Cyber-attacks are set to grow in their number and nature; those companies that embed security measures into their culture will be most successful at fending them off Type ‘cyber-crime’ into any search engine and you’ll get an array of pictures of shady-looking young men in hoodies, hunched over laptops in dark corners. Today, that stereotype couldn’t be further from the truth.
Rob McGillen, global head of technology at Grant Thornton, asks how important ICT infrastructure to business growth prospects and which economies are performing best.
Poised to be every bit as disruptive as the internet revolution, is your business ready for the rise of the sharing economy?
Technology is at the cutting edge of efforts to make growth more sustainable. As the global population swells and more people move into higher consumption classes, the demand for food, for energy, for water, will all increase. But the resources our planet offers will not. Clearly the status quo is not sustainable.
The technology sector is riding the crest of a wave. We interview approximately 150 technology companies around the world every quarter through our International Business Report (IBR) and what’s struck me since the beginning of the year is how bullish the leaders of these companies are about their growth prospects.
The technology industry is synonymous with innovation, fuelled by investments and a continual focus on research and development (R&D). By its very nature it is at the forefront of change. Those businesses which fail to keep up with technological change and stay current with consumer requirements are left behind.
To protect national interests, governments are using compliance to restrict companies that could potentially disrupt established industries which can creating a knock on effect for tech companies. Rapidly expanding companies also face a wider range of individual regulations as they expand into new territories, be it employment law, taxation, product safety or licensing.
Depending on their level of business maturity, the challenge for tech companies is slightly different – but the principles remain same: grow or die. To be the next billion-dollar technology brand, CEOs need to figure out how to scale and normalise faster than their rivals – without compromising the DNA of their rivals Protecting the core The good news is that cloud and on-demand enterprise servies are making expansion cheaper and less complex that ever before. Scaling tech companies can use systematising tools like Jira to track issues and manage dispersed software builds. Meanwhile, collaboration tools like Yammer, Skype and Base camp allow for close teamwork between decentralised teams.
