To answer that question, there are three main perspectives we need to consider here.  Firstly, we can look at the key technology trends impacting on all companies.  Secondly, we need to consider the relationship between the IT department and the business, because it is evolving; and thirdly, there are a number of people issues, or sociological issues, that need to be considered.

 

The internet and its continued evolution is without doubt the most important technology trend. It continues to grow at a phenomenal rate and therefore it will continue to be the most important platform for change. But today the internet is a mass of often meaningless information; the next step will be to make the meaningless meaningful. I expect to see more intelligent ways of finding information.  Google and Bing are going in that direction; and the semantic web will gradually begin to emerge.  

 

Similar principles apply to business.  At TVH, for example, the internet was initially about e-commerce. Today we do business in more than 170 countries and all our customers are connected to our e-commerce platform. Customers can search for specific products, see if it is in stock and order it.  But in the years ahead we will be moving toward a much closer relationship with our customers, based on real-time interaction and much more transparency in our processes. The front-end of the service will improve via the use of video, for example, but the more fundamental change will happen in the back end.  In a way, customers will be able to navigate our processes; they will be able to take part in our decision making. The point is to help our customers understand their root problem (a defect in a forklift truck) and to come up with the right solution, which usually entails a complex combination of different parts.   That means we’ll have to extend the dialogue with our customers, for example via IP telephony, and introduce more intelligent search and ordering processing.  The point is to address our customers’ real, root problem and not simply operate as a pure product-seller or transaction platform.  The new e-commerce process will be much closer to the customer’s own processes and it will be more mobile in the sense that we’ll be able to communicate direct with the repair folks in the warehouse.  Our own service people are already equipped with mobile devices and tablet PCs and our warehouses are equipped with Wi-Fi.   We’ve done this to optimise our own planning and for track & trace functionality but the next phase will be to make those processes more transparent toward our customers.

 

Related to the internet are a number of other trends.  The amount of data that we are being confronted with, from numerous sources, is exploding.  We need to manage it, store it, interpret it, protect it and destroy it.  All this is becoming more important.  I expect more growth in business intelligence and data mining.  Another internet-related trend is the emergence of social networks and new collaboration tools.  Social networking will begin to enter companies, no doubt.  For us at TVH this is challenging because we have strict policies around data protection.  But we need to consider all the possible opportunities and challenges; we need to prepare.  Our people and our customers are already communicating via the social networks, so why not extend this to business communication too?  When the digital natives enter the workforce, this issue will become all the more pressing.  What is interesting here is that this has very little to do with technology; it is more about culture, about our way of working, and the way we manage security.  

 

Cloud computing will be a key growth area, although I do not follow all the predictions here, especially the idea that all computing will become a commodity, a basic utility.  I do recognise the analogy of basic computing power as electricity.  Once they figured out how to transport electricity, then centralised power production became possible.   Similarly, the internet is leading to more centralised production of computing power.   As a result, we are able to right-size our computing capacity to our needs; we buy more computing power in to cover our peak moments.  But the key problem today is that not all service providers are able to deliver the types of commitments we expect.  Also, while some aspects of computing will become a commodity, companies will still need substantial skill to integrate various computing services into their business.  Sure, you can buy computing power but how you use such power to create competitive advantage for your company will remain the key challenge.  

 

Related to cloud computing is everything to do with virtualisation.  This trend will continue.  We are moving toward ‘lighter’ computing; more energy efficient, more modular, an IT architecture that is easier to manage.  Finally, the wireless internet will continue to grow rapidly, as more and more devices are connected and interconnected.

 

TVH is committed to sustainability at a strategic level and hence our entire operation is evaluated along those lines.  Green IT is simply one aspect of this broader corporate commitment, but it is pretty fundamental.  This is because we are looking at IT as an enabler for energy efficiency across the entire operation.  It isn’t simply about IT itself being energy efficient.  In fact, a great deal of work has already been done in that department.  For example, we’ve looked at our data centres, we use water-cooling and free-cooling, capture the heat produced by our  UPS  Systems to heat water in the kitchen, we switch off our PCs at night, and much else.  But the major impact will be in how we change our core operations via IT, for example, in the way we optimise our supply chain processes and thus use fewer vehicles.   That’s where the real benefits are.  Green IT is so much bigger than energy efficient data centres.

 

An increasing number of stable, well-supported open source applications will be made available to the enterprise segment. This seems to be happening very quickly now.  Google is bringing more and more apps on the market but also companies like IBM are relying on open source.  We use Lotus Notes Symphony, which is an open source variant of OpenOffice.   In CMS software you also see this very clearly—look at Typo3 and  Drupal.  The principled debates that surround open source are not important in this context; what matters is that an increasing number of stable, supported applications are becoming available.  

 

Security is a complex and increasingly important challenge.  Initially we have focused more on external security: the focus was on defending the organisation from external threats.  But in the next decade the focus will move to internal security.  How do you protect your data from internal threats?  

 

We have an internal software factory, but again I think that applications will increasingly move online.  We’ll see richer internet applications emerge.  Also, the interfaces will evolve, beyond the classic mouse and keyboard.   I expect to see more natural interfaces emerge.  For example, we already are using smart boards and tablet PCs.  

 

We have been talking about business-IT alignment for 30 years now, and we’re still talking about it.  But I suspect that in the coming decade IT will not simply align but actually integrate in the business.  For most companies today the focus is on surviving the recession, so cost reduction will remain a key priority for the long term.  But I’m convinced that this is a great moment for IT to show its value to the organisation, to show that IT is not simply a cost to the organisation but that it can be a real value creator.  But to accomplish that we need a process of cultural change within the IT organisation and beyond.  IT people need more business knowledge, and at the same time the business folks need to think more in terms of technology.   

 

At TVH this is a process we set in motion about 10 years ago.  At that point we decided to step away from the classic ERP model—where IT is big black box—and shift toward a more open, components-based approach.  Note that this was sometime before the whole SOA trend.  A key aspect is that we organised our IT to be responsible for specific business processes.  We implemented a formal mechanism whereby people could evaluate their processes and look for proposals for change.  That cultural change has happened: we get thousands such proposals today.  And business people are also talking IT now: they’re able to design process flows, which are subsequently easy to translate into IT flows.  And vice versa too: we have 10 people in our IT department who have no  IT background  at all.  Instead they have deep knowledge of business processes and have good analytical skills.  

 

On a daily basis our IT people are working together with the business people.   I think that my biggest achievement here is exactly that get; taking that wall away.  In the past IT was a black box.  The business had to send in formal requirements, and out would pop a delivery of some sort.  We have clearly gone a long way in this; it has been a long process of cultural change.  But that is why TVH is such an innovative company.  The driving force behind our innovation is IT.  

 

The infrastructure side of IT remains a cost obviously.  Here the objective is to ‘keep it all running’.  This is critical but I think in the future this will become a major candidate for outsourcing to the cloud.  On the factory side—the development work—there is more focus on the creation of new ideas but also here there is scope for outsourcing and co-sourcing.  But the future of the IT department lies in the value-creation side: the continuous improvement of business processes, creating more flexibility, more efficiency.  That is my challenge here at TVH; I am trying to push our organisation toward that vision.  The time that the CIO was involved in technical problems is gone.  Today’s CIO should be focused on the business.  He or she needs to be part of the executive management team and take part in strategic decisions.  With that shift you also end up creating other career paths.  At TVH, for example, IT has become an interesting career pathway for business people.  That was not the case in the past.  So much of the knowledge about our business processes and the way they are evolving is located here at IT.  The head of our software development group comes from the business side.

 

Ultimately this is all about cultural change.  My role is to prepare and push the organisation toward this new way of working and thinking.  I need to be the central point for change; the lobbyist for change.

 

The third main area to consider is the people side of things. I do not see any major improvement in the availability of IT graduates. Given the way that our young people are thinking about IT today I do not expect much change in the coming years. We have to face the fact that we will be working with external people and suppliers. The profiles that we are really focusing are the business analysts and project managers, because these people we need inside the organisation. How do we attract them, how do we develop them, how do we motivate them? Those are the key questions for us. And that is why you have to look at the social aspects of the organisation; we need to look at the work-life balance, tele-working, etc. I think these are important trends. When the digital natives show up this will only become more important.  We’re probably not prepared yet but it is a concern and we are working on it.  The technology aspects are not the issue here; it is about culture and changing the way we work.