How Fortune 500 incumbents are becoming the new market disrupters

4 September 2019| Written by: Robert Churchyard, Executive Partner - IBM Global Oracle Leader, GBS

Innovation is no longer a proprietary skill of small startups and industry outsiders. Certainly, they can still disrupt, but industry incumbents have now embraced the nature of business in the age of digital disruption. Traditional players in markets are no longer traditional. They reinvent constantly and embrace a culture of innovation.

The first phase of the digital revolution favored a small number of platform giants that benefited from the network effect. The next phase is not about the network alone, but also about knowledge.

Today’s culture of persistent innovation requires businesses to act, think, create and engage differently. Are you ready for whatever comes tomorrow?

Three keys to perpetual innovation

When an incumbent is open to change, their core expertise and relationships—while embracing reinvention and innovation—provides a distinct advantage. The fantasy of the sluggish behemoth struggling to keep up is dead. Across industries, traditional industry players are now agile, and reinvention is the new normal.

Three core objectives have emerged as the foundation for developing a culture of perpetual innovation. These objectives are to:

·      Eliminate structural costs to fund investment in growth.

·      Transform enterprise processes and systems to maintain competitiveness.

·      Capitalize on proprietary data as a foundation for growth.

Eliminate structural costs

Structural expenses can hinder the flexibility needed to innovate. Modern, efficient technology can remove structural costs, freeing up resources to invest in growth opportunities. For instance, Oracle ERP Cloud and HCM Cloud users are working with IBM to:

·      Move out of their data centers.

·      Migrate to a flexible Oracle Cloud IT platform.

·      Transform to an SLA-based delivery model.

Further, IBM solutions for Oracle provide improved availability, security, performance and reliability of their IT operations. Removing high up-front internal costs, system complexities and system constraints provides the agility to:

·      Seek out new ventures, partnerships and alliances.

·      Redefine how they interact with customers.

·      Reshape their industry.

Transforming processes

Having removed structural costs, companies are free to develop new internal and external processes through cognitive computing, robotics and automation.

These new processes mean the power to innovate. It means designing processes such as:

·      Digitizing and building touchless financial close processes

·      Deploying a self-healing and self-learning application management service

·      Using virtual agents to create authentic individual experiences.

Building and deploying Oracle Cloud solutions provides a flexible platform to transform business processes on the fly. Now, positioned to capitalize on market opportunities, incumbents are ready to disrupt their industry.

Fueling new growth with data

Long-term industry experience gives industry veterans years of institutional knowledge and proprietary data to use for a competitive advantage. When combined with a state of perpetual innovation, it’s possible to:

·      Understand customers on an individual basis

·      Identify market trends before the competition

·      Develop new ways of conducting business

·      Introduce new services on an industry basis

Private data is a key factor in a transformation to a culture of innovation. Alongside reduced structural costs and improved processes, incumbents have the tools to make evidence-based decisions. Decisions such as:

·      Personalizing interactions with customers

·      Identifying which growth opportunities are most promising to invest in,

·      Prioritizing corporate goals based on facts not available to new entrants or the market itself.

The market is being redefined. Incumbents are the disruptors.

Learn more

IBM is one of the world’s largest Oracle partners. IBM expertise across systems integration, application management, software and infrastructure is unparalleled. IBM is helping incumbents deploy Oracle Cloud solutions — pairing them with proprietary IBM assets when appropriate — to become the new disrupters.

An IBM Oracle Cloud Impact Assessment can help determine the optimal path forward to becoming a disrupter. Learn more about the IBM and Oracle partnership at ibm.com/oracle.