Defining Digital Practices Reimagining the Future

S Mohini Ratna
Editor
VARINDIA
 

Everyone wants to go digital but there is no real consensus of what that meant. It made me wonder, how can an organisation become digital if they can't agree on what digital means? The global business environment is being disrupted by the collision of an unprecedented wave of innovation.

Digital medium means using technology to support the business to proactively engage through online or digital including mobile, web etc., with their customers as and where people socialise and like to be engaged. This is headlined by social media and is supported by analytics and artificial intelligence. The incredible speed of change in technology is affecting every organization, and there are many challenges for IT leaders to overcome, from updating legacy systems to determining the right technology for the business objectives. Digital transformation requires organizations to redefine their culture so that people and teams work smarter and faster.

I think the most important thing is to make sure people understand why new technology is being introduced. Now a new C-suite discussion is under way - how to make the digital transformation happen before it is too late. Time is running out and how the business works to create a new operating model that runs on digital technologies and capabilities. Other essential transformation tasks include building a digital culture and developing capabilities that allow for deeper integration with both internal and external systems.

It is true that, digital transformation turns every business into a digital business. Most of the organisations face a common digital imperative by harnessing the power of digital technologies to become more effective, innovative and disruptive. The challenge is on how to help the businesses cope with the digital transition going on that is being heavily driven by mobile technologies, social technologies and the cloud as well as big data analytics. To grapple with this fact, businesses need a new framework of understanding and action.

Secondly, Big data, cloud computing, social business, and mobility are causing digital disruption across many industries. Social media and mobile technologies have shifted the balance of power and influenced the consumer. Many business leaders simply see digital as siloed components affecting only certain parts of the organization. This is a critical error.

Digital does not impact some parts of your business: it ripples and through it and will change almost everything about your business. Social media in nutshell, refers to social platforms (FB, Twitter, Snapchat etc), virtual communities, dark net (Private VC) etc. A million new social media users are ‘born’ every day. As of 2018, there are 3.196 billion people using social media on the planet, which is up by 13 percent from 2017 to 2018. Social media advertising revenue is forecasted to be at $51.3 billion USD for 2018. That’s $17.24 per user.

False news stories were 70 percent more likely to be retweeted than true stories were. A survey says, 60 million “bots” post automatic updates on Facebook and up to 48 million are on Twitter. The spreaders of fake news are using increasingly sophisticated methods like unbroken re-tweet chains, they found. 

Lastly, it is time to understand on why most of digital transformations fail. But I think a good step towards improving your odds of success is to have a common understanding of what digital means for your organisation.