Tag: digital transformation programs
Digital transformation has become indispensable, more so now than ever before. When COVID-19 struck, governments swung into action and issued orders that restricted in-person business operations and encouraged people to work from home. In response, businesses began to look for ways to continue their operations by turning to various technologies.
Even before the spread of the pandemic, these technologies empowered businesses to engage with their customers, allowing workplace flexibility while introducing automation and faster processes. But the pandemic accelerated these adoptions immensely. The digital transformation helped businesses to find ways for people to communicate, collaborate, and complete work while working remotely. At the same time, it catered to the request of customers who preferred contactless or contact-limited operations as well.
Exploring and understanding the latest digital transformation trends and what parts of these transformations will likely be here to last will help you plan the best digital transformation strategy.
Read more: Prepare for the future of Digital Innovation with these 10 services from Fingent!
What Is Trending In Digital Transformation Now (2022) And What’s Going Cold?
If there is one takeaway all businesses can learn from this pandemic, it is to be adaptable. As the landscape reinvents itself and workplace culture trends shift suddenly, systems, processes, internal dynamics must pivot to stay competitive. It is crucial to adopt digital trends with the staying power to benefit your business. This makes it important to know all about the trend that will stay long-term versus ones that will go cold in this post-COVID ecosystem. Let’s begin with what goes cold.
1. Fading: Blockchain implementation
Blockchain implementation is designed to maintain distributed ledgers. However, the cost associated with it is higher compared to other technologies that can be applied more affordably. The higher pricing has diminished the interest in blockchain implementation.
2. Fading: Office technologies
Much of everyday business operations hinge on office technologies. Work from home mandates has changed this outdated means of communication and collaboration. Mobile phones have replaced pagers and online documentation has replaced paper.
3. Fading: Complicated and inadequate technology stacks
Whether your team is remote, hybrid, or office-based, it is crucial to have the right tech stack. A 2021 Work Report finding shows that 32% of workers quit a job because of inadequate technology and there is the other 49% who are likely to quit if the tech stack is hard to use. Employees do not want to waste large amounts of time searching for information across various platforms. This can also result in security breaches too as it puts sensitive data at risk. Opting for streamlined technology over-complicated technology can lead to maximum efficacy.
4. Trending: 5G will go mainstream
Businesses need reliable connectivity and more bandwidth to achieve greater success at their core parts such as remote work and videoconferencing. Increased reliance on phones, tablets, and other IoT devices highlights the need for the multi-lane superhighway and so 5G deployments have become a vital part of the solution.
Read more: Future proof your business with 5G, Edge Computing, and Cloud!
5. Trending: Customer Data Platforms
There has been an explosion of Customer Data Platform (CDP) last year. It is highly difficult to organize fragmented data from multiple sources. Organizing such data is also a costly affair. To address this challenge, most companies now rely on CDPs to help them collect, organize, tag, and make it usable for all those who need access to it. Data will continue to grow exponentially in the coming years which makes the rise of customer data platforms inevitable.
6. Consolidation of software vendors
Worldwide merger and acquisition activity combined with developing technologies has resulted in a consolidation of software vendors. According to a report by Gartner, consolidation in the tech business is set to hit a record high in 2022.
7. Digital transformation tools
Remote and hybrid work is becoming the rule, not an exception. With this scenario, organizations need technologies that seamlessly enable collaboration. Digital transformation tools will help businesses to manage employees and stakeholders that are globally dispersed. And this trend will become increasingly prominent in 2022.
8. Increased focus on the power of AI and hyper-automation
The gigantic amounts of data that businesses gather are only as effective as their AI systems. So, the implementation of AI will remain crucial for efficient business function in 2022. There is no need to approach AI with fear as AI will repurpose human assets as opposed to taking jobs away.
The key purpose of Artificial Intelligence is to automate. Essentially, this means all mundane and repetitive tasks can be automated resulting in huge benefits for many employees. Besides, it allows the employer to use that talent for more purposeful tasks.
9. AI for enhanced customer experience
According to Gartner, businesses that use AI in their customer service channels will experience a 25% increase in operational efficiency. The insights on customer behavior are causing IT system redesigns.
10. Technology to support distributed enterprises
The workforce is now becoming more geographically dispersed. Frictionless work experienced necessitates major technical and service changes. Every organization must reconfigure to embrace distributed services. The right digital technology is imperative for business success.
11. Supply chain digitization
Increased consumer prices and the sluggish economy are exerting tremendous pressure on supply chains. Supply chain digitization is a crucial component that will aid in solving supply chain issues.
Read more: A Look Into The Future Of Manufacturing Industry – The challenges, the opportunities, and the technologies that will help revolutionize!
12. Fourth industrial revolution (Industry 4.0)
Industry 4.0 includes new integrated technology that aims to mitigate the inefficiencies of traditional manufacturing. The manufacturing industries are moving towards robotics, AI, and ML to increase efficiency and benefit their customers.
13. Renewed focus on Human Capital Management (HCM) software
The practice of HCM has become increasingly prevalent in 2021. It has become the driving force for most business practices and will continue to center stage in 2022.
Planning The Best Digital Transformation Strategy With Fingent
The acceleration of digital transformation may seem overwhelming. But the right technology can enable a seamless transition for your business. Fingent can help collaborate and streamline the process of selecting solutions that drive digital transformation. Fingent custom software development experts will assist you in evaluating the available options in the market and in making the best choice on the solutions you need. We can help in reducing the cost of your tech evaluations, increase process effectiveness and employee satisfaction. So, the only tool you need to digitally transformation of your business is Fingent! Connect with us today!
Digital transformation is leveraging the opportunities brought about by emerging digital technologies, to transform business activities and models, in a strategic and coherent way.
The world of digital has advanced leap and bounds. Organizations weighed down by several considerations, however, have not kept pace, forcing them to indulge in digital transformation programs from time-to-time, to catch up. At another level, enterprises, mainly upstarts, unleash new digital based business models, which become paradigms others seek to emulate or better. IBM’s use of Watson for new AI challenges, GE leveraging IoT, AirBnB transforming hospitality, Uber changing taxi transportation, and more, are all examples of companies having indulged in successful digital transformation. Several other companies strive to seek synergy with such path-breaking business models. Steve Young, VP of IT at the VIA Metro, for instance, aligns digital transformation with metro rider experience, positioning itself to leverage the changing consumer needs brought about by services such as Uber and emerging technologies such as self-driving cars.
However, such instances of successful and seamless digital transformation are rare. Most companies struggle to define their digital strategy and kick-start their digital transformation program. A recent SAP survey reveals while 97% of businesses are onto some form of digital initiatives or other, only 21% have actually gone on to implement a firm-wide strategy.
In companies where digital transformation has been successful, it is mostly the CIOs that herald the change. About 52% of companies reported that the CIOs and CTOs were responsible for creating the organization’s digital vision, but that they faced roadblocks.
The CIOs have their task cut on successfully heralding a digital transformation in enterprises.
Establish a Technical Backbone
The first step towards digital transformation is establishing the technical backbone. This translates to becoming cloud-ready, redesigning networks to update security, and acquiring remote monitoring capabilities in today’s wi-fi and IoT age. Paul Krueger, CIO of Stewart and Stevenson adopted such an approach to good effect.
Companies cannot reasonably expect to develop everything in-house or even have exclusive services for everything. Cost, time, and other considerations make it impossible, and in any case looking for developing everything in-house may be akin to reinventing the wheel. There is a need to leverage common platforms that offer shared services, as well, and also try and develop solutions out of existing services, as advocated by Ross Tucker, CIO of Texas United.
There is also a case of overhauling the ERP program, making it agiler and primed up for today’s highly competitive and fast-paced business environment that requires flexibility, speed, and nimbleness. Rusty Kennington and Walter Meyer of Commercial Metals Company leveraged agile management practices to deploy its e-commerce solution and succeeded in selling its rebar and other metals exemplarily well. The company expanded its agile practice when rolling out a global ERP program, to an equally successful effect.
A successful digital transformation makes it easy for customers to do business with the company. The very raison–d’-etre for any business being satisfying customer wants, businesses that do not keep the customer at the heart of their digital transformation initiatives are bound to falter. Rusty Kennington and Walter Meyer of Commercial Metals Company applied this precept to good effect, aiming their digital transformation initiative to make it easy for customers to do business with them, by including customers in defining what the digital transformation exercise looked like. The results paid off as Commercial Metal Corporation saw a spurt in market share.
Understand the Nature of the Transformation
Having set up the basic infrastructure, the next basic requirement in rolling out digital transformation initiatives is fixing the context in which digital transformation is to be applied in the enterprise. Digital-savvy CIOs understand how emerging technology can impact different aspects of the enterprise, both operational and customer-facing, and make a strong case for implementing the most relevant solutions.
John Varkey of Direct Energy makes a case for lowercase digital and the uppercase Digital. Lowercase digital is about technologies such as websites, mobile, and e-commerce while upper case Digital is about “accelerating business change” in aspects such as customer experience, new business models, and more. Each type of transformation initiatives requires a different approach. Lowercase digital, for instance, is transforming front-end customer facing digital assets, whereas uppercase digital runs deeper, seeking to change digital technologies that impact underlying behaviors and influences that often keep the business running.
In today’s highly competitive environment, businesses are always on the lookout to cut costs, boost revenues, and create efficiencies. To further such ends, innovation is inseparable from digital transformation. Without innovating solutions and innovative new business models, there is no case for digital transformation. Often, such innovation boils down to taking calculated risks.
Bruno Ménard of Sanofi says “ “If I look at the expectations of my board members, they are really around innovation. What does digital mean for my business, how can I create competitive strengths, how can I create resource from digital, how do I manage a digital transformation? How do I help my business teams to really shift or integrate digital in what they do?” A big part of the challenge, according to Ménard, is developing organizational structures to deliver such innovation on a consistent basis, or in other words, improve the maturity of IT governance vis-a-vis innovation.
7 out of 10 digital-ready CIOs consider themselves responsible for driving the adoption of disruptive technologies within their organizations, especially in mobile, analytics, and cloud. These CIOs are comfortable driving innovation throughout the business, rather than simply in IT itself, and research on developing new products and solutions.
Manage Change Effectively
Digital transformation is also a change and comes with all the complexities associated with change. There is a need to unfreeze existing culture and paradigms, implement the new culture and paradigms, and freeze it. Simultaneously, there is also the ever-pressing need to overcome resistance to change and iron out the teething troubles and glitches that invariably come to pass during the transformation. Transformative enterprises often take on a significant number of parallel initiatives, and the CIO becomes the hub that integrates everything together.
As a study by Forrester Research concludes, it requires somebody who is both adept in the technology and has clout across the enterprise to lead the change. The obvious candidate who fits the bill is the CIO.
As the in-house, IT team is saddled with pressing routine tasks, and anyway may not be too conversant with the in-thing, make sure you co-opt a technical partner for your digital transformation initiatives. The world of technology is fast changing, and a focused technical partner, abreast of the latest cutting-edge technology would help you roll out robust apps and other solutions essential for the digital transformation initiatives.