128  Blockchain

Process gaps

The majority of incumbent businesses are facing challenges from upcoming

start-ups. In order to compete with them, they need to go through a massive

transformation throughout the whole ecosystem of the business.

The majority of the issues faced by incumbent businesses can be classified

under the following categories:

• Legacy manual processes that are complex

• Legacy IT infrastructure supporting the business

• Lack of funding for innovation to exist in parallel to running legacy

processes and business models

• Lack of innovative culture

• High reliance on low-cost unskilled resources rather than employing

high-cost skilled resources

• Lack of transformation to digitalise the business applications

• Lack of transformation to change the culture to be innovative, trans-

parent and agile

• Lack of funding to support employees to go through training and

practical experiences on upcoming technologies

Prospective transformational steps for the incumbent businesses to be

competitive can be classified as follows:

• Establish a capability uplift programme to improve the knowledge

and skills of all employees.

• Support training programme for all employees across all levels.

• Establish innovation funding to start building new products in paral-

lel to running the existing legacy ones.

• Establish partnership with start-ups and use their technologies or

acquire them if it fits the business model.

• Simplicity is the king. Establish a transformation stream to simplify

the business and IT processes throughout the organisation.

• Establish HR policies to make sure employees have work–life balance.

Business knowledge gap

In my career of 25 years in consulting, software houses and banks, I have

noticed a huge gap between IT and business knowledge and skills. This gap

is shrinking in technology companies and start-ups like Google, Instagram

and Challenger Banks; however, it is a huge gap and a problem in large

companies. In large companies, employees working within a department

have no or lack knowledge about the company’s vision and mission. This

creates a huge gap and can impact the overall strategy of the company to

meet its vision and mission.