FEATURED ARTICLE | September 26, 2018

“It is neither the strongest nor the most intelligent of the species that survives.It is the one that is the most adaptable to change”

The most consistent failure in the world of technology is the failure to recognize it will move on – and to equip yourself to be nimble, to leverage its transformative abilities.

The first eight months of 2018 have shown us just how fast the world of technology moves. There is relentless innovation in the domain of User Impact via User Experience and Engagement – and Digital Transformation is the clear, unambiguous means to achieve this change.

Business runs no differently from life itself: adaptability enables survival and success. Enterprises that don’t incorporate technological advancements – even those businesses that are already highly successful – will eventually be left out of the race as technology continues to change the face of business forever.

In the coming year we’re going to see huge leaps and changes – and at the heart of it will be the need to transform businesses to deal with the digital surge. Trends in improving digital presence have been a top driver for IT investment in the past few years and most organizations are focused on reducing operational costs, improving customer experience and aligning digitization with their business strategy.

Many businesses, however, stop the transformation at window dressing. It is a misconception that beautified User Experience is Digital Transformation. In reality, the realm stands on a foundation built on five crucial underlying pillars: ‘Data’ to make decisions on, ‘Cloud’ as a hosting platform, ‘User Experience’ to give a feel of customer journey, ‘Automation’ for seamless and quick release to market (and Bots wherever applicable) and last but not the least, ‘Smart Connect’, that account for mobile and IoT-based solutions to enhance user base. Think of these as the plinth on which to construct a digital organization that can survive the turbulence of an agile and stormy world.

Customer Experience (CX) is the key

Blending technology with personalization has always resulted in great customer experience.

Industries are focusing on this today and will continue to do so. Retailers, for instance, are utilizing mobile apps, websites, and chat bots to provide personalization experience not only for active buyers but also for passive ones. By adapting innovative technology to their domain, healthcare players are solving the problem of disconnected experiences and driving substantial benefits. Healthcare payers who personalize the member experience have seen substantially higher retention rates.

Automation is the way forward

Adding cognitive capabilities to robotic process automation (RPA) is one of the most exciting and growing trends in the industry. Organizations are focusing on creating BOTs for process automation to unleash their staff to focus on innovation and areas of their job that adds more value rather than mundane operational work. This is the need of the hour to keep pace with business agility and competitors – not to mention, crucial to building a workforce that is stimulated by the work they do, rather than be deadened by mechanical tasks. Most businesses find that when they introduce automation into the workplace, people are happier without the constraints of operational tasks, the entire business becomes more productive, and people focus on adding more value to their company.

Connected Smart World is the reality

First our phones connected to the internet, now everything does.

The world is moving towards ‘Smart Organization’, ‘Smart Cities’, ‘Connected Vehicles’, ‘Smart Security’ and so on.

Smart devices/sensors are available for everything from day-to-day living to manufacturing. Augmented Reality makes it easier for consumers to make buying decisions. Hospitals are able to monitor patients remotely, gathering vital stats with connected devices enabling them to remotely advice medication. Getting everything around us to be Smart and then using the data collected from these sensors gives organizations critical inputs to analyze and learn how to improve products, tweak offerings, and provide the enhanced customer experience that enables them to stay ahead of the competition.

Data is the source of truth

Let’s shift focus from Sensor-based Data to actual Data, the “truth” that is being collected in the world of technology. Å recent Forbes article says, ‘there are 2.5 quintillion bytes of data created each day at our current pace, but that pace is only accelerating with the growth of the Internet of Things (IoT)’. Enterprises, too, are not just collecting data, but constantly seeking to refine their use of it; most crucially, identifying the golden data sets on which various analytics / Artificial Intelligence can be applied for self-learning and self-healing. ‘Smart’ is possibly not good enough anymore, you have to be ‘intelligent’ now.

Speed to Market Platform

A strong blend of seamless process deployment and infrastructure are key for speed to market. DevOps is a culture and set of practices that bring various enterprise teams together to successfully develop, test and release a software. It allows enterprises to create and improve products faster and with significantly greater precision than with traditional methods. Advantage for enterprises are faster solution distribution, enriched innovation and teams focused on performance.

Each of these is a huge deal when seeking a competitive advantage in modern business environments.

Next comes the more stable digital environment: with increasing data and transformation initiatives on the rise in most organizations, robust, reliable and scalable infrastructure are imperatives. Fortunately, giants like Microsoft, AWS, Google, IBM, and Oracle have made it easier for all to afford these solutions through creative deployment of pay-as-you-use models. Enterprises have also seen over a period of time how Cloud infrastructure has offered substantial savings over traditional on-premises solutions.

The trends and industry will keep moving on – in the end, the real genius is in how a business learns to deploy the incredible tools available to win the digital transformation battle. The victory? Living out the moment, and becoming a business built to last. It’s no longer just the survival of the fittest – but the Smartest…or should we say the ‘Intelligent’ now!

Article Authored by: Nidhi Khanna, Vice President – Delivery, Ciber India