Interview: Ray Bradbery, NCB Group

In our annual Leaders in Technology series, we ask the experts what the year ahead holds. Today we talk transformation and social media with NCB Group’s Ray Bradbery.

Which technologies do you think will be game changers in 2020?

While much has been written about the use of social media platforms as a means of marketing and driving sales with customers through two-way interactions, I think the next wave will be the use of social media internally to better align organisations around their corporate objectives. A challenge for all business has always been the concern that an organisation is not always aligned around the same desired business outcomes. I see successful organisations using social platforms driven from the top and bottom, both to ensure alignment and to allow communication both ways.

Which innovations or disruptions are your customers most concerned about in the year ahead?

Digital transformation seems to be the topic of conversation across many of our customers; however, what is meant by digital transformation is different in many cases. This variation is driven by the fact that digital transformation is mainly being driven by the customer’s customer. The expectations of customers, whether they are in a B2B or B2C relationship, is based on a belief that the customer will have access to content relevant to their needs anytime and on a device of their choosing. Digital transformation requires enterprises to rethink how they interact with their customer base. The resulting challenge is that much of the data required to revise business processes to suit is not in one system.

What will be the biggest growth opportunities for your company in 2020?

As our customers grapple with their desire to embrace digital transformation, the major work will be around identifying data sources and transforming that data in many cases into formats that can be consumed and presented by the right technologies to power their digital strategies. Customers have an expectation that digital systems will deliver what they want, when they want it on their platform of choice. This need to redesign systems to meet the expected instant gratification will drive demand for business process redesign and the resulting technology changes.

What’s on your tech wish list for 2020?

From the regulators I would like to see some common sense prevail into paring back the amount of red tape involved in doing business in a global economy. Customers are no longer local, and the effort required to understand the ramifications of doing business across borders and even different states places great demands particularly on small business. From the industry, I’d like to see more emphasis on providing technologies that simplify the process of delivering business solutions across disparate platforms, while taking advantage of the wealth of data sitting still in legacy systems and being able to modernise those same systems.

Ray Bradbery is CEO of NCB Group, an indigenous technology solutions company specialising in assisting companies to adopt new ways of doing business through business process redesign, assistance with analysis and transformation of data, technology identification and support for the cultural change necessary to adopt new ways of doing business in a digital market.