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Q&A Tuesday with Nathan One: Digital Transformation in the Age of Big Data

insightsoftware -
March 10, 2020

insightsoftware is a global provider of reporting, analytics, and performance management solutions, empowering organizations to unlock business data and transform the way finance and data teams operate.

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Nathan One is the Strategic Director at Windstream, a consulting firm helping companies pivot from commoditized services to disruptive tech. As a B2B technology implementation specialist, he works closely with companies to explore tech-driven opportunities and obstacles standing in front of them. We spoke with Nathan about the imperative for all companies to adapt, and the consequences if they don’t. 

You work extensively in the telecom industry, which is transforming quickly like many other industries. What are the forces at play in telecom specifically?

Telecommunications is in a tough spot because 5G is right around the corner, which will be the first time that mobile is fast and stable enough to replace a phone connection. There are a lot of areas where legacy companies have been sitting around sucking up revenue that is suddenly going to dry up. The major players like Verizon and AT&T will be fine, but it’s going to be very disruptive for the smaller players.

What sorts of challenges do companies inside and outside of telecom face as they adapt to new technologies and the rapid evolution of the economy?

Let me take you back in time to 1993, the last year that Sears ever published its legendary catalog. At the time, it seemed like a logical business decision. In hindsight, we can see it as the beginning of a long descent that left the storied retailer in ruins. So what happened? Well, it didn’t help that Amazon, today’s online equivalent of the Sear’s catalog, was founded in 1994. But that doesn’t explain why Sears couldn’t just shift the immense resources it already had into an ecommerce environment or how Amazon beat them at their own game. I blame executives for enabling a culture of complacency. It’s what kills companies. Sears wasn’t willing to experiment, and as a result, it never adapted to the era of ecommerce. And look where it is now. If leadership isn’t pushing the company to adapt and experiment, it’s going nowhere.

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How can companies undergo a meaningful transformation without stepping too far outside their comfort zone or disrupting their operations beyond repair?

Priority one is executive involvement. Executives need to assign a team to lead the transformation and empower that team to do something significant, which only comes with enthusiastic executive approval. They also need the foresight to think about what markets or consumer demand will look like five years from now and get ahead of those trends. That’s why Uber invests in self-driving technology, or Amazon invests in drone delivery. It’s because they want to lead changes in their industry instead of following behind. I think most companies excel when they adopt this mentality.

What role does the accounting and finance department play in terms of encouraging or enabling an enterprise transformation?

Today, the CFO has almost as much power as the CEO when it comes to driving the vision of the company, so the accounting department is at the forefront of transformation, which is good and bad. At Target, Marriott, Yahoo, and Equifax, for example, data breaches resulting from technological failures translated into huge losses on the balance sheet. So the accounting department is a driver of change and also potentially a victim of those same changes. That’s why I see a lot of companies hiring a Chief Information Security Officer and having that person report directly to the CFO.

We know that companies are becoming more data-driven across the board. From your perspective, how can companies ensure that the ocean of data at their disposal actually returns value?

I think most companies realized this around 2016, but 2020 is the year when they’ll really get serious about leveraging, optimizing, or monetizing data.  I’m working on a project right now for a convenience store chain in which we’re taking data the company already had, running it through some machine learning models, and using those insights to explore new revenue streams. It’s an exciting project for my team and my client, and these kinds of opportunities exist for basically all companies today thanks to data. It’s really a matter of being willing to adapt and experiment.

What sorts of technological or organizational changes are the most important right now?

Whenever I watch old movies, I’m struck by the number of people doing jobs we now consider unnecessary. That’s applicable for companies undergoing any kind of transformation, because they’re really trying to keep up with smaller, faster startups that optimize their human capital. Therefore, I advise companies to identify what they want to accomplish on the most basic level, then re-engineer that on a small scale with as few steps and few people as possible, and let it run side-by-side with the old process. Without fail, the automated process produces better results, and the people whose work it replaces go on to do more important and meaningful tasks. So I would encourage everyone to experiment with automation.

This interview was edited and condensed.

To learn more about digital transformation and its effect on financial reporting and organizational growth, check out our guide:

A Guide to Driving a High-Performance Organization

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