At COLLABORATE 17, I’ve heard similar thoughts from many customers and speakers about business transformation, powered by recent and planned technical and functional updates to JD Edwards and PeopleSoft software. The time is ripe.

For example, Liz Herbert, VP and principal analyst at Forrester Research, shared at the Executive Forum that digital disruption is an existential threat to most businesses. Digital disruption rewards agility and innovation while penalizing those who change too slowly. IT departments face similar existential challenges.

Lyle Ekdahl of JD Edwards shared in his COLLABORATE presentations that digital transformation is about much more than just adopting the latest technologies, including social, mobile, analytical, and cloud. Digital transformation is about applying the latest technologies to transform how companies work. Late adopters risk losing ground to agile competitors.

Paco Aubrejuan of PeopleSoft shared similar thoughts. The strategic challenges that customers face ultimately are about changing the business, applying the latest technologies to empower departments and lines of business to work with their internal and external ecosystem of customers, suppliers, and partners.

The Future is Bright

For both JD Edwards and PeopleSoft, customers can take advantage of new technologies and functional capabilities that address both tactical needs and strategic or transformational opportunities. In order to maximize the value of these innovations, they need to transform how often and how they roll out software updates.

In many cases, a good starting point is replacing legacy version customizations with current-version capabilities. In conversations I had with customers I repeatedly heard, “That’s in the product now? I didn’t know.”

Learn More, Do More

Stay tuned to Quest’s Weekly Download emails for articles and webinars that share more information on what is new in JD Edwards and PeopleSoft, how to deploy and maximize the value of these innovations, and what other customers have learned from their experiences.