Digital Transformation: Benefits

As 2019 closes, and I reflect on my conversations this year with Functional/Technology leaders, the value of Digital Business couldn’t be clearer.

Digital Transformation is the drive to improve Top line and Bottom line by re-imagining current business and improving its performance, using software/digital technologies as enablers.

Across industries, such as Financial Services, Retail, Hi-Tech Manufacturing and Retail-CPG, digital technologies helped achieve 3 key business imperatives & Transformations:

1. Improving Customer Experience

Helping build a connected experience by providing contextual & continuous (personalized, omni channel) and capability-rich journeys (API’s to internal/external application, connecting front/Middle/back office, increasing digital/self-service over in-person/voice) to Customers (partners, employees).

Retail: Enabling customers to “Buy online Pickup in Store (BOPIS)” and “Buy Online Return in Store (BORIS); helping reduce shipment costs, increase in-store traffic and impulse buying

Digital Finance: A home buyer using mobile device to ‘Explore’, ‘Research’, and do a Quick Application for mortgage; using Web to ‘Complete’ application, uploading documents, visiting a Brick-Mortar office to ‘Close’: and using mobile/web to staying ‘Engaged’ post move-in to new home

2. Becoming Data Driven

Analyzing years of customer data (disparate systems) and making it available across applications/users to improve customer experience, increasing operations efficiencies and launch new revenue/growth opportunities. Applying AI/ML to personalize customer care, increasing productivity, targeted campaigns, reducing churn and others.

Online Brokerage: machine learning algorithms for data-driven goal planning, rebalancing, and diversification

Online Lender: approving loans online in sub-seconds, using data models for credit risks, fraud prevention

Hi-Tech Manufacturer: Improving supply chain efficiencies

Hotel Chain: a data repository that can service guest profile data to various application (mobile, web, front-desk, guest care/contact center) with a sub-second response

3. Running a Least cost, most available and scalable IT Infrastructure

With maturing of cloud offerings, Enterprises are using a mix of OnPrem, Cloud-based and SaaS Infrastructure. These has created a need of being able to opportunistically move workloads across infra by utilizing micro-services and containerization.

High Availability Application: Running it on a private PaaS solution to meet objective of reducing infra cost, responding to market/volume spikes, RTO <3 Hours, RPO<3 hours, RCO of 50%

Digital Transformation in 2020 and beyond

As we began our next decade, some of the current buzz-words/pitches will gain solid traction and become widely adopted. Digital transformation will continue and the push to improve Top Line and Bottom Line continues. And at end of 2020, I wish I have successful use-cases to share with digital technologies such as:

IoT: Sensors and applications to monitor goods through the supply chain, logistics, food safety, asset tracking, smart tags to thwart counterfeiting

VR/AR: Provide rich customer experience at each stage of their journey. A step towards experience economy

Chatbots & Virtual Assistants: Better response to human interactions and drive higher customer satisfaction