D V Seshu Kumar, Asst. Vice President - IT Head, Orient Cement Limited, a Group of CK Birla  

“Many technologies and solutions are built to make business automation like Mobility, Artificial Intelligence, Big Data, Social and Cloud etc. Organizations are more customer focused, agile and interactive. For any organization there will be several internal and external factors that contribute towards the need for investing in digital change. However, normally the theme is applying technology to create better operations and strategic business differentiation and improve performance.

Digital transformation is a major organizational change supported by technology; it is only possible through people. It is worrying that some of the organizations are either resistant to transformational change or having mixed views on the subject. It can be interpreted differently in different organizations because they have different levels of digital maturity, values and visions.

There are many challenges in digital transformation journey in the Manufacturing Industry, particularly with old equipments. It is difficult to deploy IoT or any other solutions alongside legacy equipment. Many Industries have still not exposed their SCADA systems to the external world. The reason is that legacy systems were designed during the time by keeping specified requirements in mind. As a result, the infrastructure is not suited to the modern IoT or big data approach of large volumes of data transmitted in near-real-time.”