Digital transformation is nothing but a comprehensive change in attitude that enables businesses to remain relevant and competitive by keeping up with the fast-changing industry landscape, while also helping to retain existing customers and attract new ones. While the adoption of new technology, of course, forms part of this, it also involves a significant cultural shift which will have an impact on everyone in the workplace.
The technology sector is witnessing an era of digital transformation driven by digitization and process optimization. To be competitive, most IT/ITES companies need to have business agility to respond to the changing market dynamics and most of these companies are investing in technologies that can drive the differentiation.
Led by the Chief Information Officer (CIOs), digital transformation is enabling businesses to create new revenue sources, transform their business models, and remain agile. It is rightly described in the book titled Digital Transformation - What you should have done yesterday, which states that digital transformation is about business transformation and a journey for the entire company.
Digital Transformation journey in the IT sector
Companies should first establish the digital infrastructure that is required to test the pilot projects. These projects are mainly in the area of building intelligent ERP (enterprise resource planning) or using cognitive technologies to gather predictive business insights or setting up an IoT infrastructure.
The three main areas of digital transformation:-
At an organizational level, not all IT/ITES enterprises are early adopters of digital transformation. It needs a top-down approach. A CEO needs to be committed to investing in digital transformation projects to drive competitive advantage by attracting and retaining the right talent.
Embracing Change
The key to the success of a digital transformation program hinges on its strategy. As companies adopt modernized technologies such as IoT, Big data, cloud, and mobility, securing the data and managing risks become pertinent. Companies that are on a digital transformation journey must make cyber-security a top priority. It is essential to maintain confidentiality, integrity, and availability of data in all these contexts-on premises, in the cloud, and in hybrid environments.
Following are the few aspects that can help companies embrace digital change internally:
Re-looking the relevance of the existing vendor relationships and identifying and developing new strategic relationships with digital startups and giants. Enterprises need to build a 'Think Digital' culture, where every employee is passionately curious about the digital future and every leader is profoundly uncomfortable with the status-quo. Companies with a futuristic vision should take a comprehensive view of their transformational strengths and weaknesses vis-a-vis technology adoption. They need an end-to-end transformation mechanism to streamline operations, develop new businesses that serve new customer demands, and eliminate those operations that don't align with their organizational goals. Transformation on such a scale is a long process, involving several challenges. But, at the same time, it will also open up unprecedented opportunities.