Wasserstein, Managing Director at Box UK. “As a result, organisations are increasingly looking to undertake work on business-critical software projects, whether this is through the creation of new products and services or the optimisation of existing systems, to more completely embed digital capabilities within day-to-day business activities.”

The report, which surveyed leading CEOs and senior executives, found that investing for growth dominates key business priorities for the coming year, as a reduction in perceived risk encourages leaders to create long-term plans for expansion and enhancement. It also showed how digital technologies are expected to play a central role in achieving these goals, with more than half of the current priority IT issues specifically mentioning social, cloud and mobile.

The changing role of technology

“These findings illustrate that the potential for digital transformation to drive improved business results has been understood at the very highest levels, with investment in technology increasing accordingly. In line with this on-going focus on organisation-wide transformation we’re not only seeing marketing’s online budgets continuing to rise, and IT professionals preparing for the purchase of new software alongside predicted increases in maintenance budgets, but also departments from finance and operations to sales and customer service significantly adding to overall IT spend.”

“This evolution of digital’s place in organisations has also helped effect a shift in people’s perceptions of technology away from being centred solely on efficiencies and cost savings and towards enabling the growth CEOs are demanding. Consequently, there is now a greater focus on producing solutions that support the customer experience; a critical enabler of growth as users gain increasing power and control over brand interactions. Progressive organisations are reviewing and tailoring the roles and structures they have in place to support this, with many implementing end-to-end, cross-functional teams. The approach is one we’ve embraced at Box UK, and our development teams work closely with dedicated testers, business analysts, technical consultants and user experience specialists to define and refine high-quality solutions.”

The future of digital

As the software required by organisations touches ever more departments, consulting firms such as McKinsey are suggesting that digital silos be avoided, with digital instead integrated across a wide variety of roles.

“A dedicated technical partner can prove incredibly valuable in helping ensure that these digital skills are embedded throughout an organisation in a way that supports the execution of their customer experience strategy, and at Box UK we’ve seen demand increase for this kind of relationship. Our clients are seeking solutions that enable the delivery of exceptional customer experiences; this requires a comprehensive view of all user and organisational activity, a sophisticated and integrated approach to the gathering, analysis and application of business intelligence, and a joining up of all touchpoints both online and offline. We’re therefore working with a broad range of departments and roles within a single organisation to facilitate the successful delivery of software that supports this, and enjoy long-term partnerships that see the continual extension of our clients’ digital capabilities for the benefit of their business and their users.”

Find out more

For more information on the ways in which Box UK can help your organisation, please get in touch with a member of our team. For interviews with Benno Wasserstein, please contact press@boxuk.com.