Leverage data and tech for business sustainability- expert

By Oghale Mafuru

As the concept of disruption continues to surface in business discourses as a pragmatic approach to achieving business sustainability in a Volatile Uncertain Complex and Ambiguous (VUCA) environment, marketers and entrepreneurs have been advised to optimize data and technology to survive the dynamic world of business.

Kolawole Oyeyemi, Chief Executive officer of Axiom Itel Limited gave this advice in his keynote address at the Marketing conference of the National Institute of Marketing of Nigeria, NIMN held in Lagos recently. The marketing expert noted that with the explosion of data and technology, organisations are at risk of extinction if they cannot creatively discover and explore new ways to harness the opportunities embedded in new forms of technologies.

According to him, businesses must strategise to compete and win sustainably. To do this, he said they should need to maintain spontaneity in response to changes and complexities, especially with evolving technology.

He said: “Technology can help you drive operational and financial efficiencies. It can make you leaner, fitter, smarter, and more profitable. It can make you more innovative and enable faster market access. However, technology can also accelerate your extinction. And it can come as a barbarian from outside your industry”.

While noting that businesses must radically overhaul their business models and rethink structural operations for sustainability, the highly cerebral IMC expert stated that organisations must radically transform from the inside out. “Mere leveraging technologies to digitise operations, assets and upscaling the workforce cannot be enough in the digital economy. If you truly want to capitalise on emerging opportunities in the digital economy, there is a necessity for a total rethink and overhaul of structures, culture, business models, revenue models, and route to market models” he said.

He urged marketers to continue to leverage deep insights into  evolving consumer behaviour as well as acquire new skills and capabilities that match new opportunities that will be created by the evolution of technology.

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