EXECUTIVE CORNER TECHNOLOGY | DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION
HARNESS THE POWER OF FIVE There is no stopping for organisations undergoing digital transformation. Companies, however, need to focus on five key elements to reap benefit from it. BY VIMARSH BAJPAI
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t won’t be wrong to say that digital transformation saved the world during the pandemic by providing continuity and allowing businesses and governments to function during the lockdown. It kept organisations afloat and employees engaged during the pandemic. However, this rapid move to transform businesses gave insufficient time to technology and business leaders to put together a formidable strategy that can help navigate short- and longterm challenges. While there are many aspects that deserve considerable attention, let us focus on the
One of the biggest challenges in unlocking the full potential of digital transformation in some sectors is the limited availability, quality and usability of data.
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five key elements that have a significant bearing on how digital transformation will eventually pan out for any organisation.
employees to innovate, managing ambiguity by laying out a clear vision, prioritising tasks and effectively communicating hits and misses.
NEW AGE LEADERSHIP
THE TALENT POOL
The corporate landscape is being swept by digital transformation at an unprecedented pace. However, what differentiates the digital business environment from the traditional one is its leadership. New-age organisations need a vibrant culture of innovation and entrepreneurship. According to a recent report by McKinsey, “successful transformations start with the CEO and top leadership reimagining their business in a digital age. These are bold visions to generate transformative value—think new business models, entry into new markets, and monetisation of data-based assets.” Successful leaders invest time to understand the nuances and long-term impact of new technology. They are also inclined to communicate frequently with the workforce about the benefits of transformation that will reach customers and stakeholders within the organisation. Keeping employees ahead of the curve by conducting training sessions and aligning skill sets needed to drive this change is crucial for the success of any digital transformation initiative. A few common traits of digital leaders include delegating responsibilities, encouraging
Digital transformation is as much about talent as it is about technology. Before the pandemic, it was hard to visualise that organisation, whether big or small, will have to jump on to the digital bandwagon at such a rapid pace. However, buying technology is only half the battle won because without talent and skills, digital transformation will not pick up steam. The most important common barrier to digital transformation was missing skills. According to a survey by Capgemini, 77% of the companies cited skill challenges in a wide range of areas. Putting the right team together in domains such as technology, data, cybersecurity and process automation would be the single most important step for companies contemplating digital transformation. The war to hire and retain digital talent is already underway. To tide over the talent crunch, organisations need to engage in both short-term and long-term planning to ensure they have a sustainable workforce and talent strategy that can address current needs as well as those which arise in future. Several companies have decided to centralise new digital skills such as artificial intelligence, machine learning and blockchain in the shared unit. Training and
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TECHNOLOGY | DIGITALEXECUTIVE TRANSFORMATION CORNER
KEY TAKEAWAYS Start the organisation’s transformation journey with the CEO and top leadership reimagining business in a digital age. Ensure that employees are ahead of the curve; conduct training and programmes to align workers skill sets to drive change needed for digital transformation. Set up digital committees within the organisation to focus on breaking down silos, fostering collaboration, streamlining efforts and minimising duplication.
knowledge sharing is another way that digital units build skills across the enterprise. In a recent global management survey, conducted by MIT Sloan, 93% of workers across industries and geographies affirmed that being digitally savvy is essential to performing well in their role. The idea that effective digital transformation delivers agility, adaptability, and customer centricity is now both managerial mantra and leadership inspiration.
GOVERNANCE MATTERS
As digital disruption came to the fore, many organisations made huge investment in technology and talent to drive digital transformation. However, not all organisations could reap the benefits largely because these digital initiatives weren’t adequately thought
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through and were marred by poor governance. These include issues relating to alignment between business processes and assigning ownership for change efforts. According to research by MIT Sloan, a well-governed digital program must satisfy different stakeholders across an organisation and be flexible enough to accommodate multiple types of initiatives, while ensuring enough rigidity to achieve strategic alignment and efficiency. The research lays out a few key governing principles that are linked to successful digital business transformation. These include moving from centralised to decentralised governance of digital initiatives as digital maturity grows; making sure that KPIs measure the real impact you want to achieve with each initiative; and evaluating different scenarios to proactively steward digital initiatives toward fullscale impact. One of the ways to effectively manage governance issues is to set up digital committees within the organisation that focus on breaking down silos, fostering collaboration, streamlining efforts and minimising duplication. Besides
these, empowering a faster go-to-market by streamlining support for standards, solutions, and common skill-sets for the organisation would also fall in the purview of governance structure.
DATA QUALITY AND USABILITY
Data is extremely valuable as it plays a key role in both digitisation and automation of business operations that improves efficiency, spurs innovation, and unleashes new business models. Thanks to the availability of granular data, businesses today are well-equipped to drive a business-centric approach to transformation. However, one of the biggest challenges in unlocking the full potential of digital transformation in some sectors is the limited availability, quality and usability of data. According to a report by Forrester, firms make fewer than 50% of their decisions based on quantitative information as opposed to gut feeling, experience, or opinion. Even so, 85% of those surveyed want to improve their use of data insights in their decision making, but 91% report that improving the use of data insights in decision making is challenging. Besides, with the power of AI and machine learning,
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EXECUTIVE CORNER TECHNOLOGY | DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION New-age Leadership: Must have the ability to understand the nuances and long-term impact of new technologies, and reimagining digital-age business. Security & Data Privacy: Create safe customer experience by improving risk management and building cybersecurity directly into businesses’ value chains.
Data Quality & Usability: Draft a comprehensive strategy that can help discover organisationwide data, analyse it, and generate meaningful insights.
THE DT ESSENTIALS
Governance Structure: Design a digital program that is flexible enough to accommodate multiple initiatives and rigid enough to achieve strategic alignment and efficiency. organisations can put together a comprehensive data strategy that can help discover data, analyse it and generate meaningful insights. This begins by clearly defining KPIs, focusing on a few use cases for validation and building a strong feedback look that involves all relevant stakeholders.
CYBERSECURITY AND DATA PRIVACY
Technology leaders today are facing an uphill task of identifying and mitigating risks associated with data sets that comprise sensitive customer information.
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Digital Talent Pool: Engage in short- and long-term measure to put together a team in domains such data, cybersecurity and process automation.
Cybersecurity is the backbone of a successful digital transformation strategy. Fuelled by the remote work culture and increase in the adoption of cloud, data breaches are becoming costly and difficult to manage. As businesses digitise and operations automate, cyber-risks are growing at an unparalleled pace hitting brand reputation, critical assets and valuations. Companies today are vying to create more digital customer experiences and this enhances the need to ramp up and align their teams to manage security, fraud prevention and product development that loops in design controls such as authentication that are both secure and easy to
use. Technology leaders today are facing an uphill task of identifying and mitigating risks associated with data sets that comprise sensitive customer information. Another challenge relates to effectively managing bot credentials as companies deploy robotic process automation for speed and efficiency. On a global scale, according to the Allianz Risk Barometer 2021, cyber incident is ranked as top three among the greatest business risk by companies. According to McKinsey, if cybersecurity teams are to avoid becoming barriers to digitisation and instead become its enablers, they must transform their capabilities along three dimensions. They must improve risk management, applying quantitative risk analytics. They must build cybersecurity directly into businesses’ value chains. And they must support the next generation of enterprisetechnology platforms, which include innovations like agile development, robotics, and cloudbased operating models.
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