Digital disruption is an unavoidable force that is impacting both B2B and B2C industries. One of the reasons disruption has become so prevalent in 2016 is custom software development.
TechBeacon’s article regarding software trends for 2016 suggests that software developers are more than multilingual employees who create software for your company, but rather collaborative problem solvers who are there to help with critical business decisions. This makes developers one of the many instruments companies are utilizing to drive digital disruption in their industry. Exceptional developers are difficult to find and software development companies are in fierce competition for the same talent.
According to McKinsey, digital disruption can drive different responses from different companies. Some may improve a few processes through digitization and continue business as usual. Others may completely scrap their business plan and try going into a new market.
Blockbuster, the brick and mortar video rental chain that seemed to go out of business overnight, didn’t disappear for no reason. According to a Harvard Business Review, digital disruption hit its industry the hardest. Blockbuster is a prime example of a company that was too slow to initiate major changes in response to digital disruption. The primary industries being impacted at the moment are media, telecom, consumer financial services and retail.
Digital disruption is what the World Economic Forum is calling the Fourth Industrial Revolution and has been occurring in a series of waves which impacts each industry differently. The first wave is interactive and personalized experiences driven by social, mobile, analytics and cloud (SMAC) technologies. The second is digital enterprise, which leverages SMAC technologies to improve collaboration and productivity. The third wave is the breakthrough of artificial intelligence, robotics, cognitive computing and the Internet of Things (IoT). These are all trending topics among IT professionals right now and adapting to these waves is driving revenue for other companies.
Currently, the digital health industry is lagging behind in terms of digital disruption. The industry is facing issues with software development and connectivity between hospitals. HHS.gov suggests this is partially due to the strict privacy regulations put in place by HIPAA and the increasing security threat of having information readily available online.
