As digital transformation becomes a mainstay of modern business, new avenues and approaches to automation, digital expansion, and insight generation are coming to the fore. Companies can now go beyond simple automation to orchestrating entire business flows digitally. However, modern digital transformation is a highly complex endeavor. The interaction of systems, processes, devices, personnel and customers makes for a highly dynamic environment.
Orchestrating the scheduling and integration of automated tasks between complex distributed systems and services driven from on-premise or cloud infrastructure creates a challenge even for the most sophisticated development organization. Adding to the technical complexity is the wide range of domain expertise required to execute the transformation objectives successfully. High costs of delays, new business models, emerging technologies, and rising customer expectations further exacerbate the need for flawless and timely delivery of world-class customer experiences.
In contemplating the best approaches to tackle the complexity and mitigate the risks of digital transformation projects, a few themes resonate:
- Power of ecosystems
The rapid explosion of digital possibilities is lessening the differences between products and services. Offerings are now often conceived as modular pieces which can be combined into product-service bundles. Networks of independent suppliers together enhance the customer value proposition. Simultaneously, mobile interfaces, cloud infrastructure, and the internet have altered the way companies can serve customers. These factors have made it untenable for a single provider to offer comprehensive customer solutions. Small and medium enterprises need to choose how to play in the ecosystem along with other providers.Product development organizations need not have all the expertise but need to partner with the right ecosystem partners to deliver a complete customer experience. Choosing cloud providers, service providers, device components, etc. are choices product designers need to consider for a successful offering. With the power of the ecosystem, companies can rapidly launch offerings without expensive upfront investments in infrastructure or support. Focusing only on delivering the core value proposition and relying on the right ecosystem partners for other parts of the solution is the fastest risk mitigated approach to digital transformation.
- Build vs. Buy
Another aspect for considerable thought and action is the degree to which transformation-related applications need to be built from scratch. Using out-of-the-box components and pre-built modules for software and hardware can shorten development times but may not provide the flexibility desired by the developer or customer. In addition to time-to-market, the supportability of the application is another important factor. While customized offerings can deliver unique value propositions, they need dedicated and unique support to succeed in the marketplace. Commercial off-the-shelf offerings come with support and do not need the resource intensity of custom-built solutions. Another important factor in the build versus buy decisions is the strength and breadth of in-house expertise. - Scope and phasing
In tackling digital transformation projects, it is essential to take an iterative approach and define the scope in increasing orders of complexity. Starting with enabling connectivity and transitioning to complex cloud-based service models is prudent. Ensuring that devices and systems can be accessed remotely is the baseline to build a comprehensive digital transformation platform. Once connectivity is enabled, adding on mobile interfaces is easier.Automating core processes to eliminate manual efforts and increase personnel productivity are important first phases of digital transformation. Expanding automation projects beyond core processes and integration of internal and external workflows comes right after. Moving to compute from capacity-constrained infrastructure (ex: on-premise datacenters) to flexible cloud-based infrastructure can aid in scaling and enable more sophisticated analytics features. Tackling the entire transformation in one big project is just not feasible for many organizations. Having a realistic roadmap with milestones and proofs-of-concept along the way will help stakeholders better manage project risks and course-correct as needed.
- Management
As the complexity of the digital transformation increases, organizations can take advantage of new approaches to automate entire workflows and abstract the complexity into manageable chunks. Orchestrating all the digital elements of the enterprise is the highest evolution of digital transformation. Using modern tools, stakeholders can automate the arrangement, coordination, and management of complex computer systems, middleware, and services within the computing environment and direct automated processes to support larger workflows.
Carefully considering the above in planning digital transformation projects is key to success. Digital transformation should yield gains in customer value propositions and cost savings. Staying competitive while delivering a differentiated value to customers should be the single-minded obsession of stakeholders driving digital automation projects. Tradeoffs related to feature sets, infrastructure, and time-to-market can enable organizations to navigate complexity while meeting objectives.
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