We live in the age of digital natives where our firms are under constant pressure to innovate, to drive efficiency, to remain competitive and relevant to our customers.
Between 50-80% of business processes are covered by core ERP systems such as Oracle or SAP, as well as CRM systems like Salesforce or Dynamics, but hundreds of lower level business processes remain unaddressed by these solutions, either because of the time and expense needed to customise them or because of the dynamic nature of business resulting in new processes being required quickly to address specific scenarios and in some cases for a finite period of time.
Modifying existing ERP systems to meet specific needs is extremely costly. Implementing custom-coded applications is often expensive, time consuming and inflexible to change/improve.
To completely Ignore these requirements brings inefficiency, requires increased headcount to cope with manual work arounds and often results in dissatisfaction amongst customers and employees.
Industrious users may take it upon themselves to invest time and money in their own solutions, leading to the rise of Shadow IT. These applications, often Excel-based, lack visibility, control, security and scalability and are not implemented by employees with the necessary transformation job skills and knowledge.
Lack of governance by IT presents a data security risk: a recent Forbes Insights Survey titled “Perception Gaps in Cyber Resilience: Where Are Your Blind Spots?” found that more than 1 in 5 organisations have experienced a cyber event due to an unsanctioned IT resource. Organisations simply cannot afford to expose themselves to these risks and must invest to mitigate them.
Read our latest insight in our T&C series, Delivering Digital Transformation while minimising "Shadow IT", produced in partnership with Nick Bantick.
