THE DIGITAL AGE
FOCUS FEATURE
‘Marketing was a relatively late embracer of digital technology but is now one that has shown the largest growth’
Technology has changed the face of commerce
‘We have manipulated our environment to survive, adapt and thrive and we’ve used tools to do this’
This explosive growth brings its own challenges as it is
driven by three key factors – market forces such as customer-centric business and the growth of the World Wide Web, new innovations - you might have heard of ‘digital disruption’ which means using digital technology to completely change the way a business is run such as Uber in the taxi world - and new players, or even old ones, finally catching on. It can prove difficult to keep up. Skills have changed too, and not just the growth of the
Information Technology (IT) department. Digital technology has changed accounting forever – gone is the image of ink- stained introverts. Accountants are now more critical to business success
than ever and many accountants now run large organisations - a significant change, given the other image of accountants as risk-averse and overly analytical. The skillsets needed to be an accountant have changed as well – commercial acumen and technical literacy are crucial
elements alongside the traditional requirements of numeracy and attention to detail. New roles have been created along the way too – the management information specialist, data scientist, digital marketer, business and systems analyst and others too numerous to list. There are new qualifications and educational boards to manage them, new standards and policies, governance and compliance requirements, new legislation and new policing to match. Now to the biggest change of all – the growth of the
Internet and the availability of portable wireless. Not even Tim Berners-Lee, the originator of the web, could have foreseen the impact of this development and the business and social change it has engendered. The web has completely changed the face of commerce by offering both the opportunity to purchase remotely and a means of accessing product and review data without direct contact. The direct impact of this change is to move control of the purchasing process to the end-user, be they
business network December 2017/January 2018 43
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