Digital transformation has been defined as “the profound and accelerating transformation of business activities, processes, competencies, and models to fully leverage the changes and opportunities of digital technologies and their impact across society in a strategic and prioritized way.”
Digital disruption is not just coming. It’s already here. In fact it’s been estimated that in the next three years, nearly 40 percent of the incumbent companies currently in the top 10 in any given industry will fall further down the pecking order as a result of failing to adequately adapt to the demands of digital transformation.
These seismic changes are expected to impact practically all industries, including travel, financial services, retail, education, technology, telecommunications, pharmaceuticals, utilities, media, manufacturing, energy, and healthcare.
Preparing for Digital Disruption
Unfortunately most organizations are not at all prepared to handle what’s coming. In fact, when you look at the numbers, they border on shocking.
- 45 percent of respondents say digital disruption isn’t a board-level concern
- 43 percent of respondents fail to recognize or respond at all to digital transformation
- 32 percent are taking a wait-and-see approach
- Only 25 percent of respondents are taking proactive action and disrupting their own businesses
Adequately preparing for digital transformation requires taking a proactive approach. It also demands ensuring you have certain foundational capabilities already in place. These capabilities are:
- Connectivity
- Security
- Collaboration
- Automation
- Analytics
Establishing a proper foundation for digital transformation will enable your organization to be more agile in response to the changes that are coming. A good foundation based on the capabilities we’ve mentioned will among other things, enable you to make better real-time decisions, allow you better access to hyper distributed data, and provide you with deep infrastructure telemetry.
Disruption and the Security Industry
Of all the industries being impacted by digital disruption, the security industry is perhaps most at risk. Information security is of paramount importance for most industries nowadays. And in fact, digitization is already disrupting the security industry.
With many enterprise level organizations employing more than 50 vendors, there are multiple entry points for malicious actors and other adversaries. And these adversaries are becoming more relentless and agile than ever before, employing evermore sophisticated and distributed attacks. As we saw with the DNC hacks during the 2016 Presidential campaign, no organization is off-limits to such attacks.
This is why security is consistently a board-level concern and a spending priority for many organizations. Unfortunately, while most organizations are concerned with security, few have a clear idea how to adequately protect themselves.
Properly mitigating rising security threats due to increased digitization requires adopting an architectural approach.
Hybrid is the New Normal
Digital transformation is being driven by a number of key market trends. These include availability, continuity and recovery, apps that drive infrastructure, and the idea that hybrid is the “new normal.”
For our purposes, let’s focus on the last one, the idea that hybrid is the new normal. As an IT director, you may have asked yourself the question, “How do I manage multiple environments, geographies, architectures and partners?”
As technology evolves and becomes more agile, you’ve probably found that some of your older systems are no longer as effective as they once were. However, replacing your systems can be costly and necessitate a challenging transitional process.
Thankfully, many companies are finding that it’s possible to optimize their pre-existing technological investments by strategically integrating new systems in with their old ones. This is what’s referred to with the term hybrid.
It’s been estimated that by 2018, at least 40 percent of enterprise-level organizations will have evolved toward a hybrid data center model when it comes to supporting digital business services. And by 2019, between 25-30 percent of Global 2000 enterprises will be implementing hybrid cloud services beyond basic application integration. That’s approximately double the 10-15 percent of such enterprises that have done so at this point.
As an IT leader, the challenge is to adopt Hybrid IT strategies that will address the governance and risk-related issues that face enterprises today, while simultaneously ensuring they maintain lines of business (LOB) that will enable them to continually meet their objectives.
However, to bridge the gap between maintaining current LOB activity and managing digital transformation in IT is not without challenges. That’s why companies are increasingly seeking out capable technology partners to assist them in the evolution towards a hybrid datacenter.
Next-Generation Customer Engagement
In managing a digital transformation, it’s key to maintain sight of your strategic priorities. Across the industry, there are several common drivers that are helping IT professionals determine these priorities.
- 90 percent of firms indicate that customer satisfaction is a key priority
- 89 percent of companies plan to compete primarily on the basis of customer experience
- Fewer than half the companies surveyed rated their current CX as exceptional
- Two-thirds of companies surveyed expect their CX to be exceptional in two years time
Think about these numbers for a moment. 90 percent of firms believe customer experience should be a top priority, but fewer than 50 percent believe their current CX apparatus is up to the task.
Clearly, there is work to do.
This new bar for CX is what’s known as next-generation customer engagement. Next-generation customer engagement is centered around the idea that CX is a concern that’s shared across all departments, not just sales or the C-suite.
In next-generation customer engagement, CX is of concern to marketing, accounting, product development, HR, and yes, IT. As an IT professional, your job is to provide the tools required to deliver a satisfactory customer experience that will be in-line with the changes demanded by digital transformation. This can require the implementation of an omni-channel approach to CX.
It’s All About Transformation
One key example of how digital transformation is impacting organizations is the rise of connected work. Connected work is a radical departure from the way our parents and grandparents worked. Some of the key differentiators for connected work are that it’s:
- Mobile
- Contextual
- Environment-friendly
- People-centric
- Collaborative
- Customer-driven
As an IT professional, the challenge is to know your users, what drives them, and what their concerns are. The account manager who works mobile for instance, will have different concerns than a VP of marketing or a factory supervisor. The same could be said of a financial analyst and a customer service agent.
But in a properly managed digital transformation, IT must rise to meet the demands of all these users.
Workforce in Transition
This challenge is made that much greater by the fact that currently we are witnessing a workforce in the midst of an enormous transition. Currently, we have a quad-generational workforce.
Baby boomers, who have largely defined themselves by their work, are working longer and retiring later. This segment of the workforce still values face time and engaging in conversations on the phone.
Generation X meanwhile, is more independent and self-reliant, values a work-life balance and doesn’t feel the same need for face time.
Millennials are both independent and team-oriented and look for work they feel has purpose.
Generation Z is only now just entering the workplace. This group has grown up with a global diverse workplace and prefers a visual engagement, either live or through video interface.
Part of the challenge in making a digital transition is being able to personalize your CX to each generation in order to maximize engagement.
Looking Forward
Ultimately, the key to managing a successful digital transformation lies in knowing where you are headed. Even now, it’s estimated that nearly 90 percent of organizations are competing with one another mainly by way of customer experience.
That means you need to keep your customers top-of-mind when it comes to the day-to-day management of your IT. Today’s customers are on a journey to solve their problems. It’s a journey in which transactions are increasingly taking place in a digital format and escalations to live assistance are becoming increasingly rare.
That means it’s more important than it’s ever been before that your IT operations are up to the task of providing a smooth, seamless CX for your customers, whether it’s the 64-year-old boomer CEO or the 22-year-old Gen-Z social media marketer.
Learn more about the information security services ATSG has to offer by contacting one of our experts today.
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