Seamless 2020: The Role of Technology in Building a Digital Business. Master or Slave?

Emakina @ Seamless Middle East 2020

“design thinking allows businesses to perfectly balance what the customer needs with what is technologically feasible and economically viable”

Just when everybody was adapting to the new “normal”, running their businesses remotely from behind computer screens – physical conference events start popping up again. In these hard times, such a common event in pre-pandemic standards only reminds us of the importance of adding a touch of human presence. With a magnificent booth, standing out like a beacon of digital innovation to all welcomed visitors, Emakina is happy to have taken part in this month’s Seamless Middle East conference in Dubai. With our greatest regional experts present, our booth was off to a Seamless start.

We take pride in the digital transformations we offer to leading organizations, and nothing compares to mounting a stage to tell an interested audience about the wide array of technologies, tools and solutions we can provide for their businesses to grow, flourish and most importantly in these times: adapt.

Diving into the many roles of technology in building online presence for your organization is our Commercial Director for the MENA region, Khalid Khan.

Technology has always been a key influential factor on every business’ set-up, organization and management. The retail industry, for example, underwent a full transformation from brick & mortar to digital omnichannel platforms. Primarily, technology drives trends and transformations, and the speed at which it is being driven is constantly increasing; catapulting us into what we call the Era of Turbulence, in which organizations feel the heat of outdated systems and are pressured into pivoting for a rapid digital transformation.

 “in the Era of Turbulence the velocity of change in consumer behavior and needs will continue to increase, businesses must be able to react, recent history is littered with companies that failed to do so.” 

We see 8 driving factors that are creating this era and forcing businesses to transform:

1. Democratization of Access
2. New Business Models
3. Distribution
4. Online Computing
5. Personalization
6. Decentralization
7. Automation
8. New Business Cultures

Businesses need to rethink their internal organization, architecture and the technologies to support it. Essentially, they need an architecture that is scalable in all directions, making sure continuity is manageable in this era of turbulence. Traditionally, technological architectures are very robust, built with the intent of a long-lasting product with a somewhat fixated design. In this current era of turbulence, built architectures need to support ease of potential editing and adapting because of rapid transformations. Especially when it comes to customer-facing systems, an organization needs to be ready to iterate, change and adapt to the shifting customer needs and demands.

It is our job to help businesses with this dichotomy between the robust, dependable & long-lasting technology in the hands of the CIO and the user-oriented layer of systems run by the CMO.  As for some necessary solution when responding to turbulence ensued: start by studying consumer behavior changes along with technological evolutions as well. We work to ensure you freedom of attaching and detaching services and solutions to help your users, without necessarily harming any existent infrastructure.

So to answer the ultimate question of “What’s the role of technology in business, master or slave?”; you can hear Khalid, in his presentation below, saying that the answer is: neither.

In all honesty, technology is versatile enough to take both forms: master and slave. We position ourselves in the pilot seat to pivot it in the direction we desire, aiming for eventual business success. In this era of turbulence, our greatest driver is consumer need, and that’s only going to get more essential in this turbulent market.