{"id":9883,"date":"2014-11-05T09:47:18","date_gmt":"2014-11-05T14:47:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/?p=9883"},"modified":"2014-11-05T09:47:18","modified_gmt":"2014-11-05T14:47:18","slug":"between-the-lines-ruminating-on-inflection-points","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/the-week-in-imaging-twii\/editors-blog\/2014\/11\/between-the-lines-ruminating-on-inflection-points\/","title":{"rendered":"Between the Lines: Ruminating on Inflection Points"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Print\"<\/a>I\u2019m still thinking about some of the presentations from the first day of The Executive Connection Summit in Scottsdale over a week ago. There\u2019s an article in this issue that offers more insights into what went on at the Summit, but the words of Kevin Gilroy, senior vice president, SAP Global Indirect Channels, set the tone for the event. \u201cIn the last 25 years I\u2019ve never seen a period of time when there is this much opportunity and this much danger. There is enormous opportunity for people to create enormous amounts of wealth and for careers to sky rocket, and tremendous risks for companies to fade out, scale down, and be sold at unfavorable multiples.\u201d<\/p>\n

The opportunities and danger are the result of what he described as an \u201cinflection point.\u201d That inflection point will affect businesses and the various channels within the IT industry. He pointed out that over the past 30 years there\u2019s been a number of inflection points. Typically when that happens, 40 percent of the suppliers, VARs, dealers, resellers, ISVs will go the wrong way\u2014down. Another 40 percent will make minor adjustments and survive.<\/p>\n

\u201cGrowth will flatten out, profits will hang on or be under pressure, but they\u2019ll survive, and they\u2019ll be at the conference two years from now, five years from now, hanging on,\u201d opined Gilroy.<\/p>\n

The remaining 20 percent will take advantage of these inflection points and thrive.<\/p>\n

In case you haven\u2019t noticed, we\u2019re at an inflection point today, one that Gilroy describes this as an epic point in time in our industry. \u201cAnd I say \u2018our industry\u2019 because it\u2019s colliding together, the traditional print industry with the IT industry,\u201d explained Gilroy. \u201cYou have the dynamics of the cloud crashing in with the dynamics of Big Data, mobility, social, and what wraps around all this are the millennials that are now either running small businesses, but at a minimum influencing small businesses.\u201d<\/p>\n

If one doesn\u2019t understand the dynamics of millennials combined with the dynamics of these technologies, then you\u2019re on the wrong side of the inflection point, Gilroy added.<\/p>\n

He further emphasized that this confluence of technology and social changes are driving next generation businesses. \u201cWhat we see in next generation businesses are people that adopt technology at an extremely fast rate. They don\u2019t always want everything on paper; they want it on their handheld device. They want it at their house, they don\u2019t watch television, they build brand socially, they work differently, they work at home, and they use these technologies and consume these technologies differently than we\u2019ve ever seen. That\u2019s not buzz words or tag lines, it\u2019s absolutely real. We\u2019re seeing this dynamic around the world. The question becomes, if you agree with my premise that we are at this inflection point, are your businesses on track to be the next-generation business or memory lane?\u201d<\/p>\n

A portion of Gilroy\u2019s presentation was devoted to SAP and FORZA and while that tied into his earlier comments, there was no doubt that his ruminations on inflection points resonated with the audience and ought to be particularly relevant to readers of The Week in Imaging<\/em> and ENX<\/em>.<\/p>\n

So, what are you going to do to leverage the current inflection points in your business and ensure you\u2019re among that 20 percent that thrives, or at worse, among the 40 percent that continues to hang on?<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know specifically what we\u2019re going to do here with The Week in Imaging <\/em>and ENX<\/em> just yet, but the wheels are turning fast and furiously.<\/p>\n

Thanks for reading.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m still thinking about some of the presentations from the first day of The Executive Connection Summit in Scottsdale over a week ago. There\u2019s an article in this issue that offers more insights into what went on at the Summit, but the words of Kevin Gilroy, senior vice president, SAP Global Indirect Channels, set the tone for the event. \u201cIn the last 25 years I\u2019ve never seen a period of time when there is this much opportunity and this much danger. There is enormous opportunity for people to create enormous amounts of wealth and for careers to sky rocket, and tremendous risks for companies to fade out, scale down, and be sold at unfavorable multiples.\u201d The opportunities and danger are the result of what he described as an \u201cinflection point.\u201d That inflection point will affect businesses and the various channels within the IT industry. He pointed out that over the past 30 years there\u2019s been a number of inflection points. Typically when that happens, 40 percent of the suppliers, VARs, dealers, resellers, ISVs will go the wrong way\u2014down. Another 40 percent will make minor adjustments and survive. \u201cGrowth will flatten out, profits will hang on or be under pressure, but they\u2019ll survive, and they\u2019ll be at the conference two years from now, five years from now, hanging on,\u201d opined Gilroy. The remaining 20 percent will take advantage of these inflection points and thrive. In case you haven\u2019t noticed, we\u2019re at an inflection point today, one that Gilroy describes this as an epic point in time in our industry. \u201cAnd I say \u2018our industry\u2019 because it\u2019s colliding together, the traditional print industry with the IT industry,\u201d explained Gilroy. \u201cYou have the dynamics of the cloud crashing in with the dynamics of Big Data, mobility, social, and what wraps around all this are the millennials that are now either running small businesses, but at a minimum influencing small businesses.\u201d If one doesn\u2019t understand the dynamics of millennials combined with the dynamics of these technologies, then you\u2019re on the wrong side of the inflection point, Gilroy added. He further emphasized that this confluence of technology and social changes are driving next generation businesses. \u201cWhat we see in next generation businesses are people that adopt technology at an extremely fast rate. They don\u2019t always want everything on paper; they want it on their handheld device. They want it at their house, they don\u2019t watch television, they build brand socially, they work differently, they work at home, and they use these technologies and consume these technologies differently than we\u2019ve ever seen. That\u2019s not buzz words or tag lines, it\u2019s absolutely real. We\u2019re seeing this dynamic around the world. The question becomes, if you agree with my premise that we are at this inflection point, are your businesses on track to be the next-generation business or memory lane?\u201d A portion of Gilroy\u2019s presentation was devoted to SAP and FORZA and while that tied into his earlier comments, there was no doubt that his ruminations on inflection points resonated with the audience and ought to be particularly relevant to readers of The Week in Imaging and ENX. So, what are you going to do to leverage the current inflection points in your business and ensure you\u2019re among that 20 percent that thrives, or at worse, among the 40 percent that continues to hang on? I don\u2019t know specifically what we\u2019re going to do here with The Week in Imaging and ENX just yet, but the wheels are turning fast and furiously. Thanks for reading.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":9884,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[80,1638],"tags":[185,1917,382,328],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9883"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9883"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9883\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9885,"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9883\/revisions\/9885"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9884"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9883"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9883"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9883"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}