GEARING UP FOR DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION
GEARING UP FOR DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION
Outlook of Digital Transformation in future
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“Each tiny effort builds on the next, so that brick by brick, magnificent things can be created.” – Robin Sharma
AI and Machine Learning will become business multipliers for data analytics, scale and comfort. Sometimes, high end terms like machine learning or artificial intelligence may seem overwhelming but we use it in our day to day lives. For example, nowadays we see our mobile phones have face lock. If the phone detects your face, then it gets unlocked. What is it you ask? That’s facial recognition technology which is trained by machine learning, my friend.
Also, have you met SIA? SBI’s chatbots SIA which was launched to help customers with daily banking tasks just like a teller behind a desk would. That's how SBI blended Artificial intelligence in its banking domain.
“The wings of transformation are born of patience and struggle.” – Janet S. Dickens
Another such use case is many times a resident thinks that the land that he owns is in his name. But, there is a possibility that in government records the same land is under their name somehow. This confusion can cost you a lot. Once you are on a block chain with a record of your land then it is impossible to erase that. Such enhanced use cases really help ease complications.
In the future, it is possible that we will encounter an Always Connected PC. This new thing has the ability to change the laptop and desktop market for real. It means the devices would come with inbuilt 5G and LTE connectivity, also battery would come with longer life. The amalgamation of Edge Computing (bringing data storage and tech closer) and 5G will race us to implementation of smart cities, drones etc. Technologies like AI will flash new use cases like human voice being isolated from noisy backgrounds and so much more in real time.
In What Broad Areas Can the Changes Be Made?
The digital revolution has altered the way organizations work. According to a McKinsey Digital Quotient survey from April 2019, 93 percent of executives believe that for strategic goals to be achieved, digital is the key factor. Albeit, organizations have been digitizing for decades now, the digital revolution still needs to be more evolved. Many times, the velocity of technological progress is often underestimated.
Key digital technologies, like machine learning, automation, artificial intelligence, intuitive analytics, the Internet of Things, and augmented and virtual reality, are evolving by each passing day. These technologies provide more path breaking use cases and areas to which they can be applied. It is not wrong to say that they will increasingly be implemented throughout the value chain.
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We will gain more insights into the tech world as we know more about real life examples. We will see a case study of Harley Davidson – an American motorcycle manufacturer used intuitive learning to soar its New York sales high in coming chapters.
With such technologies in the backdrop, organizations will need to go back to square one and rethink their business model and inject digital in their DNA so that they remain competitive and don’t miss out on the benefits of up and coming technological space.
However, not many companies are set up for taking advantage of the new opportunities offered by digitization and for commanding the challenges that are a part of these. Do you know, nine out of 10 CEOs believe their company is currently not ideally ready for such a change. Most of the companies keep their eye on tuning and offering their services to more digitally enhanced products or services. On the other hand, it is noticed that organizational implications that are equally necessary are often neglected.
“Transformation IS A process, AND AS life HAPPENS there ARe tons of ups AND downs. It’s A journey of discovery – there are moments on mountaintops and moments in deep valleys of despair.” – Rick Warren
Making your organizational set up ready for change, ready to embrace digitization derives substantial improvements in the performance of the organizations financially. As pointed out by McKinsey’s Digital Quotient Benchmark, corporations can increase their five-year revenue CAGR four times if they have a digital set up. They can also increase their total return to the shareholders by three times as compared to those who don’t undergo digital change.
There are mainly three areas where fundamental design changes can be made in order to catch the potential of digital opportunities.
Structure
They need to check if the organization has a dedicated management in the digital space for instance a chief digital officer so that he imparts his knowledge by forming a team and guiding them for the same.
We often see there are central bodies to manage the important agendas. A center of excellence should be in place to keep tabs on the formation of a digital environment. The organizations also need to decide on whether a central unit is sufficient or every business unit should have a dedicated digital unit.
A decision needs to be made whether the organization has to stay within the existing predefined structure and expand their digital aim or move toward an agile structure that is more value driven.
People
Employees are one of the major assets to any organization. Their mindset, way of working and imagination does a lot better to the organization than anticipated. They have to pick between two choices here. One is reskilling the existing employees internally and fostering scalability. Other is following external digital systems based on talent and partners. Perhaps they could also try the combination.
A horizontal approach would be making employees aware department wise and giving them opportunities to skill themselves. A vertical approach would be picking top performers and enhancing them with digital knowledge. The consequences should be known for each approach and decisions should be made accordingly.
They need to find the best possible way to leverage their organization ecosystem, maintaining relations with their partners and squeeze the connections and add up to their capabilities.
Process
Today things have modernized and there are two ways to look at the process. One is to stick with what is the way of working today, the other is to adjust our current ways, and have a vision for an upcoming culture.
To build a process is not easy. There needs to be a plan in mind of how the decisions can escalate the current situation. The process can be phased, going step by step or bombshell all at once. The choice of approach has to be made wisely that suits the nature of the organization.
Going digital, setting up an integrated interface and connecting and readjusting our business model along with it is not enough. We need to think whether the set up is meeting the expectations of digital change. For instance, whether it aligns properly? Is there any human interaction needed? Are all use cases tested? Is it giving real time results? How consistent are the results for different kinds of data? Does it have zero errors? Such issues need to be addressed.
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We all are familiar with e-commerce one stop shop Amazon which is a classic example of digital customer expectations making way to the B2B world.
In the following chapter, we will go through a classic case study of Amazon and how it uses Artificial Intelligence to understand its customers better.
We can look at an example of such e-commerce players who are already operating digitally and are constantly evolving and trying to be in line with the needful changes (that come up because of reasons like customer behavior or face of adversity like pandemic). A digital organization can achieve a breakthrough if they hit the right balance between structure, process and people by tying them together with the thread of transformation.
Let us consider the e-commerce company and understand in detail how it can be achieved –
Looking at the structural aspect at hand, the e-commerce company had replaced the central digital department with dedicated tech employees staffed to cross- functional teams namely – software engineers, operations management, UI-UX designers, and brand managers spanning through the entire organization. This new structural setup made sure that digital was embedded in every function.
On the people front, they made a significant investment in the new organizational setup because it certainly required a new skillset. In the process, it is possible that some existing roles became repetitive because of progress in digital and hence new roles were born.
Coming to the process, entire mapping for the process was done, every business model was noted and the impact of digital transformation over it was predicted along with the ranking in a way which process would get affected the most and which the least. Post which, it was embedded in an end to end system.
The employees were trained to not follow the traditional and hierarchical models rather be ready for change and adopt a new way from being less rigid to more agile. They were encouraged to be output focused and embrace the technologically driven ways.
The extent to which the digital change is required varies from company to company. To gain that understanding prior research needs to be done. Regardless, in the face of the digital revolution, it is significant for them to establish their place in the market.
“Life is a moving, breathing thing. We have to be willing to constantly evolve. Perfection is constant transformation.” – Nia Peeples
The Take On Security
Edge computing is a computing paradigm and aims at bringing the data storage and tech closer to save the bandwidth and improve the response time as well. In a world that is constantly coming closer edge computing can be leveraged for its role in centralization, and increasing security.
Things to Consider While Gearing Up For Digital Transformation
Don’t Invest in Tech Just for the Sake of It
Look at your business under a microscope. Check what kind of problems can be fixed. Look for the solutions that can be provided and ensure the digital technology in which your business will be investing, it is qualified to solve a genuine problem.
Find What it is That You Really Need
Looking for a buzzword – you’d find digital transformation. Sometimes the understanding of businesses is hazy. They might think they are marching towards digital transformation, but in reality they ended up making digital optimization.
Optimization in simple words is making operational feasibility. While on the other hand transformation is more about creation of a digital business model that is scalable. Also note, optimization is actually good. You need to understand if your business needs the former or latter. It shouldn’t be the case that you ended up doing a full-fledged transformation when your business needed only optimization at that point in time.
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| MR. PRAKASH ARYA |
Enthusiast, Strategist, Keen Planner and Strong Charisma, these are some of the motivations with which I associate myself. I describe my self as an eProfessional, who evangelizes digital media as Entrepreneur, Mentor, Management Consultant, Speaker and Writer and Domain Knowledge Expert. In my phenomenal more than two decades of long career, I have played varied roles and been an eSpecialist in the sphere of Digital and Online Communication as well as in eBusinesses in different organizations in India and abroad.
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