Plotting a Digital Transformation Strategy in the New Normal

The pandemic has accelerated digital transformation for organizations across the globe. Retailers had to either move to e-commerce sites overnight or put a halt to their business. The hospitality sector from restaurants to take-out vendors transformed by regenerating their entire supply chains from scratch. While coffee shops in cities had to shut down, manufacturers of coffee machines and home gym equipment saw an uptake in their sales.

According to a financial services industry report by Finextra, 72% of the respondents who have become more innovative in their business during the year 2020-21, have witnessed massive growth. A banking COO of digital technology has quoted, “We have never seen such transformation, such a drive for innovation, as we have witnessed in the last four or five months .” Thus, the demand to accelerate transformation is immense. With the second wave affecting the country, the traditional strategy of approaching business is changing at a fast pace. No matter the size of the company, the strategic mission is to achieve digital transformation objectives.

Picking The Right Place to Start

Business frameworks form the backbone of an organization, supporting operational successes and the revenue-generating model of the organization. These systems are irreplaceable and critical. The power of technology must be utilized by IT leaders to set the path to digital transformation. A Micro Focus study shows that 92% of the core business applications are strategic. CIOS should deploy and adapt to technologies that pave the way to a better future. These changes are however not a check box. It involves deliberate planning to what aids in maximizing returns, minimizing risks, and bringing significant value and merit to the business.

The Right Road

Digital transformation is not a single path journey. It involves multiple stages with different objectives, directions, requirements, challenges, and resources. Subsequentially with an increase in the number of variables including factors, technologies, and approaches, the risk of failures increases too. Thus, risk mitigation to focus on optimal approaches, processes, and technology is of high importance.

A Micro Focus survey found out that 70% of the IT leaders were looking at modernizing their businesses based on the original framework in the year 2020 for newer returns. However, there have been many instances of failure on such projects. Every organization will have a different modernization journey which combined over time achieves greater results. Such objectives are strategic, without affecting business continuity, and are programmed to address the transformational challenges of applications.

Travelling Companions

A digital transformation strategy, regardless of the journey, consist of three basic elements which are never far from the center stage:

People:

People make the organization. These people ought to support the changes that the digital transformation journey brings. To extend this, organizations need to engage with trusted partners who come with experience of working with a cross-section of customers and partners. These partners with their decades of expertise can deploy solutions that will enable the business to run, adapt and transform to the digital transformation initiatives with minimum drama.

Process:

Digital transformation is competitive. It requires agile operations and the best DevOps practices to enable test automation, CI/CD, refactoring of valuable services, API enablement, and using IDEs to accelerate app delivery. These are important components of an efficient transformation structure.

Technology:

A trusted system is an essential element of change. It embraces the technology required to link the present and future needs. Further, toolchains that allow collaboration, connection, and creation of new services, and support rapid testing and deployment on any platform – cloud or containers, mainframe or mobile, need to be integrated into the framework. This also signifies working with the GPS to reveal the secrets of the core business systems and deliver the correct modernization route planning in real-time.

Enabling Cyber Resilience

The security landscape is constantly evolving from hackers to disasters to changing business models. Thus, a flexible, adaptable, and resilient strategy is crucial to ensuring business continuity. A complete digital transformation strategy involves stepping ahead and strengthening cyber resiliency by integrating cybersecurity across the enterprise lifecycle. Cyber resiliency protects the business, detects possible threats and changing risk surfaces, and also adapts to the capability to address the breaches. It plays a critical role in safeguarding the systems, applications, and data while driving digital transformation.

Planning The Digital Transformation Journey

Digital transformation has become crucial to businesses operating in the new normal. On one hand, fundamental changes to the business are certain and smart changes are necessary; on the other hand, changes brought in by digital transformation are risky, and modernizing IT operations is complex.

However, a strategic transformation spearheaded by digital transformation is plausible with the help of a trusted vendor guide on the path of modernization. The pandemic has provided great momentum for change with appropriate discipline. And it all depends on the path and partner approached by the business to elevate the future of the organization.