Young,Gifted–Anddigitallysavvy

FT SPECIAL REPORT The Connected Business Wednesday January 29 2014 www.ft.com/reports | @ftreports Inside » Tricky customers Understanding data about consumers will be the next big differentiator Page 2 Lack of clarity on paybacks Normal metrics ‘don’t always apply’ to digital initiatives Page 2 Cloud cover Hybrid approach gives companies greater control over processes Bold is beautiful: analysts say organisations will not maximise the benefits of their digital strategies unless they think holistically and avoid a piecemeal approach. See Page 2 Oivind Hovland Page 3 Takeover is snug fit for Wolverine Cloud helps US shoemaker handle Young, gifted – and digitally savvy $1bn purchase Page 3 Trends for 2014 rate policy that restricted use of Jive to make internal communica- vacy. “If you are working on an M&A just another set of software tools. IT departments have their own mobile devices at work. tions more efficient. deal, you can create a group on the When done right, they will flatten Mobility and Some 70 per cent said they had used a “In many cases, adoption is driven platform that is entirely private, that organisational structures and open up analytics will be long been wary of the personal account on a cloud storage by the fact that a younger generation you would never know existed unless the way companies communicate.” under-30s but are provider such as Dropbox for work is coming in. It is a generation that you were invited to join it,” says Mr These are big claims which may or high on corporate purposes. does not use email in their personal Antebi. may not come true. But, at least, IT spending plans “I don’t think there’s one job where lives; you can’t just tell them to go He is convinced that social software some of the friction between young finding ways to adapt, I haven’t bent the rules quite far to be use Outlook,” says Oudi Antebi, sen- will bring profound changes to the “digerati” and their corporate IT gate- Page 4 more efficient,” say Max Tatton- ior vice-president of products at Jive. ways companies operate. “This is not keepers could be starting to ease. writes Maija Palmer Brown, an independent communica- “If you are trying to recruit in large tions professional in his late 20s. numbers it becomes a key component It is not just that younger employ- in attracting people. People do ask sk someone under the age of ees – who cannot remember a time what tools they will use to get their 30 about corporate IT and before the internet and mobile phones work done.” you get a big sigh. – want different gadgets. Their whole Jive’s own research suggests that, “It was a big shock,” says approach to problem-solving is differ- apart from pleasing young staff mem- Bradley Tubb, 28 and a sen- ent, says Olivier Binse, head of advi- bers, companies adopting social col- Aior account director at Clarity PR. “I sory at Deloitte’s Digital business in laboration tools obtain a 15 per cent was a Mac user and when I started the UK. boost in productivity. my first job it was hard to go from a “If you asked a group of young Security concerns over the new user-friendly interface to working graduates 10 years ago to solve a ways of working remain an issue for with something clunky like Microsoft particular problem they would have companies, but IT departments are XP. done a lot of research and analysis. starting to respond in ways that go “One company I worked for gave us Now, they just post the problem beyond issuing a blanket ban. corporate iPhones, which sounds on a social network and see what “Most companies now allow some great, but as I had my own already I suggestions emerge,” he says. form of bring your own device,” says ended up transferring my work emails Siân John, UK and Ireland director of to my personal phone and the corpo- security strategy at Symantec, a secu- rate one just kept getting left, rity software group. uncharged, at the bottom of my bag,” ‘I don’t think there’s one “And social media use is becoming he says. job where I haven’t bent more mainstream in companies. The Mr Tubb also admits to being one of IT manager, nervous about sensitive the many people of his age who have the rules quite far to corporate data leaking from social downloaded programmes that the IT networks and unsecured personal team have not sanctioned and trans- be more efficient’ devices, can be reassured with a new ferred corporate files on and off the set of management tools.” cloud to get his job done more effi- Ms John says that, rather than issu- ciently. Sometimes, says Mr Binse, senior ing a ban on cloud storage accounts – “Sometimes I would go and work in managers are uncomfortable with which would be flouted in any case – a café, and rather than take my heavy the public approach and worry about companies can build in controls that work laptop I would just transfer the reputational damage. But, he says: stop any truly sensitive data from documents I was working on to my “Sometimes it is a brilliant strategy – being transferred out of the corporate own device using Google Drive.” what comes out is much better than a network. These days, Mr Tubb is much hap- whole research programme might “Quite often, employees don’t real- pier with corporate IT – his employers have produced.” ise what might be sensitive – such as at Clarity allow staff to bring in their Organisations, from Macmillan, the mentioning that they are working at own devices. But his early work expe- cancer charity, to KLM, the Dutch air- customer site X. We can put in place riences are typical of a growing rift line, have all tapped into the social blocks based on certain keywords,” between corporate IT departments media skills of younger employees, says Ms John. Data being uploaded to and young employees who have getting them to staff official social cloud storage accounts such as Drop- grown up using smartphones and the media accounts and talk to customers box can also be encrypted, and internet. in a new way. Symantec offers Norton Zone, a More than half of young employees A number of companies, including secure cloud storage service that surveyed by Fortinet, the IT security PwC, Vodafone and DHL,arealso includes encryption as standard. company, at the end of last year said installing internal social media plat- Corporate social media platforms, they were willing to break any corpo- forms such as Chatter, Yammer and too, are built with many layers of pri- CIOs must face up to ‘off-radar’ spending on online services enabling both marketing profound sense among how easy it is to launch Budgets chiefs and the newfangled many board members that projects using online serv- digital supremos to claim their company is not max- ices and pay for them with Co-operation is vital greater influence over tech- imising the returns on its their company credit card. as decisions on what nology budgets. investment in technology. Often characterised as By 2020, almost 90 per “We’re not saying that “shadow IT”, these initia- to buy become cent of technology spending CIOs are dying out,” says tives underpin Mr Willis’ dispersed, writes will originate outside IT prediction that technology departments, according to budgets will move away Michael Dempsey a forecast last year by Marketing staff are from information chiefs. Gartner, the IT research finding it easy to VMware, a US cloud soft- firm. The explosion in ware house, says many Pity the poor chief informa- online sales and marketing pay for technology CIOs have recognised the tion officer. Having made it is driving this trend. via their company benefits of what it terms to the boardroom in many David Willis, a senior ana- “off-radar” IT spending. companies, CIOs now find lyst at Gartner, is confident credit cards More than a third of the their traditional control marketing chiefs will be the 1,500 European IT decision over IT spending threatened lead spenders on IT within makers VMware polled last by chief marketing officers a few years. They stand Mr Willis, “but they will year suspected their col- and – more recently – chief together with their digital lose influence if they focus leagues had bought cloud digital officers. counterparts, whose role only on operational issues.” services without seeking But they will have to promotes digital strategy The increasing sophistica- permission from the IT get used to it. The internet and reflects “the frustration tion of cloud computing department. has transformed customer- that boards have at getting services has brought this Marketing and advertis- facing businesses, introduc- things done in IT”, he says. debate to the fore. Market- ing new sales channels and This shift owes a lot to a ing staff have discovered Continued on Page 2 2 ★ FINANCIAL TIMES WEDNESDAY JANUARY 29 2014 The Connected Business Experts urge boardrooms to be bolder the digitisation of customer- Digital strategies facing channels at the expense of back-end infra- Many companies are structure and processes. failing to capture There’s little business value in launching a new mobile the full benefits of app if it requires too many their investments, manual processes and hand- offs at the back office to writes Paul Taylor work smoothly.” Not only may a narrow focus minimise the benefits A piecemeal approach to of digitisation, it may also digitisation misses opportu- leave organisations vulnera- nities to gain maximum ble to more agile new advantage from digital entrants.

Load more