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What is Digital Transformation?
Digital transformation can be envisaged as the widespread use of digital technologies to drive large-scale changes in the organization by automating and optimizing the business process. The goal of this transformation is to enable data-driven decisions across business functions to create new business models, products and services, which can, in turn, sustain a competitive edge and enhance customer experiences. Digital transformation can bring in that paradigm shift that companies look for in how they operate, drive demand in the market, and how they interact with prospects, customers, partners, and employees. The transformation approach is indeed comprehensive. It requires implementing digital tools and platforms and also developing new skills and capabilities across the business functions of the organization. To achieve digital transformation goals, investments in technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Cloud Computing, & Internet of Things (IoT) must be made to drive data analysis, predictive modeling and targeted customer experiences.
Agile development methodologies and DevOps practices must be adopted for faster software service delivery and to maximize team collaboration. Though technology plays a role in digital transformation, there must be a cultural shift that will nurture continuous learning & development, employee empowerment and innovation. Moreover, the business emergencies created by the pandemic have forced businesses to accelerate technology digital transformation to establish an agile, resilient and sustainable business that can quickly respond to market conditions.
Why Digital Transformation important?
Digital transformation is a strategic business imperative. It is a necessity in every business strategy of any organization as it helps them to stay competitive and helps them to meet the changing demands, either of the customer or market, quickly. The business landscape is driven by change and disruptions using digital technologies, and companies that have embraced them are seeing more agility, productivity and sustained business continuity. These technologies, such as cloud computing, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Big Data, Analytics, IoT, Digital Twins, Blockchain, are increasingly becoming more critical for a business to remain competitive and differentiate itself in the market.
Introducing these technologies and their integration into business processes can generate large volumes of data. This data can be collated and analyzed to derive insights and make informed decisions for finding new growth opportunities. One of the crucial enablement areas of digital transformation is building new business models to drive growth and unique customer experiences. Through the use of data and digital technologies, new products and services can be developed to address customer needs in innovative ways and to create new markets and revenue streams. Automation and AI-ML can be used to optimize supply chains and operations to reduce costs, freeing up key resource bandwidth and making them focus on new growth initiatives. Data available through digital technologies can be monetized to find new revenue sources and explore new partnerships and services. One of the most common digital business models is the subscription-based business model. Netflix has adopted this model to disrupt the movie rental business through a nominal monthly fee and build a huge customer base of over 200 million subscribers. This extremely predictable model allows them to experiment with multiple pricing tiers and packages, which are customized to different customer segments, increasing customer satisfaction and retention. This business model is one such example that has helped drive profitability and growth in the digital age. Other digital business models include Ad support free model used by Facebook, Freemium model used by Spotify, Ecommerce model by Amazon, Marketplace model used by Upwork/Uber, Sharing model used by Airbnb,etc. The subscription model stresses the need to adopt innovative digital platforms and products. The digital era has changed customer preferences as they expect more digital solutions to fulfill their needs. Through the adoption of digital platforms and products, companies can meet these expectations. These platforms and products can automate manual tasks, resulting in cost savings and improved productivity. They also produce quality data which will help get insights into customer behaviours, market trends, or product performance. New revenue streams such as digital advertising can be enabled, and these platforms are scalable, which helps companies to adapt to any conditions. More importantly, it helps maximize market outreach, such as social media platforms, to access new customer segments and geographies.
Top 5 Digital Transformation Technologies to focus on in 2023
Technology is the key driver of digital transformation and the potent force enabling businesses to digitize their operations, processes, and business models. Some of them can play a crucial role this year in changing the digital landscape.
Digital Twins: Digital Twins are virtual replicas of a real-world physical object or a system. These objects or systems can simulate, analyze or optimize product design and performance, optimize supply chain optimization and minimize downtime.
Edge Computing: Edge computing involves using large-scale computing resources close to the data source. This can reduce data latency and improve performance, enabling faster decision-making, better customer experiences, and reduced network bandwidth.
Autonomous Vehicles: These vehicles can work without any manual intervention. These are self-driving cars or vehicles finding applications in transportation, logistics, and delivery.
Extended Reality (XR): XR is a synergy of Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality, and Mixed Reality to create more immersive experiences in more exciting ways and blur the difference between physical and digital worlds.
5G Networks: This next-gen wireless technology will enable businesses to develop faster applications and services requiring high-speed, low-latency connectivity.
Cloud Computing: Though not a trend, more businesses can adopt the cloud due to its ability to reduce costs, improve agility and enable business models. There is a demand for hybrid and multi-cloud environments to optimize IT infrastructure and drive digital transformation.
Automation using AI: There will be more AI leverage to automate routine tasks, gain insights, and create more targeted customer experiences.
Internet of Things (IoT): The use of IoT in manufacturing with the help of devices connected to sensors can enable the collection and exchange of data. Processes can be monitored and controlled in real-time, asset utilization can be improved, and new revenue streams can be created.
Robotic Process Automation (RPA): RPA is in vogue, but the use of software robots can see a rise due to its practical use in automating repetitive tasks such as data entry and invoice processing.
Blockchain: There can be an increase in the use of Blockchain technologies due to its ability to streamline supply chains, enable secure transactions, and reduce costs.
How Ness Digital Engineering can help you adapt?
Ness digital engineering, a digital transformation company, is one of the top digital transformation companies helping businesses worldwide in their digital transformation effort through a range of digital offerings in Cloud, Data & Analytics, Experience Design, Intelligent Engineering, and Salesforce. The company also offers specialized industry offerings in Financial Services, Manufacturing and Transportation, Media, Entertainment & Education, and Technology & ISVs. The company also has a proven methodology to help businesses assess their readiness to adopt digital transformation technologies, find areas where they can create value, and develop a roadmap to help them implement these effectively. The first step is the Discovery phase, where we analyze the company’s challenges and assess its readiness for digital transformation. The current infrastructure and processes are evaluated for their strengths and weaknesses. The existing systems, processes, and data, along with the skills and capabilities of the workforce, are assessed. The next phase is the Design phase, where we find the areas of value creation, such as designing the infrastructure architecture and workflows. We will work closely with you to tailor a strategy that aligns with your objectives. In the Engineer phase, we build the digital products and platforms which meet your strategic business goals and objectives. And finally, in the Sustain phase, we will offer you continued business support for the legacy product or platform till you migrate to the new digital platform. The roadmap we develop will involve a comprehensive plan outlining the steps to meet your transformation goals. It includes the timeline, cost, and performance indicators to ensure the project meets your expectations.
Be it transforming customer engagement, developing intelligent IoT-driven products, virtualizing people processes, redefining supply chain boundaries, in creating new digital ecosystems, our goal is to create and integrate software products and digital platforms, offer digital advisory through scaled engineering services to enable our customers to stay ahead of the competition. Ness is a full digital transformation specialist, which makes us the best digital engineering firm you can rely on to transform your business. We also offer digital transformation as a service to most of our clients. Ness has played its role worldwide, developing contactless payments for transits in Europe, video streaming solutions for major hotel chains, SaaS platforms for banking, entertainment, and education, or digital transformation for theme parks. We have also developed AI-driven imaging solutions for improving the productivity of dosimetrists in cancer treatment. Ness digital transformation services can fundamentally transform the relationship between you, your customer, and your supply chain.
We have excellent examples where our expertise in technology transformations is put to good business use. We have worked with a large turbine manufacturer to reduce the maintenance cost for these turbines and their downtime. By fitting the IoT devices to the turbine, which tracked and monitored minor issues such as cracks and relayed information back to the database. This helped in predictive maintenance, reducing downtime and enabling customers to deliver value-added services which they monetized over time. The company sells its predictive maintenance data for more revenue, expanding its traditional physical product revenue for a turbine into an information service revenue. Similarly, Ness has transformed the video streaming platform of a traditional cable TV provider to help them compete in the OTT market. We have also designed contactless payment systems and transformed the in-store experience for retail firms.
Conclusion
Digital transformation is a continuous process. It needs an organization to keep pace with the trends and evaluate the technologies that will help them stay competitive. The digital technologies mentioned here can potentially transform businesses in meaningful ways. These technologies and the best digital transformation services companies must be considered while developing your digital transformation strategy for 2023 and beyond. The digital transformation services partner can help you use these technologies to achieve your business goals and objectives. They will also bring in the talent and resources to design, build and manage your digital infrastructure. In addition, the partner can help you establish a robust data governance model to ensure data security and privacy. As a result, you will experience agility and flexibility in dealing with market changes and experience a new level of competitiveness and sustainable growth.
