Reflecting on over 40 years in and around technology Sally Waterston considers the edges of everything in business, technology and systems and how managing those boundaries and intersections can help to make our customers happy and secure, and keep them with us. Presented on 24 November 2016 at the Business & Technology Leaders' Network, London.

1. Sally Waterston
24 November 2016
Living on the Edge
Public use

2. Agenda
• Context
• Security blanket
• The dragons
• The little excursions
• Ignore the FD
• Bespoke toast
• Me and we
• The big stuff
• Taming the monsters

3. The Road Not Taken
Mars Rover Curiosity
‘

4. The Comfort Zone- old slippers

5. Why is it frightening?
Here be dragons...….

6. Crossing the line in a small way
• That elusive extra mile (aka meeting your
customers more than half way)
• ‘Nothing to do with me mate’
• The gaps between us and them

7. How do we mitigate the risk and manage
the fear?
• Someone has usually done it before.

8. How is this relevant to work and business?
• Selecting and implementing new systems and technology
• Understanding new challenges (the cloud; the IoT)
• Supply chains
• Customers
• Future work

9. System selection and implementation?
• Don’t prioritise the processes in the middle
• Forget the CFO and the FD
• Ignore the VAT return and the ledgers

10. Reconciliation to outside sources
The bank account
Suppliers
Customers
Controls

11. Buttering the bespoke crusts
A failure in the making…

12. The sharp, knife edge…
Where Systems (bespoke or off the shelf) fail…

13. ….that’s just the small stuff…
Change in mind set…
81% of businesses surveyed ‘Believe that in the future,
industry boundaries will dramatically blur as platforms
reshape industries into interconnected ecosystems.’
Accenture Technology Vision 2015 Survey

14. A digital interconnected ecosystem
• Blurring the boundaries
• We need to look at the digital strategy
beyond the obvious
• Need to be embedded in our customers’
and suppliers’ organisations
• How scary is that?
• But bigger than that…

15. The Me and the ‘We Economy’ (Accenture Vision
2015)

16. Intelligence at the edges
• Smart objects and machines extend intelligence
beyond the edges
• From applications to apps and APIs
• Hardware in the edges between the digital and
physical

17. Security
• The ubiquity of information within organisations means
that security must be much more sophisticated
• The other side of trust is security
• Endpoint security is no longer enough – after all your data
is leaping over the wall - being taken home and so on….
• The burden of data protection is moving from the vendors
to the individual
• Secure the data rather than the device ~ rights
management and encryption

18. The key to surviving the sharp edges

19. Turn the dragons into hamsters
The digital signature versus the handshake.

20. John Donne ‘Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions’ 1624
No man is an island,
Entire of itself,
Every man is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main……….
………And therefore never send to know for
whom the bell tolls;
It tolls for thee.

21. 0345 094 094 5
Keep in touch
Sally.Waterston@waterstons.com
www.waterstons.com/people/sally-waterston
@WaterstonsLtd
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