You might be the leading force in your industry, but if you are not exploring, or better yet, implementing new ways of doing things – and simplifying the way you’re doing them – chances are you will find yourself blindsided by an agile competitor who is.

Those businesses that continuously take fresh looks at how they deliver to customers, engage employees and network with suppliers are likely to thrive rather than just survive in the era of digital disruption.

Technology is playing a critical role in enabling the disruption we see in Australia and across the globe. A raft of new capabilities, such as anytime access to data and services through the cloud, or real-time business process and intelligent data analytics via in-memory database platforms, is enabling organisations to approach traditional business challenges in new ways. In many instances they are creating new business models altogether.

We only have to look at the impact of the rapid rise of video and music streaming services, or crowd funding and peer-to-peer lending, on their industries and consumer buying habits. It’s proof that you either disrupt, or be disrupted.

A particular Australian institution leading the way in harnessing the power of technology to disrupt is La Trobe University in Melbourne. Student services provided at the university have long been underpinned by technology, yet the numerous disparate systems led to complexity that hampered its ability to adapt to new opportunities.

La Trobe knew it could do more to simplify its landscape to focus its efforts on delivering a better user experience -and it targeted a perhaps unlikely area to do so. The finance applications were replaced with SAP Simple Finance.

This fundamentally changed the way La Trobe approached finance, with reporting taking days instead of weeks. What that speed means is an additional day per week delivered back to key users across the business – a day they can spend in any way, including enhancing the student experience, working with researchers and changing La Trobe’s value proposition in the education sector.

As technology increasingly impacts the world around us, the potential for businesses to disrupt their industry, or even other industries, is huge. Technology that quickly and simply supports an organisation as it innovates new business models is likely to play a key role in helping Australian businesses to come out on the right side of disruption.

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