Speed is the new currency

As new and innovative technologies are constantly emerging, it is important for your business to embrace these changes by adapting to customers’ needs. Businesses that do this by developing innovative products and new distribution channels are able to capture the most market share. Those that do not, suffer from what we refer to today as digital Darwinism – when technology and society evolve faster than your ability to adapt.

Today, just 71 companies from the original 1955 Fortune 500 list remain today and over 40 percent of business that were on the list in 2000 were no longer there in 2010. Case in point – companies like Barnes & Noble, X Box and Blockbuster have gone bankrupt while companies focused on innovative new ways to connect to their customers through digital – like Uber and Square – continue to prosper.

As Mike Corr, Salesforce Vice President of Commercial Sales in Southern California and Hawaii shared if you’re not moving towards the next digital solution, your competition will. Today, Salesforce is the fourth largest enterprise software company in the world. And it achieved this by constantly innovating – releasing three automatic upgrades each year with key features sourced directly from its community of customers.

In today’s mobile-focused lifestyle, Salesforce recognizes the importance of offering the convenience of apps. Apps are an easy way to transform your business and give your customers quick and convenient access to you on the go.

Everyday we create 2.5 quintillion bytes of data. In fact 90 percent of the world’s data was created in just the last 12 months alone. But how are you using technology to leverage the data your customers are giving you?

Statistics show that just one percent of all customer data collected is analyzed. But in order to be successful, you need to take that data and use it as a tool to gain insight into what your customers are looking for.

A great example of this is the city of Philadelphia which, with the help of Salesforce, created a mobile app that allows its residents to log in from anywhere, attach photos and geo-tags to report issues. The city’s 1,000 police officers are also now equipped with access to the app’s records from their vehicles, allowing them to be more informed in their actions in the field. Today the fifth largest city in the United States is handling more than 1.5 million citizen inquiries a year and building opportunities for collaboration with partners and departments.

Enterprises own and fully control their private corporate networks. Through corporate policies and currently available technology, enterprises have the ability to reverse the encryption of the information on their networks for the sole purpose of inspecting for malicious activity and then re-encrypting the information so that it is protected when it leaves the corporate network and traverses the internet. Enterprises will need to ensure they have clear policies and procedures governing decryption and inspection activities.

We remind you that: In order to gain a substantial advantage over competitors you must stay ahead of digital changes by proactively creating solutions that meet your customer’s evolving needs.

Download Mike Corr's presentation here.