Systems and Technology
Digital transformation
National Standard through our award-winning Microsoft Partner and Oracle Gold Partner, Capesso, and our artificial intelligence and data analytics team at Claxon Actuaries, has the capabilities to apply Systems and Technology in assisting institutions in their digital transformation journey. Digital transformation is the cultural, organisational, and operational change of an institution by integrating digital technologies, processes, and competencies across all levels and functions in a staged and strategic way.
We leverage systems and technology to create value and new services for institutions through innovation, thus allowing institutions to acquire the capabilities to become future-ready, agile, and resilient in an increasingly digital economy.
Digital transformation is the gradual transformation of business and organisational activities, processes, competencies, and models to fully leverage the changes and opportunities of a mix of digital technologies and their accelerating impact across society and on our lives in a strategic and prioritised way, with present and future shifts in mind.
The development of new competencies revolves around being more agile, people-oriented, innovative, digital-savvy, customer-centric, streamlined, efficient, and able to leverage opportunities to change the status quo. Data competencies are vital since Digital Transformation leverages big data and unstructured data sources to generate service-driven revenues and, ultimately, transform business models.
Present and future shifts and changes, leading to the necessity of faster deployments of a digital transformation strategy, can be induced by several causes, such as customer behaviour and expectations, new economic realities, societal shifts, black swan events, industry disruption and emerging or existing digital technologies. This important under the 4th industrial revolution and the new realities imposed by Covid-19.
End-to-end customer experience optimization, operational flexibility, and innovation are key drivers and goals of digital transformation, along with developing new revenue sources and information-powered ecosystems of value, leading to business model transformations and new forms of digital processes.
A digital transformation journey needs a digital transformation strategy, a staged approach with a clear roadmap involving various stakeholders, beyond silos and internal/external limitations. This roadmap considers that end goals will continue to move as digital transformation de facto is an ongoing journey, a marathon instead of a sprint, as is change and digital innovation.
A holistic approach
Digital technologies, and the ways we use them in our personal lives, work, and society. have changed the face of business and will continue to do so. This has always been the case, but the pace at which it is happening is accelerating. Moreover, it is faster than the pace of transformation in organisations. Unexpected events like Covid 19 can accelerate it in several domains, requiring a fast change in strategy.
Digital transformation covers a large number of processes, interactions, transactions, technological evolutions, changes, internal and external factors, industries, stakeholders and much more. It is, therefore, not just about disruption or technology, but takes a more holistic approach that considers value, people, optimisation and the capability to rapidly adapt through intelligent use of technologies and information.
Focus on the edges that cause disruption
Customer expectations, customer experience, purpose and end goals, partners, stakeholders, the last mile of processes, and disruption often sit and occur at the edges, yet are key factors that induce digital transformation. The end goals of the business, customers, and stakeholders, therefore, do drive the agenda, with the central role of the organisation being to connect the dots and overcome internal silos in all areas in order to reach these different goals. In other words, although the focus shifts towards the edges, the central capabilities are realised through digital transformation to work faster and better for and at the edges.
The main causes of disruption leading to the need for digital transformation include:
⦁ Technological innovations (technology-induced), which are more impactful than ever. It is not necessarily the technology that drives the disruption or transformation, but how it is used and adopted by customers, partners, competitors and various stakeholders.
⦁ Customer behaviour and demands that are not necessarily related to technology, but where technology enables or causes disruption when adopted and turned into business realities.
⦁ Innovation and invention induced where entirely novel approaches to human and business challenges, as well as innovations and inventions that create a new reality, whether it’s in science, business, technology or even a non-technological context of true innovation, can be disruptive.
⦁ Ecosystem-induced where organizations being part of broader ecosystems, business ecosystems and the social and natural ecosystems are affected by economical changes, demands from partners who want you to adapt, evolutions towards collaborations in transformational business ecosystems, regulatory changes, geo-political changes, societal shifts, unexpected events such as natural disasters or a pandemic all can impact and drive the need for digital transformation.
Digital transformation areas
Digital transformation in a holistic sense touch upon the transformation of the following areas:
⦁ Business activities/functions: marketing, operations, human resources, administration, customer service, and others.
⦁ Business processes: one or more connected operations, activities and sets to achieve a specific business goal, whereby business process management, business process optimization and business process automation come into the picture, with new technologies such as robotic process automation. Business process optimisation is essential in digital transformation strategies.
⦁ Business models: how businesses function, from the go-to-market approach and value proposition to the ways it seeks to make money and effectively transforms its core business, tapping into novel revenue sources and approaches, sometimes even dropping the traditional core business after a while.
⦁ Business ecosystems: the networks of partners and stakeholders, as well as contextual factors affecting the business such as regulatory or economic priorities and evolutions. New ecosystems are built between companies with various background upon the fabric of digital transformation, information, whereby data and actionable intelligence become innovation assets.
⦁ Business asset management: whereby the focus lies on traditional assets but, increasingly, on less ‘tangible’ assets such as information and customers, with enhancing customer experience being a leading goal of many digital transformation “projects” and information is the lifeblood of business, technological evolutions and of any human relationship. Both customers and information need to be treated as real assets in all perspectives.
⦁ Organisational culture, whereby there must be a clear customer-centric, agile and hyper-aware goal which is achieved by acquiring core competencies across the board in areas such as digital maturity, leadership, knowledge worker silos and other factors that enables a business to be more future-proof. Culture also overlaps with processes, business activities, collaboration and the IT-side of digital transformation.
⦁ Ecosystem and partnership models, with among others a rise of cooperative, collaborative, co-creating and, entirely new business ecosystem approaches, leading to new business models and revenue sources, ecosystems will be key in achieving digital transformation success.
⦁ Customer, worker and partner approaches. Digital transformation puts people and strategy before technology. The changing behaviour, expectations and needs of any stakeholder are crucial. This is expressed in many change subprojects whereby customer-centricity, user experience, worker empowerment, new workplace models, changing channel partner dynamics and many other factors all come in the picture.
Holistic digital transformation strategy
Digital transformation affects all activities, divisions, functions and processes of an organisation in addition to affecting industrywide ecosystems. The strategy, therefore, requires a holistic approach
CapGemini Consulting was one of the first to come up with the concept of digital transformation and a digital transformation framework. The company did so in collaboration with the ‘MIT Center for Digital Business’ during a three-year study which defined an effective digital transformation program as one that looks at the what and the how.
Digital transformation framework by Capgemini Consulting and the MIT centre for digital business
The McKinsey also showed areas where digital transformation can play:
⦁ The (digital) customer experience, which is the de facto key element with many digital transformations being a mix of customer experience optimisation, process improvement and cost savings).
⦁ Product and service innovation where, for instance, co-creation models can be used.
⦁ Distribution, marketing and sales, along with customer service, that is often one of the earliest areas undergoing digital transformations.
⦁ Digital fulfilment, risk optimization, enhanced corporate control, among others.
Our capabilities
Our capabilities in digital transformation are built around understanding that digital transformation succeeds when we put people and processes above technology, even if technology is a change agent. We use technology as an enabler to assist businesses to evolve, innovate, and adapt.
We understand that digital transformation is about using digital technologies to improve, connect and often radically change processes, enhance customer experiences, focus on the area where business and customer value meet and seeing new and better possibilities, while using different and digital-intensive ways to realise them. Digital transformation even goes beyond the use of digital technologies to support or improve processes and existing methods. It is a way to alter and build new business models, using digital technologies. In that sense, it also goes beyond digitisation, and certainly beyond a digital-savvy skillset and capacity which is nothing less than a must in the age of an increasingly channel-agnostic and digital customer.
We understand that digital transformation is about responding to the changes that digital technologies have caused, and will continue to cause, in our daily lives, individual businesses and organisations, industries and various segments of society. These changes are not necessarily brought upon us by the technologies themselves, but by how we adapt and use technology. The human dimension is not simply an important focus of digital transformation, it is a catalyst whereby the ways we use and see digital technologies can have unexpected consequences, regardless of whether it concerns customer behaviour or the innovative capacity of disruptive companies. In the end, it affects people, and the impact should be managed by people as shown by International Data Corporation (IDC) – what we call the human touch.
The material on this webpage has been sourced from the I-Scoop website with some edits to reflect our own understanding and views on digital transformation. For more details, please visit: https://www.i-scoop.eu/digital-transformation/