Ensure growth with digital asset management

BANGALORE, INDIA: Since 2008, world economy has been going through multiple challenges.

Emerging markets like India too are impacted by global events such Europe union crisis, US market slow down, etc. World has become smaller and much more integrated. Business environment is increasingly becoming competitive. Disruptive technologies are changing the way we do business across b2b and b2c space very fast.

Growth opportunities continue to be descent in emerging markets like India. Differentiation in offering is diminishing with time across verticals. Costs continue to raise faster, manpower retention and costs continue to pose worries, all leading to challenges on 'profitable growth' front for business across size and vertical.

In order to ensure profitable growth in such challenging times, every organization across size and vertical needs to identify its key business assets and differentiators and evolve an ongoing plan to manage them effectively. Internet, smart phones, social media have changed us both at home and work and they bring in new challenges on risk to business.

Business across time zone and geographies are compelling organizations to extend flexibility to work from office, home, public places through variety of devices - personal and official, bringing along new risks. Collaboration needs of business calls for networking with external stake holders from different entities with various sensitivity and compliance levels on information security front. Digital data is exploding - doubling every year. Application availability, performance and security demands are increasing by the day across user spectrum.

Compliance and regulatory norms are getting stricter every quarter Threats a decade back caused lot of nuisance while modern day ones are sophisticated and targeted to gain information for financial benefits. Enterprise perimeter is steadily becoming virtual with SaaS, Cloud and hosted models. Breaches hence not only cause damage to reputation and brand value but also inflict huge financial loss.

Frequencies of natural disasters on business continuity have become real. It is no more a CIO or CTO challenge as seen by the above trends and challenges to business.

Effective management of digital assets needs to be given highest priority to ensure profitable

growth followed by statutory and compliance needs. This is not a one-time activity but a

continuous ongoing process to keep evolving with changes in threat and business landscape.

Digital asset management is not just technology but also more importantly process and people.

With this strong foundation of effective digital asset management, CXOs need to work together

to evolve an IT strategy that helps business meet its challenges on growth and cost optimization

fronts.

With challenges on profitability, IT budget growth is moderating. Hence it is critical to

invest technology in line with business needs. IT needs to be leveraged to fullest extent to drive

business in the information age.

The author is co-founder and managing director at iValue InfoSolutions.