Steps to Ensure a Successful Digital Transformation

DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION

It is virtually impossible for enterprises to thrive in today’s highly competitive, globalized business environment without updating old legacy systems and outdated business management practices. Digital transformation refers to the gradual process of implementing advanced technological tools across the entirety of a business’ operations, in order to improve the value delivery to customers. Undergoing this metamorphosis isn’t as simple as updating hardware, software, data analysis and business intelligence tools. True digital transformation involves leveraging multiple cutting edge technologies for a smoother and seamless execution of processes to gain a competitive edge over business rivals.

IDENTIFY YOUR OBJECTIVES

The first in your digital transformation journey is the identification of key objectives. This involves understanding what you hope to achieve with this initiative, not just stating generalizations such as improving customer experience. A more detailed objective would be using digital transformation to attain a frictionless enterprise and deliver a more unified, omni-channel customer experience.

Another such objective would be the leveraging of digital data to facilitate better decision making in areas such as customer communications, employee performance, sales lead prioritization and ad spend. Digital transformation enables you to reduce the complexity of in-house processes, automate manual tasks and leverage analytical insights to make more informed business decisions.

CREATING A DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION STRATEGY

Once you’ve defined your goals for implementing a digital transformation initiative, it is time to craft out a detailed digital transformation strategy. This is where you identify key technologies that can help achieve your digital transformation objectives. 

For instance, you can detail each stage of your ideal user or customer experience and what you want customers to see, feel and imagine as they go through the buying journey. Once this is done, identify the emerging technologies that can help craft such an experience and how you can integrate them with other business processes.

IDENTIFY RELEVANT DIGITAL TECHNOLOGIES

Understanding the solutions that you need to update is key to the success of your digital transformation agenda. A thorough review of all hardware and software solutions must be carried out to identify those that need to be eliminated, updated or replaced. There are various technologies in the market that cater to a wide range of business. Identifying those that are ideal for your business require in-depth research and due diligence. Some of the more advanced technologies currently disrupting the global business environment include solutions leveraging AI and machine learning algorithms, deep-learning neural networks, business analytics and automation, IoT devices, mobile, cloud computing and state of the art cybersecurity tools. These technologies are indispensable and form the basis of your entire digital transformation journey. 

LET’S TAKE A MORE INCISIVE LOOK AT SOME OF THESE DIGITAL TECHNOLOGIES

1. ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE 

AI is no longer about predictions and automation. Today, it is being used in an increasing number of unique use cases. AI can be used to handle customer service systems and account management in virtually every industry. It can also be used internally to study employee engagement and productivity. IDC experts predict that by 2019, 40 percent of digital transformation initiatives worldwide will be supported by AI capabilities. 

2. MOBILE AND CLOUD SOLUTIONS 

Top app development firms have rebuilt their solutions for cloud and mobile. The mobility trend has overtaken virtually all industries, leading to more connected and increasingly mobile employees. Millennials are always on the go, and so should their workplaces. To be truly efficient, your employees need instant access to their workstations whenever and wherever. Hi! I am David, your virtual assistant How can I be of help today? Hey! I wanted to know.... 7 ©2019 | Property of Cogent Infotech 

3. INTERNET OF THINGS

By 2020, industry experts predict that there will be over 50 billion IoT devices in the world. IoT can help your organization improve security, productivity and efficiency while reducing operational costs. Aside from lowering energy consumption, integrating IoT devices within your product and service offerings will help promote a better user or customer experience. 

4. CYBERSECURITY

Static system firewalls, traditional AV solutions and conventional endpoint security systems no longer cut it. The number of cyberattacks is on the rise and all enterprises, no matter their size, are at risk of data and network breaches. You must implement the latest cybersecurity solutions as part of your digital transformation journey to ensure that your systems, client and employee data, as well as other sensitive data, are safe from hackers. These solutions also ensure that hackers do not execute DDoS or APT attacks that would sabotage your business operations and stop your systems from running.

5. ANALYTICS & INSIGHTS 

In today’s highly competitive business environment, using old legacy systems hinders management from quickly making the best decisions for your organization. For organizations that still use old batch reporting solutions for most of their information, it’s past time they did an upgrade. To ensure the success of your organization, your managers need real-time reporting and business intelligence solutions. Statistics show that cloud-based business intelligence grew from $0.75 billion in 2013 to $2.94 billion in 2018, a CAGR or 31 percent. Leveraging cloud-based intelligence solutions and making them part of your digital transformation journey will give you an edge over the competition and ensure that your business is future proof. With real-time social media analytics, you can take the unstructured data from social media networks and other platforms and use them to evaluate the success of your business’ digital channels. It provides you with information and insights into interaction rates, response times, post types, post engagement and other KPIs, which you can use to optimize your social media performance.

FIND THE RIGHT PARTNER

Large organizations would require an in-house team of digital professionals and a trusted third-party digital transformation partner to manage and ensure the success of their digital transformation agenda while maintaining the concurrent running of all business processes.

Each member of the team must possess business intelligence and technology expertise, and understand the organization’s goals, culture and values. In cases where businesses do not have the requisite resources to employ a dedicated team, it becomes even more necessary to identify and work with a trusted third-party digital transformation partner. On this point, due diligence is vital.

You should check the track record of the partner, find out what tools and solutions they offer and determine whether these tools are the right fit for your business needs. Since issues may arise at any stage of the digital transformation process, your partner must possess the requisite experience to handle any and all problems that may arise.

CONCLUSION

At Cogent Infotech, we deliver digital transformation projects by providing a range of technology implementation solutions including Mobile, Cloud Computing, IoT, Cybersecurity, Analytics and Insights. 

With proven expertise in formulating technically complex solutions, Cogent Infotech possesses the requisite experience and project management skills to ensure high-speed delivery of your digital transformation project. 

Our solutions engineering methodology can be customized for both enterprises and small businesses and our expertise and delivery methodology guarantees increased ROI for all our clients.

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