Gartner Symposium Barcelona 2014: Are you ready for digitalization?

This week I’ve had the opportunity to attend the Gartner Symposium in Barcelona. Great organization and in a lovely city!

“Driving Digital Business” was the main theme in this edition, so we had the opportunity to enjoy a lot of inspiring presentations by leading keynoters, that went through different topics around how digitalization is changing the way companies do business, now and in the future, and how CIOs must be prepared to embrace and lead the change, that means to become real digital leaders within their organizations. Digital is already determining the winners and the losers, so it is critical each CIO moves it at centre stage of their strategies. Unfortunately, the agenda was so tight and my week so busy that I couldn’t attend all presentations that I would have loved to hear…

From a Retail perspective, I had the opportunity to attend two interesting presentations. Consumerization is clearly driving retailers strategies, and this trend will continue, showing a clear power shift from retailers to consumers. As a result, retailers are trying to be closer to their customers, which at the end creates an interesting dilemma to retailers: a stronger intimacy with customers can finally bring to higher competition, since some of these potential customers have already the means and technology weapons to finally become competitors. Another key message: the physical stores remain the hub of multichannel. The executional excellence in store will be the key multichannel differentiator. Great to see we are aligned with this vision!

From an ERP perspective, Gartner’s “Postmodern ERP” concept was central, which explains the evolution ERP systems are suffering, where “Hybrid ERP” is nowadays the norm, moving from monolithic ERP suites to a combination of core ERP systems and a set of integrated specialized add-on solutions that provides a much higher business agility to adapt to business model changes. This new reality is facilitating the emergence of cloud ERP players that are becoming a real threat for traditional vendors. A good scenario for Openbravo as well.

From a general perspective, the “CIO Agenda for 2015” presentation, was another great experience. A main message, and very visual, of “flipping” was presented, to succeed in today’s digitalization era:

• Information and Technology Leadership: flip from legacy to digital first
• Value Leadership: flip from visible to valuable metrics
• People and Culture Leadership: flip from control first to visionary first

Are you ready for flipping? A lot of great information to process and digest during the coming months!

See you in the next Gartner Symposium in November 2015!