This is a short presentation on how the IT seen by various FMCG companies can would face risk in the future. We have done this presentation keeping a company that was given in the course-case. Reality might be in a different dimension though.

1. Anathema
Abhinaba Das
Debranjan Bhowal
Ram Mohan MP
Ratnavel Subramanian
S.R.SriRam
We have considered the present time advancements though the case was published in 2004

2. AGENDA
 Connecting rate of improvement and reach today
 Looking into the near future developments
 Predicting far-fetched developments
 Assessing the risk in the mentioned developments of IT
 The IT improvement that would blow the company out of the
water
 What we suggest

3. Connecting rate of improvement
and reach today
 $5 million for the fastest supercomputer in 1975 to a $400
today, that too on a mobile handheld device
 230+ million knowledge workers as of 2012
 The rate of accidents increasing as we near the development of
Google’s autonomous cars
 The use of RFID technology increasing at a fast pace
 The speed and the reach of the network increasing exponentially
(4G LTE..)

4. Looking into the near future
developments
 4G LTE in mobile devices – Can be used in conjunction with
other advancements for efficient supply chain management
(Majorly company’s reach to consumer)
 RFID tags – Can be used to trace various aspects like average
stocking time etc for better production and supply chain
management
 Cloud based software-as-a-service – Would eventually replace
proprietary ERP systems to SaaS to reduce the cost and to
convert their fixed costs into variable
 Social Media – Can be effectively used for below the line
marketing approach to enable direct contact with customers

5. Predicting far-fetched
developments
 Automation of knowledge work
 Development of AI technology and its possible replacement of
knowledge work
 110M – 140M full-time knowledge work might be replaced by AI
 Self driven automobile
 Self driven trucks would reduce the delivery anomalies
 It would avert labor crisis
 As they can be driven continuously for longer duration, the
number of warehouses required can be reduced
 They would help in reduction of cost in transportation
 The more closer Google is towards organizing the world’s
information, the more closer the company would get to the
consumers’ minds
Source: McKinsey report on Disruptive Technologies, May,2013

6. Risk assessment in the mentioned
developments of IT
 Low- risk
 4G LTE – This would change the network in the entire world and hence
helping the company enjoy this change in various ways without investing
anything
 Cloud based – This is already being started and it would grow into various
fields and at different levels of customization. The company will have to
choose wisely from the available vendors, the apt package that would suit
their requirement keeping mind that it wouldn’t change their internal
structure at the same time it would be future-proof to possible extent
 Social Media – This involves a sensitive team of people marketing their
product and addressing the mass very carefully. Though the risk involved in
investments is low, the risk of misinterpretation and bad image is very high.
 Google’s advancements would play a very important role in the company’s
future prospects and the risk involved is nothing

7. Risk assessment in the mentioned
developments of IT
 High- risk
 RFID tags – many companies like Walmart , P&G etc have already
invested a huge amount in RFID and have not received sufficient
returns out of it
 Self-driven trucks – This is a far-fetched prediction in technology as a
whole and will definitely impact the company on a huge. The
investment incurred would be very high and so would the risk of failure.
 Automation of knowledge work – This investment would definitely be
of high risk as it is replacing the entire work of a human brain in the
field
 All these high risk investments should be made in accordance to the
company’s ‘quick-follower’ policy for safer returns

8. The IT improvement that would
blow the company out of the water
Any IT improvement used effectively by competitors before us
would give them an advantage. Hence, it highly depends on
how quick we’d follow the competitor
But in some cases, it could be hard to follow. Therefore, these
should be predicted carefully
Also, since we are an CPG company, investing highly on new unproven technology is not justifiable

9. What we suggest
 Looking into the industry and the scope of IT in our
company, we suggest investment in the following which
otherwise could be a risk for our company:
 Social Media – Creating an active page on major social
media web-sites
 Cloud-based – SaaS is the way to go for reduced company
cost and in one way stay up to date with growing
improvements in the technology

10. Thank You