Digital Transformation Becomes Top Agenda For CEOs

S Mohini Ratna, Editor, VARINDIA

Digitisation is creating tremendous opportunities for economies across the globe and as the technology is growing in leaps and bounds, technology companies are rapidly expanding their portfolios through R&D or acquisition to provide new services to their clients. 

Technology is enhancing traditional business models and is creating new ones at an unprecedented rate by defining consumer experience.Digital paradigms are now defining the pathways to see the growth for every sector.

We are standing at the cusp of another major technological revolution - which some are calling the fourth industrial Revolution - moving from mobile computing towards intelligent and immersive computing. The advancements and innovations made are already shaping our lives in this modern era. Machines are outperforming humans in various areas with high-level precision.

Digital priorities are changing the way organizations think about and manage IT. Companies aren’t just looking for specific technology skills (e.g. mobile, cloud, social, big data); they are also looking for new approaches to planning, development and deployment. At the same time, Cyber threats have rapidly become a top concern for most of the CEOs.

Various initiatives like Digital India, Smart Cities are forward-looking policy environment. The National Digital Communications Policy 2018 (NDCP) has started laying down structural guidelines to fulfil the dream of USD1 trillion digital economy. It is really a positive movement towards growth.

Digital transformation is a priority for businesses. Customers and employees are more demanding, ecosystems are evolving, and the established rules of business economics and decision making are shifting. These changes are opening up new opportunities through transforming costs, improving customer experiences, making operational efficiencies and creating whole new business models.

Business leaders implementing a digital transformation strategy are facing new technology challenges and choices. Migrating to new platforms such as cloud, supporting global connectivity including mobile platforms, and securely managing and making sense of the ever-increasing amount of data, all need focus.

I see digital transformation as empowering people – customers, businesses and employees – to do amazing things. We call this the Digital Possible.

As much as technology has grown with cloud computing, IoT devices and new software applications, organizations have in turn created a larger attack surface that opens the door for more potential cyber-attacks. This is a real challenge for IT and technology leaders within a business.

The biggest concern is with the sharp rise of the use of social media. Facebook, the largest social media platform in the world has 2.4 billion users. Other social media platforms including Youtube and Whatsapp also have more than one billion users each. With this they are collecting various types of database, user experiences and many other things which most are unknown on the fact.

Social media has changed the world. The rapid and vast adoption of these technologies is changing like how we find partners, access information from the news, and organize to demand political change. These numbers are huge – there are 7.7 billion people in the world, with 3.5 billion of us online. This means social media platforms are used by one-in-three people in the world, and more than two-thirds of all internet users.

It is time to regulate all the e-commerce and social media sites and to address the growing concern over security and privacy. Government of India insists that all multi-national companies with customers (and consumers) in India, need to keep a copy of consumer data on local servers within India. Now onwards all the social media companies, payments and wallet services, credit card companies, e-commerce sites, and other online services that operate overseas but have Indian customers will need local data centres; this will bring a tremendous opportunity for the vendors/OEMs. Moreover, the Reserve Bank of India has mandated that all payment firms should store their data in India.

A report says that 31 per cent of businesses are yet to develop a roadmap for digital strategy. It brings an opportunity of USD 48.69 billion (INR 3, 408 billion) and has the potential to be unlocked by India Inc.

Secondly, most of the organisations acknowledge the fact that IT can play an important role to deliver value and competitive edge to the organisation. Many organisations consider such slowdown situation as best opportunity to sharpen their strategy using IT. However, the focus is more on direct tangible outcome projects rather than intangible.

At the recently held 18th edition of the Star Nite Awards focused on the theme-“Partner Transformation”, many believe on the gig economy that is based around core on-demand services. One of the most important parts of the puzzle is being able to manage logistics by moving offline services online. The system in place is used to manage vendors and provides everything with an interface layer that connects the client and the business.

Essentially, you can ensure that everything is streamlined and moves more rapidly than before, guaranteeing that customers get what they want faster than before.

I personally take it as an opportunity.