The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency. The second is that automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency.

Virtually everything in business today is an undifferentiated commodity, except how a company manages its information. How you manage information determines whether you win or lose. How you use information may be the one factor that determines its failure or success – or runaway success.

The Key Digital Applications for Business

Replacing paperwork with digital text

Facilitating groupwork by enabling teams to use the same data simultaneously

Providing up-to-the-minute information about sales and customers to improve responsiveness

Facilitating relationships with business partners.

Fundamental Management Changes Engendered by the Internet

Focusing on your core competencies and outsourcing everything else to outside suppliers  >>>

Maintaining a small central core of people, and employing others as and when required

Expanding rapidly and even globally from small or medium-sized bases

Escaping from geographic constraints by transferring work to where it is best and/or most economically done

Refocusing all processes on the customer, and constantly mutating to meet changing markets and competition  >>>

Increasing the pressure to shorten cycle time and increase the speed of all other processes.