Gartner Reveals How To Forge “The Digital Edge”

Digital technology and the Internet of Things (IoT) are opening up new opportunities for companies to create new sources of customer value and revenue streams, according to Gartner, Inc. However, meaningful digitalized revenue opportunities are difficult to access and address, leading to significant challenges in establishing a fully digitalized business.

In the e-book “The Digital Edge: Exploiting New Technology and Information for Business Advantage”, launched this week, Mark P. McDonald, group vice president and Gartner fellow, reveals how forging an edge requires new thinking and new approaches for bringing together digital and physical resources. The result is a new source of advantage, where technology supports growth.

Mr. McDonald is discussing some of the key findings from the book at Gartner Symposium/ITxpo, which is being held here through October 25. He is explaining how the increasing density of digital technology is fueling new kinds of innovation that can provide organizations with a digital edge.

“The first wave of business investment in technology created the modern IT-enabled enterprise by automating and integrating back-office and operational processes,” said Mr. McDonald. “Then the Internet wave of investment created electronic copies of analog business models in the form of e-commerce, Web stores and the like. Digitalizing the business represents a new wave that will drive business investment in IT, based on the evolving capabilities of mobility, analytics, social computing, communications and cloud technologies.”

Gartner believes that a digital edge comes from creating new combinations of analog and digital resources resulting in new sources of customer value and company revenue or results. Analog resources refer to the people, how they are organized, the equipment they use, the facilities they work in, as well as the company's other physical aspects. Digital resources include information, customer history, situational awareness, and so forth. Digital resources also include the equipment that processes information such as mobile phones, tablet computers, sensors, computer controlled machinery, etc.

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