Faster, more efficient at less cost; organisations all have to get there, otherwise the competitors in their industries – and sometimes even ones from a completely different industry – will get there first and take the profits. How can digital business transformation drive this necessary shift? How can the technologies underpinning it such as cloud, big data, analytics, mobile and social help? Some industries already have striking examples of transformation. General Electric Aviation no longer sells jet engine units to their customers, but rather hours of thrust. Thanks to massive amounts of analytic data generated from its fleet, GE has targeted ambitious goals such as one percent fuel savings across the board, a raw saving of nearly half a billion litres of fuel.

We’re not GE, but how should South African businesses be approaching this fundamental change to doing business?