Hurry up, please. It's time.

We’ve been talking about the disruptive impact of digital forever. Time to stop talking. Here’s why.

As we all know, digital has already reset the social contract with the consumer and end user. Marketing and customer service relationships have migrated from real-time contact with human agents typically at a designated site of the vendor’s choice to asynchronous interactions with a hybrid of digital systems and human agents in a location-less cloud. We call the enabling IT here Systems of Engagement, and everybody gets they are fundamental to modern life.

At the same time, however, we also know that our back office IT, what we call our Systems of Record, are complex applications with high security needs run in private data centers, all of which does not lend itself to interfacing them gracefully with Systems of Engagement. The risk of disrupting something mission-critical here is real, and we have used this as an excuse to move slowly in the name of caution. But here’s the thing. For every alpha risk (the risk of commission) there is a corresponding beta risk (the risk of omission), and in 2015 the lines have crossed. There is now more risk in not acting than in acting.

Read the full post here.