Digital Transformation

Digital transformation is the integration of digital technology into all areas of a business, fundamentally changing how you operate and deliver value to customers.

To best leverage emerging technologies and their rapid expansion into human activities, a business must reinvent itself by radically transforming all of its processes and models. So, digital transformation journey of a company involves usage of digital technologies to create new or modify existing business processes, culture, and customer experiences to meet changing business and market requirements.

It transcends traditional roles like sales, marketing, and customer service. Instead, digital transformation begins and ends with how you think about, and engage with, customers.

The long history of digital transformation begins with the first computers, which transformed handwritten notes into computerized information that could be processed, analyzed, and shared. With the advent of networking and the internet, these capabilities advanced and datasets grew extremely large. Big data required more robust digital data management and analysis processes, supported by data centers, data warehouses, and now, data lakes.

The development of the cloud was in part a response to increasingly vast amounts of data and the need for ever-expanding capabilities to manage, analyze, and process that data. IoT, AI, and machine learning have since offered even more sophisticated technology options for organizations seeking to transform their operations to create better outcomes. Virtual and augmented reality, along with video analytics-based technologies, are part of the mix of innovative capabilities contributing to widespread digital transformation.

Breakthrough technologies like AI and the Internet of Things (IoT) are reaching maturity and becoming more accessible and affordable. Digital leaders are leveraging these technologies to transform customer experience, improve productivity, and gain competitive advantage.

Every business will eventually need to reinvent themselves in the digital age. Some industries are under intense pressure to transform their business model now, while others are starting with incremental process innovations

It’s well known that digitization and data can transform the way businesses operate. But the process is not a simple matter of gathering more information and using the familiar data warehouse and customer analytics approach that starts by collecting data and builds insight from the past. Instead, becoming a digital business requires a major change to the cultural code of an enterprise and developing the skills to find new kinds of value in data. Discover the three things that are essential to the success of digital transformation:

• Creating, sharing, and rolling down measurable KPIs
• Choosing the right-sized project
• Giving IT teams the opportunity to innovate

Almost any business in any market can benefit from digital-driven operational improvements that create greater value for customers, employees, and partners. Some of the benefits that digital transformation can deliver include:

• Deeper analytics-based actionable insights
• Faster and more efficient processes
• Increased capacity
• Reduced costs
• Improved safety, quality, and productivity

The opportunity to blend business process change with next-generation automation can deliver greater value and meet changing expectations. Successful companies have transformed to focus on relationship selling over lead generation; on simplifying the purchase process instead of engaging in lengthy negotiations over terms and conditions; and on collaborative success by running technology on behalf of customers instead of licensing technology that customers take in-house to implement and integrate to drive their own success.

Expertise
You’ll need the right combination of skills and experience to manage both legacy IT and modern infrastructures. Remember to fill out roles that are lacking within your organization including enterprise architects, software engineers, and analysts. The right strategic partner can help fill in these gaps and drive your digital transformation initiatives

Success
You’ll want to see proof of their previous successes. Ask to see demos and case studies of similar systems, projects, or industries. You need to have confidence and trust in your partner so that you can make this long, and often expensive, journey together.

Capabilities
Make sure that your chosen partner specializes in your unique systems. They have to know best practices for how to work with and update your systems, while also performing digital transformation using modern methods. They need the right combination of services, solutions, and tools to get the job done.

Support
Communication is key. Many DX projects fail because of improper communication between internal and external teams. Good communication is at the heart of all successful process changes, and is essential to an enterprise transformation.

While every organization is different in terms of its transformational objectives, many share similar challenges. These include:

• The perceived complexity of migrating legacy systems
• Additional costs of adding new technology
• Uncertainty about which technology is the right technology
• Difficulty knowing how to engage the organization in change
• Worry about security issues

For many organizations, the overarching challenge is simply knowing where and how to get started.

Taking a well-thought-out, step-by-step approach to transformation and choosing the right solution partners can help you address each of these issues so you can design and implement the digital transformation approach that works best for your needs.