Digital transformation explained
Digital transformation is the process of integrating digital technologies into the company operations aimed at improving business efficiency, flexibility, and innovation as well as satisfying the always-evolving customer expectations. Successful transformation requires a strategic approach, a cultural shift toward innovation across the entire organization, and a widespread willingness to embrace change.
Read this article to understand all basic digital transformation concepts, including the importance of data, the impact of artificial intelligence (AI), and other key elements needed to succeed when transforming your organization for the digital era.
Essential elements of successful digital transformation
Digital transformation is based on a data-centric operating model. For decades now, business processes and operating models have been supported by emerging technologies, which have evolved into a complex jumble of tools, applications, data silos, and legacy systems.
This makes integrating data from multiple sources difficult, hindering the ability to gain actionable insights that facilitate informed decision-making and drive business value. Effective data management is challenging for many organizations, resulting in operational inefficiencies, increased costs, and diminished customer experience levels.
To succeed in digital transformation, it is important to build a clear, integrated strategy that elaborates on operating model elements, such as customer proposition, business process, integration of technology, corporate culture, and performance management.
Digital transformation is a disruptive shift in the way business operates and a culture change driven by commitment, ambition, and entrepreneurship. In today’s global market landscape, it is paramount to consider how new digital capabilities can transform your core business model to improve efficiency, lower costs, and improve customer experience, leading to revenue growth.
How to leverage digital technologies?
Digital transformation requires leveraging digital technology to improve the performance of various business functions. However, all successful digital transformations begin with a clear mandate from management. Convincing your organization’s C-Suite to give digital investments a green light requires solid argumentation and a comprehensive transformation roadmap.
When building your strategic direction, try to highlight current industry standards when it comes to technology adoption, mention the risks of not modernizing, and finally, outline the new capabilities and benefits transformation will unlock for your business.
Formulating a digital transformation strategy
Business-led tech solutions and services provide companies with increased resilience, faster time-to-market, easy-to-maintain IT systems, high availability, agile development, scalability, real-time response, and advanced data analytics. With access to accurate and consistent data, support for new operating models, optimized operations, and improved user experience, a company that embraces change gains a competitive advantage in the digital age.
Drawing from my industry experience, I recommend considering the following points when working on your digital transformation strategy.
1. Embrace loosely coupled new technologies in software development
Digital strategies employed by business leaders and digital transformation consultants across industries suggest that using loosely coupled technologies, such as microservices and event-driven architecture, becomes a requirement in application development.
Event-sourced systems are, by design, asynchronous first. This means these systems strive for the minimum amount of synchronous interaction; consistency boundaries are consciously chosen to meet business requirements, and everything else is eventually consistent. As a result, such systems are highly responsive, flexible, easy to scale, and meet the highest demands on audibility and adaptability.
2. Use artificial intelligence to optimize digital transformation project
Artificial intelligence (AI) is an increasingly popular solution that makes highly complex processes that previously required a lot of human and technical capabilities easier to achieve with minimal human intervention. That offers tremendous opportunities for optimization and entirely new business models in all kinds of industries.
Modern AI offers ever-new opportunities for innovation, cost savings, and efficiency. Coupled with automation, AI-based tools can interpret large amounts of data and arrive at valuable insights faster and faster. Predictive AI models can be used by financial institutions to analyze risks in granting loans and by manufacturers to schedule maintenance of machines and decrease downtime. No wonder more and more businesses include artificial intelligence solutions in their digital transformation strategy.
3. Optimize cloud infrastructure with platform engineering
Platform engineering combines the cloud-native software development process with infrastructure, security, and quality assurance to improve time-to-market for digital products and optimize resource utilization at scale. The approach supports standardization and consistency, which bring invaluable benefits to businesses.
Platform engineering facilitates an agile governance mindset and simplifies the complexities of cloud computing, enabling developers to focus on core tasks. It accelerates onboarding, promotes seamless collaboration, ensures robust security and predictable deployments, reduces the number of errors, and streamlines the software delivery process as a whole. It also enables rapid issue resolution that minimizes downtime and maximizes business value.
How can a digital transformation consultant help?
With so many technologies supporting digital transformation initiatives, many organizations decide to leverage third-party capabilities and external digital transformation services. With the ultimate goal of enabling organizations to increase their problem-solving capabilities and make better decisions, digital transformation consulting firms offer an end-to-end approach that facilitates change management and provides a coherent digital vision.
Maxima Consulting has successfully supported clients in facing their technology-related challenges since 1993. With more than 30 years of experience, our digital transformation consulting services can be the support your business needs in transforming your organization for good.
To discover the benefits digital transformation can bring to your organization, contact us and schedule a meeting with our expert advisor.
