What is the digital transformation of an organization?

Digital Transformation involves the transformation of a business’ existing processes with the use of digital technologies to make them more efficient. The core idea lies in using technologies not just to digitalize the existing services but to completely transform them into something notably better.

Digital transformation doesn’t merely rely on a single technology, but it uses the blend of IoT, big data, AI, ML, and the cloud computing to transform a business. And also, they aren’t just the new digital technologies, which are adopted, but bringing changes in business processes and corporate culture are equally important to achieve the goal of the digital transformation.

Digital Transformation is often adopted by large organizations to compete with their rivals, which have already digitized themselves. Digital Transformation projects are often large in scope.

SOME FACTS & FIGURES

• IDC reported that global spending on hardware, software, and services required for the implementation of digital transformation technologies hit $1.3 trillion in 2017. On its findings, IDE expects the spending is to double by 2021.
• In a Gartner’s survey conducted over 460 execs, 63 percent confirmed that their organizations initiated the transformation program to digitize business process. 54 percent in the same survey said that their business-objectives are transformational while 46 said that their objectives need optimization.
• Commissioned by Accenture Interactive, a Forrester consulting research study said that the key drivers of digital transformation are profitability, customer satisfaction, and enhanced speed-to-market.

Three Reasons Why Digital Transformation Is the Demand of Time

1. Acceleration of Change – Digital changes are happening at an exemplary high pace. Of course, not all leaderships across industries find it easy to maintain with this pace. This is where they required an acceleration of new digital tech solutions introduced to the market.
2. Digital Competition – Companies are facing an ever increasing digital competition. New start-ups are “born-digital” and, they are creating huge disruptions to those businesses which have not yet fully adopted digitization.
3. Customer Expectations – Customers expect best experience across all the ways to reach an organization. There is the need of ensuring that interactions are seamless and exceptional to every given case.

Why does digital transformation matter?

Digital Transformation helps organizations and executives to change the typical economic order, and its effects are visible everywhere. Organizations without proper digitization are as prone to risks as small retailers because of Amazon’s influence and publishing because of Facebook’s impact. In fact, almost three-quarter of top business executives know that their organizations are going to be disrupted because of the lack of digitization; still, they are not taking it risks seriously.

A Dell EMC’s research found that only half of the enterprises were serious for the born-digital start-ups and, nearly 1 out of every 10 believed that these startups could pose them in a challenging situation just because of their digitization. Actually, seven percent of executives have said that they are not bothered with the digital disruption threat whatsoever.

Why there is need of digital transformation?

Technologies like AI, IoT, big data, and cloud are already being used by entrepreneurs to build a new business model and affect typically running organizations by the disruptions. These technologies have now all-grown to provide tangible value to organizations, which are struggling with lowering productivity and increasing costs.

Regardless of what you term it; from digital transformation to digitization to digital disruption, it is certainly something which has become an escalator taking startups quickly where there non-digitized, traditionally running organizations have reached in decades.

It’s been observed in researches that organizations, regardless what sector they work in, are still stuck in the legacy mode.  They are those enterprises, which are focused more on their policy and process than adopting trends, information, and insight.

Companies like Nokia and BlackBerry are two latest examples of failure. They continued with doing what they thought was right. Both companies didn’t adopt innovations at the time they were ruling the mobile market and, soon there leads were taken over by Apple and Google.

Gartner says that 67 percent of business leaders believe that their organizations must adopt digitalization to stay competitive and relevant in the market.

What should be focused while digitizing a business?

• Rethink of current business model, process, and operations
• Avoid enhancing or mapping out traditional methods to mimic them as new technologies. They will fail.
• Digitization must improve customer experience, increase productivity and streamline several process and operations should be data-driven. New offerings should be based on insights obtained from data trends.

Few examples

• McDermott International is creating a computer model of the oil and gas platforms facilities provided to clients. The firm expects growth 15 per cent. The model will be applied to predictive maintenance.
• Rolls Royce’s R² Data Labs is based on ML, AI and Big Data analytics. The company uses it to create new services. The system has helped the company deliver more than £250m in value through engine-health monitoring activities in the past 12 months.
• UPS is bringing in analytics and insight at the core of its business operations. The logistics firm will rely on the real time data, advanced analytics, AI to help its employees make better decisions.