A BLUEPRINT FOR DIGITAL SUCCESS

AMIT SAXENA, CIO OF RAMCO PLEXUS, ON KEY INGREDIENTS OF A SUCCESSFUL DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION STRATEGY.

What are the major challenges facing CIOs in 2023?

First and foremost is balancing priorities in an uncertain economy. For CIOs who are part of organisations deeply embedded in the culture, identity, and fabric of their countries, utilizing global technology effectively might be a challenge. Moreover, despite the rapid evolution of unique new technologies such as machine learning and virtual reality, many companies cannot afford to invest in new equipment, even if it’s what they desire. This scenario means CIO should emphasize return on investment as a selling point to help encourage digital transformation.

The second one is bolstering cybersecurity. It’s important to know that all businesses are targets of cybercriminals because it’s now typical for companies to store confidential financial data on business networks. So, another challenge for IT leaders is to convince companies’ decision-makers they must prioritise cybersecurity.

Other significant challenges include:

• Digital transformation and change management: Digital transformation is the process of implementing digital technologies to create new business processes -or rework the existing ones- and build healthy customer experiences to meet the fresh demands of the changing market. And to make the digital transformation process work smoothly, CIOs need to rely on a managerial strategy. Building and managing this team is getting harder and more challenging as more businesses try to keep up with evolving technologies and cope with change management.

• Staying ahead of AI/ML developments: As CIOs, we must constantly be up to date with current trends to remain relevant and maintain business processes’ security and efficiencies.

• Dealing with supply chain issues and rising costs: IT departments are going through a great need for participating in digital transformation, leaving no time or effort to maintain the already created services and operations.

• Digesting digital transformation and improving interoperability: The need to keep up with this environment breathing evolving technology in and out. They are expected to be ready to develop new products and services and adapt to changes in IT strategies when necessary.

Can you share tips with your peers for digital transformation success?

I’ve mainly four tips for digital transformation success:

1. Focus on customer service. A customer-centric approach is of utmost importance, so implement the latest technology and focus on your target audience.

2. Gradually implement a digital strategy. Don’t overwhelm employees with sudden change; go progressively.

3. Cooperation and cultural change. All parts of the collaboration should be involved; this will have a cultural shift.

4. Monitor return on investment. You can measure your success by financial returns on investments. Revenue is affected by business strategy; thus, you should keep switching regularly.

Which emerging technologies will have the maximum business impact? The first one on my list is 5G communications. With higher multiGbps maximum data speeds of up to 10 Gbps, ultra-low latency, increased reliability, massive network capacity, and increased availability, 5G will drive innovation across every sector and industry and transform everything as we know it.

Another one is artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence is shaping in different directions every day. It spans platforms, tools, and applications. AI is the new bride for major tech giants attracting massive spending in the form of investment. At the same time, this technology is becoming more affordable by the day and growing in its uses. Artificial intelligence is now a special interest in trading, asset management, healthcare, manufacturing, automobile, sales, marketing, etc.

Also, watch out for blockchainbased storage. Proponents claim that by taking advantage of the empty space on users’ devices worldwide, blockchain storage can cut up to 90% of the cost of centralised cloud storage. Blockchain storage also allows faster and more customisable storage systems because users can manipulate settings, such as retrieval speed and redundancy.