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Each year advisory firm KPMG Australia surveys C-level executives across Australia to better understand the key issues being faced by business leaders, with the results released in its latest report, “Keeping us up at night: The big issues facing business leaders in 2020”.
The most recent issue demonstrates that—for the third year running—digital transformation remains the number one concern.
“Australian leaders are acutely aware of the challenges and opportunities of the fourth industrial revolution, and the transformative change that technologies like big data, the Internet of Things (IoT), and artificial intelligence will bring,” the report says.
And while many organisations are quick to embrace and adopt new technologies, the “State of Enterprise Software” report from leading research firm IBRS suggests that the property industry lags well behind other sectors when it comes to committing investment and devising plans for digital transformation.
While this research and analysis occurred before Covid-19, the global pandemic has turbocharged some sub-trends and will force radical changes in human behaviour, government regulation, corporate strategy and stakeholder expectations.
The IBRS report found that technology procurement is increasingly business led, so it’s common for property companies to employ multiple disjointed IT systems that meet the needs of separate business functions like finance, HR and development management.
While employing separate solutions may adequately meet the demands of each silo, it’s an inefficient and time-consuming approach that generates a poorer overall result.
The use of multiple solutions usually leads to replication of processes and multiple inputs across separate functions, effectively increasing potential for inconsistencies that bring reporting accuracy and validity into question.
In effect, the bigger picture is lost.
In the not too distant past, "gut feel" may have been enough to go on when it came to business decisions, but the world has changed.
Availability of—and reliable access to—vast amounts of real time data is the very thing that underpins business success in the 21st century, especially in complex environments such as property.
From feasibility modelling through to cash flow forecasting, the entire development process demands visibility of accurate information in real time.
While each business unit owns its inherent function, typical industry undertakings—like provision of accurate costing, estimation and project scheduling—require data drawn from multiple sources.
Integration between disparate business-led solutions can be onerous and, if the resulting extracted information lacks integrity and currency, it leads to poor business decisions that threaten every stage in the development cycle.
For many the humble spreadsheet still remains the tool of choice in business functions tasked with managing complex projects and budgets.
Seen as a "one size fits all" solution, spreadsheets are used across a full spectrum of responsibilities including; contract management, cost estimating, scheduling, project management, subcontractor management, supply, cost control, health and safety, quality management and compliance.
That’s a lot of faith to put into a solution that is primed for human error through manually mis-keyed information, incorrect formula creation or cut-and-paste mistakes.
Not only error-prone, carrying out manual processes is time-consuming, costly and an ineffective use of valuable resources, so you’ll wait longer for information that may not even be accurate or current when you get it.
Digital transformation is an evolutionary process, and an inevitable one for businesses hoping to realise the potential improvements offered by today’s technology trends.
For example, some businesses look for a quick fix and employ proprietary business intelligence add-on solutions designed to extract and collate data from siloed applications.
This may serve in short-to medium-term, but for organisations with serious digital transformation aspirations, there is no substitute for the solid foundation that an enterprise solution delivers.
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