By Tom S. Noda
Published in the CWP December 2009 - January 2010 issue

Although the economic crisis is yet to end, software firms see no let ups in technology adoptions of businesses next year. They see 2010 as a time for more strategic IT investments as companies seek to empower more their businesses and customers.

Natasak Rodjanapiches, regional managing director of Oracle ASEAN (Asia-Pacific), cites that global trends such as the Internet and instant communications, globalization of businesses and competition, the rise of virtual Internet-empowered business networks, and the presence of more empowered customers that are Internet savvy, are pushing companies to keep adjusting to change.

Rodjanapiches says businesses can’t help but go hightech, describing Net-savvy customers as very “knowledgeable” and “demanding” about their wants and needs.

Another “great” factor, according to business analytics firm SAS, data volume growth is making companies to be more IT-oriented, claiming that complex decision-making has now become a standard.

“We foresee that more and more companies will realize the importance of leveraging on their data,” says Maxie Ventura-Garin, country operations director, SAS Philippines.

And for business solutions company SAP, they see businesses, particularly smalland medium-size enterprises (SMEs) investing on their IT infrastructure all geared towards streamlining their operations.

“SMEs, majority of which are family-owned, see IT investments as a way to be more competitive and effectively manage their growth opportunities. They are looking at 2010 with guarded optimism,” says Jennifer Ligones, country manager of SAP Philippines.

Ligones adds that due to the recent natural calamities, risk management and mitigation are now also higher in the consciousness of business owners and decision makers.

John Bessey, newly appointed country manager for Microsoft Philippines, says globalization is a factor that continues to bring various challenges such as expanding market boundaries, the increasing need for workers to be able to collaborate easily anytime and anywhere, having a variety of new competitors, and facing complex market pressures and regulations and currency fluctuations.

In this yearend special feature of Computerworld Philippines, all four companies, Microsoft, Oracle, SAP and SAS, reveal some of their new products and strategies to help businesses become more efficient as well as to keep pace with their IT-savvy customers.

THE GREEN APPROACH

For Microsoft, the “green” approach is one of the major IT trends that businesses and organizations should adopt in order to save on cost yet become more productive and efficient.

Bessey says with enterprises becoming green, they don’t only contribute to environment protection but would also help them to lower their costs in doing business. He recommends virtualization and unified communication (UC) technologies.

“Virtualization enables organizations to take advantage of built-in power management features in their desktop and server operating systems, thus lowering the costs of power consumption. It can also help lower hardware and labor costs,” he says. “Unified communications, however, can also decrease an organization’s carbon footprint by reducing the need for travel.”

 Bessey adds besides saving costs on commuting, UC is helpful in reducing costly office spaces but, more importantly, the technology brings about a new culture of collaboration that improves productivity and efficiency.

“Microsoft is ready to provide the IT-enabled tools to our customers who are looking for ways to remain on top,” Bessey says. “We believe the key to delivering value in the near future is in combining the best of software running on PCs, servers, and devices with the best of services running on the Web – what we call software-plus-services. This gives companies flexibility through choice. Software plus services makes technology very accessible and affordable, lets customers and partners have more control, and builds on IT investments in software and skills.”

INTEGRATED

Rodjanapiches notes that Oracle aims to support the business and technology trends in 2010 by providing solutions founded on Oracle’s three key attributes – “comprehensive, open and integrated.”

He says there are six key areas of integration, and they are: “user experience, business process management, business intelligence, security, scalability and high availability, and also operational management.”

Rodjanapiches claims Oracle is planning for technology enhancements that would benefit more than 90,000 of its current customers which will enable cost reduction, improve efficiency and the ability to differentiate their organizations from competitors through unrivalled innovation.

“For applications, Oracle continues to place a significant focus on meeting our customers’ industry specific needs. For example, in financial services, Oracle provides applications to handle areas such as branch and call center automation, marketing automation and customer loyalty management, wealth management, financial, performance, and risk management, human capital management, and core banking systems,” Rodjanapiches says.

Rodjanapiches says through Oracle’s applications unlimited program, their customers worldwide can continue to enjoy business value from product upgrades and enhancements. Added to this is the Oracle Lifetime Support policy which assures its customers that their IT investments with Oracle will be protected no matter what product release they are running.

BI AS NEXT WAVE

SAP’s Ligones says business intelligence (BI) will be the next wave in 2010 since a lot of companies who have already set-up their back-end automation processes will be needing a system that enables them to “drill down and slice and dice data fast and interpret them into information that their management can use for decision making.”

The demand, she says, may also differ depending on industry.

“In banking for instance, a strong customer relationship management (CRM) system is needed to support them as they push their different consumer products. Large enterprises may look into GRC (Governance, Risk & Compliance) systems,” Ligones says.

She explains stakeholders normally demand effective governance, including enterprise risk management, transparency, accountability, and optimized performance. Successful companies address these challenges by proactively managing performance across the enterprise with risk-balanced strategy management, and risk-based controls embedded in business process areas. This can range from financial to human resources, environmental to trade management.

“Such companies increase visibility across risk and compliance initiatives, and they do so efficiently to minimize the cost of GRC,” Ligones says. “Achieving effective and efficient operations and reporting requires a unified strategy that guides people, standardizes processes, and integrates technology to embed GRC at every organizational level.”

With the two trends mentioned, Ligones says companies, more than ever, need a clearer and better understanding of their business. Rapid “go or no go” decisions will only be possible if companies have automated most, if not all, of their business processes.

BIZ ANALYTICS

Ventura-Garin, citing the economic crisis, explains the importance of “predictive analytics.” She says the technology is more about reporting on what happened, but using advanced analytical capabilities to develop deep insights and understanding about the business, the customers and the products to derive the organization’s competitive advantage.

“SAS knows that the future of an organization to sustain their competitive advantage using business analytics will be in their ability to take advantage of the different types of data beyond the traditional structured text data. The future dictates the ability to capture insights out of other types such as unstructured text, voice, video or web to enhance the customer experience, introduce product innovations or improve operational efficiencies,” Ventura-Garin says.

Coupled with the vast amount of data available, the data volume and complex analysis required, organizations will need to continue to leverage on a business analytics framework, she says. An agile framework that enables an organization to address its most critical business issues now and then add new functionality over time that will be critical in determining future behaviors.

She says imperative to the businesses are robust data integration, data quality, data and text mining, predictive modeling, forecasting and optimization technologies to anticipate what might happen. She reports that many implementations today have not capitalized on the full power of business analytics.

The private sector, Ventura-Garin claims, has been using business analytics to great effect, by managing risk and compliance, optimizing investments, competitive pricing, effective promotions quickened problem resolution, and producing more accurate forecasts to improve performance.

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