Digital Transformation & Modernization

Understanding Digital Transformation & Modernization

We are in the middle of a digital revolution where rapid technology and computing innovations continuously shape how we live, work, learn and shop. This revolution started with digitization, when organizations focused on converting assets and information into digital formats. Now, the race is on to modernize and transform to harness of the wealth of information being generated for sustained growth and competitive advantage.

Digital transformation is about reinventing and fundamentally rethinking an organization’s business or strategic model and operations to find new ways to improve efficiencies, create new lines of business and customer support model in innovative, personalized ways. This enables innovation and growth that delivers true value in all areas of the organization. Digital transformation is achieved by adopting wholesale change across people and processes, as well as using advanced or AI-enabled technologies.

Digital modernization is focused on improving individual processes and specific systems enable efficient business operations and compelling user experiences. It involves assessing current skills and capabilities and then consolidating, updating, replacing or retiring processes and systems to better align with future plans. Technologies of a modern, digital enterprise include:

• Digital Platforms: like Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems to connect the entire enterprise, while enabling improved processes and experiences.
• Data Science and Advanced Analytics: to gain deeper insights into customer expectations and market trends, allowing organizations to accurately predict outcomes and make critical decisions.
• Robotic Process Automation, AI & Machine Learning: to automate processes and enable intelligent systems capable of self-learning, increasing enterprise efficiency and productivity, while enabling value-added services to improve employee and customer experiences.
• Cloud Computing: to seamlessly share information and swiftly respond to market needs.

The Importance of Digital Transformation & Modernization

Digital is unique to every organization so it’s important to define organizational goals and develop a clear vision of how technology can help achieve objectives. And whether the organization is modernizing an ERP system or transforming the entire organization, digital is critical to compete for many reasons:

• Accelerated Pace of Business: The speed of business is now fast-tracked and highly competitive. Digital organizations can create solutions faster and keep pace unlike companies still dealing with legacy technology and applications. A culture of speed is required to stay in business.
• Customers Have Changed: Customers expect hyper-personalized experiences and the ability to ‘do business’ anytime, anywhere. Their needs will continue to rapidly evolve and providing digital-first, data-driven experiences will help your enterprise offer valued experiences that drive engagement and customer loyalty.
• Disruption is Here to Stay: The constantly evolving marketplace—which experiences seismic shifts from new technologies to global crises—means your organization must be agile and able to use technology to successfully change strategies and determine new directions quickly.
• Hypergrowth is Expected: Digital leaders, such as Netflix and Amazon, are able to innovate products and services faster because they’re using digital technologies to gain deep insights into customer behavior and then offer personalized products and services; legacy companies need modernize and adopt digital technologies quickly to keep compete and innovate.

The Digital Transformation Case for Change is Clear

Every company must become a digital innovator to succeed in a highly disruptive and competitive future. This case for change was confirmed in recent research, where seven in 10 organizations (69%) indicated they would have been more resilient today if they had invested more in digital technologies prior to the COVID crisis. And only about 10% of those organizations surveyed were considered leaders—able to identify new opportunities for growth and drive revenue with digital and able to realize the full benefits of digital transformation:

• Reduced costs and increased operational efficiency
• Improved enterprise efficiency and productivity with data analytics
• The ability to adapt quickly to customer and employee changing needs and improve the experience
• Improved decisions-making capabilities to quickly pivot to market needs
• The ability to introduce new products quickly and at scale and ensure enterprise value and growth

The Steps for Digital Transformation

• Strategy drives transformation, not technology: Determine what digital transformation means for your business and your enterprise culture and leverage technology to effect change
• Simplify and modernize technology: Technology plays a key role in your digital transformation; strive to simplify, optimize and modernize your IT, with application modernization, cloud-native capabilities, DevOps culture and by using a data-driven approach
• Technology change necessitates organization change: Beyond deploying new technologies to create efficiencies and accelerating the business, recognize and accept the inevitability of change, deploy change management solutions and champion new ways of working
• Drive continuous transformation: Recognize transformation as a state of being rather than an end state and integrate it into the DNA of your organization, to create a culture of innovation, including a DevOps culture, and think transformation every step of the way