Kathy Gibson is at Context Channel Connect SA – Shift happens.
This is the message from Anton Herbst, CEO of Tarsus on Demand, who points out that events out of our control happen all the time, but we can control our attitude towards it, and choose what changes we want to make ourselves.
Among the major shifts happening now are a change from the industrial economy to the digital economy, which does away with the conversation about capital and supply-driven economics.
The digital economy, on the other hand, works with data, which is monetised to drive customer acquisition.
However, the industrial economy is still very relevant, Herbst adds, and the digital economy is relatively small – but it is growing.
In this industrial economy, productivity is becoming more important, and technology has a huge role to play in driving up productivity.
Technology is set to play a major role in future developments, and could set us on an exponential curve – 5G could be the catalyst that drives this.
“I have seen the power of the cloud,” Herbst says.
This power makes it possible for even small companies to use as much compute power as they need – without owning any assets.
Herbst believes the IT industry has to collaborate, learn together and thus develop the resources to deal with the exponential model.
“The problem is that we still have vertical value chain thinking. But with the digital economy I don’t necessarily have the answers to all the problems our customers encounter.
“We need to work together to solve problems.”
Herbst says Tarsus is trying to implement this internally and within its partner base.
“In the digital economy space, we have to put the customer in the middle and build solutions around the customers – working together to meet the customer needs.
“The only ecosystem I have seen that is very good at what it does is Discovery’s Vitality,” Herbst says.
“They fetch the partners needed to ensure the customer gets the best experience.”
In these circumstances, Herbst believes IT industry payers will have to work with their competitors to serve customers.
“When it comes to ecosystems, there is currently an arms race between Amazon, Microsoft and Google – but when you are on each of these platforms, you play by their rules.
“What we need is to put the customer in the middle and build ecosystems around them.”
Digitally-enabled business have to create space for people to fail, Herbst adds.
In distribution, we are moving from a product sales world to a digitally-enabled environment that substitutes services for customer empathy, and trust.
In future, customers will be looking for value, rather than just products, says Herbst.
“Data is at the core of what we need to do with our businesses. By combining systems of record and systems of engagement, we start getting context by adding systems of intelligence, we can start monetising this data.”
But, while doing this, we need to gain customers’ trust, Herbst adds, and this means they have to gain value from the process.
“Are we solving the job to be done – and for who? Customers buy our technology to do something with it. We need to ask what value we bring to the ecosystem? And what do we need from it?”