Optimism & Stakes Rise — and What It Means for Enterprise Leaders

Some of the major ExTech players announced earnings this week — and the results were uniformly positive. Actually, that's an understatement. They were almost shockingly strong.

While financial analysts largely expected these results, you should not underestimate what they represent — it is becoming plainly clear that digital has become the primary driver of value for the enterprise. As Microsoft's Satya Nadella said during this week's earning's call, "Coming out of the pandemic we are seeing actually a lot of constraints in the economy, and the only resources that can help drive productivity while keeping costs down is digital tech."

We heard similar statements from the CEO's of ServiceNow and Qualtrics, not to mention foundational players such as Intel. The message is clear, as times become more tumultuous and uncertain, investing in technology is the safe bet.

But that also means the stakes are getting higher. It's not enough to just have technology. You need to be deploying technology that materially changes the game in some way. Otherwise, you're doing nothing more than keeping up with your competitors. That kind of investment may mean some kind of efficiency breakthrough, but more likely it's going to come down to using that technology to transform the digital experience in some way. Xerox's launch of three cloud-native businesses is a great example of these types of investments.

So, while this week's earnings announcements represent a broad digital rising tide that will float all boats, I believe it's an even stronger indication that investing in the digital experience is the right place to be placing your bets.