#digitaltransformationtips Archives

Enterprises Piloting the New Normal with Next-Gen Applications

Posted on 27/08/202009/06/2021 by Anteelo Master

Remote working, physical distancing, travel limitations, and the psychological effect of isolation have together changed stakeholders’ behaviors in every organization while creating unexpected challenges along the way. This pandemic has not just disrupted everything once denoted normal but has also been forcing enterprises to navigate the recovery period and develop a new normal for the post-crisis era. Even amidst the clear need for digital transformation, enterprises are grappling to remain competitive in a world filled with nimble startups. These enterprises were once dependent on their IT models as a key to a competitive edge. Now, however, the same IT cores have made it difficult for them to adopt a new normal centered around flexibility, speed, and efficiency.

With being nimble now accounted as the only way to survive and scale in the COVID-19 world, enterprises have turned their focus on the development of next-gen apps.

Table Of Content

The Need for Next-Gen Apps
What Does Next-generation application development Mean for Enterprises? Speed, Efficiency, and Flexibility
Key Transformation Areas for Enterprises
The Best ADM Approaches for the Creation of New Normal Enterprise Applications
Schedule a Discussion

The Need for Next-Gen Apps

Businesses need apps that will be able to adapt to changing demands and scale to meet customers’ and employees’ needs in real-time. An enterprise application development company by building next-gen apps based on business understanding and customers’ requirements gives enterprises a platform to transform digitally.

Next-generation mobile apps and other software help enterprises:

Lower the time to market when meeting the changes in customers’ needs.
Lower product complexity by utilizing a cross-platform, scalable ecosystem.
Make smarter business decisions through analytics-backed insights.

What Does Next-Generation Application Development Mean for Enterprises? Speed, Efficiency, and Flexibility

The need of the business hour for enterprises, as we noted before, is to look for next-generation application management services. This new normal in enterprise software revolves around a trio – Efficiency, Speed, and Flexibility.

Speed – Pre-COVID, release cycles came with a months-long completion time. Now, with customers’ needs changing by the minute, enterprises don’t have the leverage of taking up months for deployment. There is no guarantee of a problem staying a problem by the end of those months. The new normal enterprise will have to bring in agile methodology in its application development and maintenance process to offer its stakeholders value in real-time.

Efficiency – The success of every nimble enterprise lies in automation, a well-planned business integration, and the adoption of agile methodologies. And all of this can be achieved through practices like the integration of AI in mobile apps, re-prioritization of business processes, and weeding out unnecessary feature sets.

Flexibility – Zero downtime has become a success mantra. But its adoption is a lot easier written or said than done. In order to become truly flexible, enterprises must modernize or replace their outdated applications. However, letting go of the legacy system is one of the biggest digital transformation issues.

What enterprises need is a next-generation application maintenance program that would make proper use of the modernization spend while enabling digital transformation.

Before we get down to the nitty-gritty of what that next-gen application would look like, let us look at the areas that enterprises would have to work on to compete within themselves and with the startups flooding in the business ecosystems.

Key Transformation Areas for Enterprises

The best thing about enterprises is that they understand how COVID-19 would change them – on some grounds, better than their startups’ counterparts.

The speed of automation will expedite

The automation of key processes and routine tasks has remained at the center of business development for some time now. This need for task and process automation is not new. Back in 2017, McKinsey & Company forecasted that 30 percent of key tasks across industries will get automated by 2030. “Before the pandemic, automation was looked upon as a way to boost efficiency while cutting costs,” said H.I. Executive Consulting. “With social distancing directives likely to stay in place for a while, more and more businesses are accelerating their automation efforts in order to reduce close human contact to a minimum, free up employees to manage crisis response and focus on providing essential services.”

The movement towards remote digital service

The new normal for business after covid will be organizations changing their support and service delivery plans to meet the digital reliance of their employees and customers.

Here are some examples of what a remote digital service looks like.

The digital-powered Russian bank Tinkoff created a cloud-based call center with several freelance employees. The bank focuses completely on virtual servicing. To date, they have expanded into a team of 14,000 call center operators of which 6,000 of them make an average of 500,000 customer calls every day from homes. The bank’s cost of managing and training operators gets offset by the savings made from rental offices and equipment.

In the telecommunication industry, companies have started launching digital-only offerings that redefine customer experiences and gather considerable attraction. The USP of these services lies in customers signing themselves and moreover with more than 80% of customer-care activities being conducted online. In this digital-first model, online referral act as the biggest source for customer acquisition – estimated to be 15% of the total sales.

The success examples are prevalent across multiple industries. This has turned remote service into a trend that has a high-profit potential.

Supply Chain Disruption May Continue

Global lockdowns have resulted in a massive scale of supply chain disruption. Back in February, Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV stopped production in their Serbia factory for they weren’t able to obtain automobile manufacturing parts from China.

The majority of the enterprises understand the manufacturing and delivery process of their Tier 1 suppliers while having little visibility on further the line. The business need is to make the supply chain resilient for the post-COVID period. And in order to do that, enterprises would have to:

develop strong backend infrastructure – possibly by combining blockchain and supply chain processes
remove the dependency from paper-based processes
share data with suppliers for gaining manufacturing stages visibility.

Partnerships will become collaborative and lean

Enterprises can meet the changing partners and vendors’ preferences by shifting to a more collaborative and flexible set of partnerships. These partnerships can be multi-form. Example: An IT consultancy firm could work with remote vendors to decrease their office and travel cost. There can also be enterprises providing agreements with their vendors for long-term opportunities. For example, how Alibaba supports SME suppliers with an extended line of credit.

As a part of the new normal for the marketplace, we are seeing partnerships brewing on the basis of an understanding of customer needs, wherein both the partners can mix knowledge and create value. For example, recently, WhatsApp started enabling its customers to directly connect with brands and make purchases through a simplified mobile experience on WhatsApp.

Management systems of a new model

Met with the unsurity of the new reality, enterprises have started looking for ways of adopting virtual management systems in enterprise application development services.

For effectively responding to a fast-changing environment, businesses will consider making use of advanced analytics tools, automation, and digitalized processes to meet customer demand fluctuations in semi-real-time. We can also envision enterprise application development solutions being built on human-technology interactions which would help businesses collect insights for IT-driven productivity rise.

To meet with the changes that a post-COVID world would pose, businesses would have to take a modernized approach – one that would help them become cognitive. While this can be achieved through the creation of new-age technologies backed next generation mobile applications services, it would need enterprises to get back to their legacy systems.

Here are some of the application development and maintenance approaches that we have been offering to enterprises coming to us seeking digital transformation consultancy.

The Best ADM Approaches for the Creation of New Normal Enterprise Applications

Optimizing the current IT systems

Enterprises can optimize their present IT systems with modern approaches and tools to cut costs and heighten efficiency. We advise organizations to make use of AI and automation capabilities for ensuring quality and following DevOps steps to lower the development cycle.

By deploying new-generation capabilities and features around existing systems enterprises will be able to innovate and keep their competitive edge – even when they are not prepared for complete cloud transformation. They can attain easier access and modification of the legacy systems through the use of technologies like containers, API integrations, and microservices.

Gather data and convert it into an actionable product in a minimal time range

When we build enterprise applications, we focus on benefiting from cloud-native, digital-first technologies to deliver growth at speed. Deploying speed-focused innovation abilities are generally backed with an MVP, small feedback loop, test-driven development, and a fail-fast approach.

The intent of this approach is to help enterprises take key business decisions and turn them into products that their stakeholders need in as close as real-time.

Role of digital transformation in reducing business costs

Posted on 25/08/202009/06/2021 by Anteelo Master

Digital business transformation constitutes the integration of digital technologies in all areas of a business. It integrates new operational processes with improved values delivered to the consumers. Did you know that by 2023, the spending on the technologies and services that enable digital transformation worldwide is expected to amount to 2.3 trillion U.S. dollars?The above-shown statists will help you understand the global digital transformation market revenue from 2017 to 2023. By inculcating a digital business transformation strategy, you will experience a cultural shift towards more agile and intelligent ways of doing business, powered by technologies such as advanced data analytics and artificial intelligence. Digital transformation for business growth in the current landscape is more a matter of necessity than a matter of choice!

How Are Businesses Going To Function Post Covid-19?

There is no denying the fact that the current pandemic has drastically affected the way an organization works. Let’s pay attention to the current truth of the business world, shall we?

Increasing operational efficiency and transforming the existing business are the most important business initiatives
63% of organizations believe that delivering excellent customer experience as measured by customer satisfaction scores defines success as a digital-first business
Improving customer experience and increasing cybersecurity are also essential initiatives considering the pandemic

Can Digital Technology In Business Help in Cutting Unnecessary Expenses?

If you want to keep your budget in control then without any doubt your biggest ally is technology! Digital business transformation solutions as a whole cover three major sectors – operation, strategy, and management. In the operations sector, one can start with processing data in the cloud, digitizing business processes and documents, and optimizing processes.

Digital transformation strategy changes the way business functions by focusing more on customer experience and needs. In the aspect of management, it revamps the entire business model of a company further taking advantage of the commercial and productive opportunities created by the current digital trends.

How digital maturity drives revenue?

If you completely understand the importance of digital transformation in business then you know how investing in technology can lead to higher revenue by providing your consumers the well-deserved value. A pattern that held true across all industries was that higher-digitally mature companies in this year’s sample were about three times more likely than lower-digitally mature companies to report annual net revenue growth and net profit margins significantly above their industry average.

7 Benefits Of Digital Transformation In Business

1. Revenue growth

Companies that implement the digital transformation business model see an improvement in their efficiency and profits. Let’s talk numbers!

80% of organizations that have completed the digital transformation report increased profits.
85% say they have increased their market share.
On average, leaders expect 23% higher revenue growth than competitors.

2. Increased efficiency

Software development companies open up the possibilities of what is working fine and what can be improved. Constant efforts are being made towards reducing the time of execution.

With the help of digital tools, companies can not only see efficiency in their workflows but also in their supply chain by integrating those tools at each stage of development of a service or product delivery. This process can be as simple as tweaking an existing process by including a digital checkpoint or as advanced as automating a process and remote monitoring the output at each stage via IoT devices.

The traditional ranges of productivity and efficiency have now indicated an increased possibility of cost improvements to about 25%. Not only this but incorporating practices like remote monitoring, robotization, and optimizing the entire workflow improves the labor costs in percentages above 60%.

3. Increased consumer satisfaction

DT drives customer experience towards ultimate brand resonance. This is not a secret anymore. Businesses across numerous sectors are using digital platforms for gaining insights into customers’ needs, using technologies to communicate directly with their customers, and inherently transforming customers’ touchpoints.

Here are some of the ground-level ways that digital transformation solutions entail for their consumers:

Personalizing the customer journey
Seamless omni-channel presence
Embracing automation to keep customers updated.

We simply cannot deny the fact that organizations that are able to leverage design thinking into their current structure will see a significant advantage in customer experience!

4. Improved data collection and analysis

Data collection and analytics have opened up new windows for digital businesses. Data analytics tools make it easier to collect and analyze customer data and further result in making informed decisions. Data can be securely hosted on a cloud-based system, which will further allow you to save up to 50% when compared to traditional data management systems. It is one of the best ways to enhance your strategies by studying the online habits of your target audience.

5. Increased flexibility and scalability

The impact of digitalization on business is such that it allows you to explore scalable alternatives. It breaks you free from the processes that come with old technology that accept manual inputs. Modern software and processes allow one to integrate various business parts, further making it more flexible. Tasks like service requests, providing support, or connecting the data can now be automated without manual intervention.

6. Enhanced reliability and reduced risks

From a technical point of view, the old technology cannot back up, maintain and protect the data of your company as well as of your customers. This will certainly make your business an easier target for cybercrime. Hence, as your organization will grow, the technology and processes have to evolve.

By upgrading to digital tools, you’ll see improvement in the efficiency and effectiveness of current risk- management approaches. Also, remember that digital risk initiatives can reduce operating costs for risk activities by 20 to 30 percent.

7. Increase agility

Business transformation makes organizations more agile. You can improve speed-to-market pace and adopt continuous improvement and continuous deployment strategies. This will not only make innovation happen fast but also increase the rate of adaptation while providing a pathway to improvement. Also, let’s not forget that business transformation consulting firms will keep you at the top of your game among your competitors.

To Sum It Up

I have listed above the reasons such as automating tasks for improved efficiency and effectiveness, enhancing customer experience, increasing flexibility, scalability of your business, and reducing risks; but the most important thing is to keep your business objective in mind!

Below listed questions like –

What do you want to achieve via digital technology that you can’t in the present scenario?
What value addition do you want for your customers to experience that your current technology and processes are not allowing?
How do you plan to collect the data and use it for your target audience?
What manual tasks can be cut off by the introduction of digital tools?
What revenue growth do you expect if you invest in new technologies and tools?

In order to start the evolution process of your company, contact a digital transformation solutions provider now to transform your business journey strategically and as smoothly as possible!

Leverage Digital Transformation Opportunities Post-COVID-19

Posted on 26/07/202009/06/2021 by Anteelo Master

As the Covid-19 pandemic hit the world, it completely changed our perspective about digital technology in business and its implementation. It has encouraged digital adoption and transformation all over the world! But the question remains, are we utilising it’s full potential?

Digital business transformation post Covid-19 is at the center of today’s economic development debate due to its widely increased usage. As per a survey done by Statista on how will the Covid-19 pandemic affect the overall economic situation of the digital economy, the opinions were mixed. Let’s see how business transformation in digital economy is assumed to shape up according to the survey:

33 percent of surveyed international digital decision makers believed that the digital economy will benefit after the pandemic
25 percent believe that number of business players will be reduced while the major corporations will emerge stronger than even once the pandemic is over
24 percent think that the digital economy will have to endure a long-term revenue loss like the overall economy
16% of the people who were a part of the survey believe that no predictions or forecast is possible at the moment

Is Covid-19 Really Accelerating Digital Transformation?

Yes, we have seen a drastic shift of consumers towards online channels, companies are coming up with digital business transformation strategies to stay in the game. Let’s look at some stats to get a clear picture, shall we?

The pandemic has accelerated digitalization in business. Many companies have accelerated the process of digitization of their supply-chain, customer interactions, and internal operations by three to four years. Not only this, companies have also accelerated in adding digitally enabled and efficient products in their portfolios by seven years!

How Digital Transformation Benefits Your Business?

Increased efficiency: DX will help streamline operations and automate the manual processes. As a result, you will get better speed and enhanced focus on revenue-generating techniques and activities.
Reduced cost and enhanced productivity: Optimising business technology and operations around digital technology means cost-per-transaction savings and increased sales. Also, since employees are already working remotely, their focus is on leveraging collaboration technology and tools to maximize workforce productivity and maintain the company culture.
Increased profits: Companies that undergo DX improve their profitability. Let’s talk about the results reported by the SAP Center for Business Insights and Oxford Economics:
Improved agility: Due to software development, businesses can increase their agility with DX to improve speed-to-market and adopt Continuous Improvement (CI) strategies. This allows for faster innovation and adaptation while providing a pathway to a much improved version of what was.
Enhanced customer experience: Customers have gotten used to having endless choices, low prices, and fast delivery. DX manages to keep the consumers happier than ever.

Accenture reports that customer experience has emerged as the key driver of sustainable business growth. They found that even a slight rise in the customer experience count can bring millions of dollars growth annually.

6 Ways Businesses Can Make The Most Of Digital Transformation Market Opportunities

Let me walk you through the key elements of digital transformation for your business model. So, without further ado, let’s begin!

1. Omnichannel commerce

Centralising customer experience is one of the most important strategies to ensure that we are engaging the customers and at the same time making it easy for them to find the answers that they are looking for. Due to the unfortunate turn of events in 2020 all the physical business locations are shut down and as a result consumers have no option but to go online for their basic needs.

For example: we can choose groceries online, pay online, track our order, receive items on our doorstep in a contactless form and leave feedback all on one convenient app. It is important for the businesses to blend the physical and digital aspect smoothly and create an integrated channel.

2. AI and machine learning

Last year an IT Ops and Security company Splunk announced its “Data to Everything” campaign, and I couldn’t agree more! Data is obviously everything but data without the technology to analyze it becomes obsolete. AI and machine learning are exactly the key elements we need right now. All data to be captured, analyzed, managed, enhanced and visualized in rapid succession.

3. Operational agility

Digitization of processes lowers the amount of resource and time needed for maintaining operations and innovations. Companies are enabling workers with digital tools and platforms for improving collaboration on the go, while using digitization tools for streamlining their operations through data capture and analysis automation.

4. Embracing automation

Did you know 84% of the consumers preferred interacting with computer automated systems. Especially in times like these, such DX in business can go a long way! Computer based systems increase the customer digital experience. In case, you have not used automation as a part of your business transformation strategy then I suggest you start now!

It will help you save time since automated responses engage and provide services faster than human advisors or customer care services. It will also increase efficiency, because the time spent by team members on basic processes like follow-up emails and ticket prioritization will be automated.

5. Cloud strategy

The organisations who are still pondering over the idea of migrating onto the Cloud needs to accelerate the action in this area post the Covid crisis. The logical starting point could be setting up a site on the cloud that should be regularly tested as part of the routine drills.

6. Information security

Last but not the least key element of DX is securing the data of your organisation and customer. Such sensitive information should be tackled with utmost security. In recent times, a surge in security breaches has increased mainly due to substantial increase in usage by working remotely.

Recently, security concerns were highlighted in Zoom, where their executives acknowledged that the online communication platform was not designed for a sudden surge in the app usage. So, your focus should be on making the ‘Information Security’ an integral part of the overall design of your organisation. An equal emphasis should be given to securing the IT assets – Servers, Desktops, Smartphones, etc by integrating the best-in-class security tools.

In order to leverage DX post pandemic, I strongly suggest to adhere to the key elements mentioned above.

Help Your Business Adapt To The New Normal

By 2023, 53% of all investments in information and communication technology will be in digital transformation. That represents increased spending by more than 50% from 2019 levels. Well, in my opinion DX is the need of the hour during this crisis, even post Covid-19, the business world will be completely digitally transformed. Confused? You can always go to digital strategy consulting firms.

What can’t be cured must be endured! Business transformation has crossed the stage of being a trend, it is now a necessity that cannot be ignored. It has now become a mode to win a competitive edge. I hope that I have helped you view gain perspective as to why DX is essential for your business. In case you want more guidance, reach out to our digital transformation strategy consulting team.

Without Downtime, Here Are Five Ways To Deal With Digital Transformation

Posted on 16/07/202008/06/2021 by Anteelo Master

Advanced technologies are significantly impacting and transforming the way people communicate and collaborate. How are businesses tackling this evolving corporate landscape?

From an option to a necessity – the trek of the digital transformation journey has always been full of obstacles and problems. When advanced technologies started having a significant impact and transforming the way people communicate, interact, and collaborate with a business, the majority of CEOs realized that it’s a matter of survival in the ever-evolving corporate landscape.

A survey conducted by Tech Pro Research Center in 2018 revealed several interesting facts. Out of all the respondents, 70% admitted that their business heads are either working on a digital transformation or already have one in place. Moreover, the survey also revealed that the budgets for IT transformation have been increased in the past couple of years by senior-level executives.

With the acceptance of C-LEVEL executives, every businessman knows that digital solutions are crucial for the success of an enterprise. However, the percentage of businesses that invested in a digital transformation strategy is surprisingly less. What’s the major contribution to such a low adoption rate? What’s hindering you from adopting digital transformation solutions?

The last ten years of information technology have been about changing the way people work. The next ten years will be about transforming your business!

A lot of CEOs are afraid that they’ll have to stop their business process while they undergo digital transformation. However, with proper planning and monitoring, you can easily conduct digital transformation in your company while keeping your business running.

Here’s a list of stats that’ll help you decide by yourself:

A report by Adobe & E-consultancy stated that companies with a digital-first approach are 64% more likely to achieve their business goals than their competitors.
According to a case study conducted by Deloitte, 45% of companies tell people that digital transformation has a positive impact on their business and reported higher net revenue growth.
A published article by PwC stated that 52% of the companies plan to cut their defer investment amid the rise of COVID-19, while only 9% are likely to do the same with digital transformation’s budget.

As the statistics suggest, businesses that have adopted digital transformation strategy not only have an edge over their competitors but also allow them to get a higher revenue growth. In this article, you’ll know about five assured ways to tackle digital transformation without downtime. However, before we start, let’s get back to the basics and understand the correct meaning of digital transformation.

The Main Issues of Downtime

For most digital transformation services company owners, downtime is the single biggest reason behind the loss of production time. According to research by Vanson Bourne Research Study, 82% of companies have experienced unplanned downtime at least once over the past three years. Aberdeen’s Research further includes the cost of a company that can go as much as $250,000 an hour. Not just the production, but companies are also facing issues related to productivity, IT, and customer service due to the downtime.

The study by Vanson Bourne also revealed high levels of asset estate ignorance across organizations, wherein 70% of companies lack full awareness due to equipment maintenance, upgradation, or replacement.

The same study also reveals another issue that occurs due to unplanned downtime is that the unplanned downtime results in loss of customer trust and productivity. This loss resulted in a 37% loss in production time and 29% inability to support equipment for production.

When unplanned downtime occurs, no value is generated but the cost of digital transformation grows constantly specifically around overhead operations , which in parallel impacts a company’s bottom line.

The unplanned downtime is the real issue that is pervasive and finding a solution for this downtime gap is a primary step in an organization’s digital maturity and an essential role for a transformative journey.

Road Towards Zero Downtime

As organizations create and invest in their digital transformation business strategy, we are soon entering a time where zero tolerance and zero unplanned downtime will turn into a norm. The key to this is an understanding of and interest in field service management and asset performance management.

As indicated by Vanson Bourne, eight out of ten organizations have effectively perceived that digital tools can improve the visibility of assets and eliminate unplanned downtime. Around half of the organizations confirmed their intent to invest in field service and asset management in the following three years, while 72% claim that zero unplanned downtime is presently the focus of priority.

One of the significant barriers to digital modernization is the challenge to replace systems while maintaining business continuity. To build a strong customer base, and empower employees with modern technical skills, there is a strong need to increase the uptime and follow digital transformation maintenance to bring digital and IT transformation strategy in the business. Let’s look at the ways businesses are overcoming digital transformation challenges and adopting digital business transformation strategy.

5 Ways To Conduct Digital Transformation Without Missing Business

Digital transformation is a sure-shot way for large and successful organizations to stay ahead of their digital-only competitors. That’s why these projects are usually large in ambition and scope, but there are always some chances of risk. With that said, let us take a look at some of the handiest tips that allow you to undergo digital transformation without any downtime

1. Phase-wise Approach

Instead of following the traditional “rip and replace” methodology, you need to approach transformation in a more efficient way to prevent the risk of downtimes. Consider taking a phased approach to reduce the risk in your transformation. You can release a minimum viable product (MVP) into production early to get realistic structural and operational criticism. This phased approach lets you focus on each stage to make changes and develop a customer centric product.

To tackle the digital downtime, the first phase should always be to create and deploy a front-end proxy. The proxy will provide the data. Only after getting the data, you should move to now comes the time for the second phase which includes the replacement of the old stack.

2. Identify Problems Earlier

As downtime can be caused by a native problem, for example, a software glitch in a workstation, remote server, a major event, or any other reason. Thus, for a major transformation phase, you need to build an early warning system to validate and test things in each phase, so that not much time is wasted in detecting the issue and then resolving it.

Identifying problems earlier also helps in having a solution right there, so when the problem occurs then it is easier to correct it without affecting any productivity. With a little bit of testing, iterating, and assessing, you can easily manage traffic to the new system and identify any potential problems earlier.

3. Plan For Accuracy and Reliability

While undergoing a digital transformation, you must visualize, collect, and alert on in-depth operational metrics. It’s better to have a dynamic plan to ensure functional accuracy and operational reliability to minimize the chances of errors and move towards the next step. The plan can involve the right management. Then comes the skill development to streamline standard operations, decrease downtime, allow quick decision-making, enable employees to attain the skill effectively, and improve brand reliability.

The accuracy provides a convenient digital strategy framework to identify important components within the system and reliability helps in decision-making which is meant to upgrade the system availability or reduce the mean duration of system downtime.

4. Establish A Multi-Layered Fallback Mechanism

Multi-Layered Fallback Mechanism helps to reduce the use of the old system while decreasing the impact and elegantly degrading in case of problems. The mechanism helps in a way that the issues arising in one service do not harm overall operations.

During the transformation, you need to make sure that your team gets familiar with the use of new systems to prevent the product or service quality from degrading. That’s why it’s always a good idea to plan for multiple layers of fallback to keep your back covered.

5. Keep Everyone Involved in the Plan

One of the major issues is the skill gap in what needs to be transformed and what is there in the workforce. Thus, to make everyone in your organization understand the process, recognize the process, and agree that it will be worth the efforts, it is important to involve everyone in the plan. Involving the team in a plan helps to track the progress that is being made towards the goal. It helps build trust within the team and provide employees a chance to come up with approaches that they think will work in a way. Also this helps in getting out-of-box ideas from different members, preparing business transformation strategies, and there are chances of not wasting much time in finding a solution or explanation.

The After-Transformation Effect

Although DT is filled with numerous revolutionary technologies, the top ones are the internet of things, cloud computing, artificial intelligence, and big data. However, it’s more than just the use of technology – transforming corporate culture and business processes are also an integral part of the digital transformation process.

While it’s easier to manage the disruption created by technology to your business, you also need to make sure that your people can cope up with the changes – and it’s more than just technical skills. It’s more about embracing the change and being resilient and resourceful enough to make decisions faster and better.

If you have any business transformation challenges in your organization, you can partner with a digital transformation agency like Anteelo to take care of the migration and adoption needs. We are a well known brand that builds digital products and processes to help teams get acquainted with changes through the shortest learnability curve. We have served digital transformation companies across the globe including digital transformation companies in USA and parts of the globe.

Industry 4.0 / Digital Transformation

Posted on 15/02/202015/06/2021 by Tushar

Digital Transformation / Industry 4.0 is on everyone’s mind. Investors are happy to hear from organizations that they are embarking upon a complete Digital Transformation / industry 4.0 journey. Investors love it, leaders advocate for it, directors have to make it a reality, managers have to design for it, but few understand what all it means in the grand scheme.

Hopefully, we can simplify this world for you.

What is Digital Transformation? Let’s keep it simple.

The simplest way to describe Digital Transformation is “Using Digital technology, innovation and intelligence to find better ways to do various things that organizations do today. It’s not about creating something new, but more about improving effectiveness and efficiency of existing processes for better business outcomes.”

Digital Transformation started as Industry 4.0 in some places. However, the idea remains the same. While Industry 4.0 started with the intention of transforming the manufacturing processes using Digital Technology, the principles of Digital Transformation now apply to all functions across the organization.

How does this theory apply in practice? Let’s study an example:

Step 1 – Current State

Map out the current process to uncover gaps that can be filled with better technology or intelligence.

Consider a global paper products manufacturing company. The manufacturing industry team is constantly trying to find opportunities to improve efficiency and productivity and reduce costs.

Energy consumption is a big area of focus for the manufacturing team. Currently, manufacturing industry reports and energy dashboards are used to track the consumption of energy across a few important machine parts.
Operators use these dashboards to identify sections of machines that are in green/red (good/bad) zones in terms of energy consumption and adjust the settings to optimize energy consumption.
These dashboards only track a limited set of machine parts that influence energy consumption.

Step 2 – Future State

Outline what the future should look like, after Digital Transformation.

Energy consumption of machines at the mill (specific reference to Tissue Machines) can be reduced by finding the key driving factors of energy consumption, determining their optimal settings while factoring in for the production constraints in terms of time, quantity and quality.

The following challenges will have to be addressed to get to the future state

There are a few hundred variables in a tissue machine that determine the energy consumption. These machine variables have to be studied comprehensively to identify the key influential factors for energy consumption. Relationships between these variables also need to be considered.
A detailed and statistically robust mechanism is created to generate insights/correlations across all relevant machine variables, to take proactive steps to minimize energy consumption.
Study the process characteristics that influence energy consumption and optimize them. E.g. machine speed, maintenance schedule, aging of parts.

Step 3 – Establish how technology, data and analytics can bridge this gap.

The best way Digital Transformation approach for this example would be:

Select a machine, in a market, which can be managed and monitored easily. Maturity in terms of capturing data, and the groundwork that has already been achieved for manufacturing systems and lean energy dashboards provides an immediate feasibility in terms of execution and adoption.
Build a Driver Model to understand key influential variables and determine the energy consumption profile.
1. Identify Key Variables –
  1. There are ~ 600 machine parts that drive the consumption of energy of a tissue machine. First, shortlist the top contenders and eliminate the non-influencer variables, using inputs from technical teams and plant operators.
  2. Identify primary drivers among the selected machine variables using variable reduction techniques of Machine Learning.
2. Driver Model –
  1. Building multivariate regression models to understand the impact of top drivers of energy consumption using techniques like linear regression, RIDGE/LASSO regression, Elastic Nets.
3. Optimize the engine to lower energy consumption.
  1. Optimize energy consumption by identifying the right combination of drivers under the given production constraints – time, quantity and quality.
  2. Create a mechanism to provide guidance during the actual production hours (In-line monitoring).
    1. Track energy consumption of the machine parts and their active energy consumption states. Identify deviation from the standards.
    2. In case of deviation, provide guidance to machine operators to bring the energy consumption to within defined limits.
4. Adoption
  1. Real-time dashboards, refreshed weekly, provide charts on energy consumption, recommendations, and improvements achieved through proactive measures.
  2. Post-live support to operations teams to enable adoption.
5. Scaling
  Determine phased roll-out to other machines using
  1. Strategic initiatives.
  2. Machines or mills which utilize higher amounts of energy to target higher ROI.
  3. Similarity in process and parts characteristics of tissue machines.
  4. Data availability and Quality.
  5. Readiness and groundwork for adoption by plant operators and energy management teams.

4 key stages in Digital Transformation

How should you, as a leader in an organization, look at Digital Transformation? Organizations should consider the 4 key stages of Digital Transformation, in order to create a sustainable impact on their organization. To make Digital Transformation a reality, all these steps cannot work independently. The philosophies of Design Thinking are embedded in the framework’s interconnected elements.

DEVELOPMENT PHASE:

Focus is on identifying the key areas and prioritizing the Digital Transformation efforts

Stage 1 – Discovery

Identify the key areas of opportunity or risk and related key stakeholders. Detail out the gaps in process, data, insights or technology, fixing which would help capture opportunities or mitigate risks.

Stage 2 – Design

Rapid iterations on design and implementation of prototypes helps reach optimal solutions faster. Build out Proofs of Concepts (PoC) to establish the theoretical validity of the approach. Validate the practical validity of the approach through a Proof of Value (PoV).

IMPLEMENTATION PHASE:

Implementation needs to account for limitations arising from human behavior and scale of the operations.

Stage 3 – Adoption

Building solutions that keep the user at the center of the design, is key to adoption. This means that users must be included in the design and feedback early on. In addition, there should be support for users post design, in the form of FAQs, training videos, chatbots etc.

Stage 4 – Scalability

If we can’t solve a problem at scale, then the solution does not solve organizational problems. The issues that we anticipate at scale, should be accounted into the design in the Development phase. This means considering the technology used, the infrastructure required, process automation possible / required and how to manage future developments.

Like Design Thinking would dictate, the Development phase of the Digital Transformation processes have to always consider the Implementation aspects.

Digital Transformation is no longer just optional.

Every organization is transforming the way they do business. Numerous organizations like BASF, Mondelez, KLM airlines, Aptar group, PepsiCo etc. are already making massive strides in this area.

If you want to zip past your competition, or even stay competitive, it’s about time you started thinking about how to transform the way to do business. After all, there’s no growth in comfort.

How Can Mobile Apps Help Your Company’s Digital Transformation?

Posted on 20/02/201921/06/2021 by Anteelo Master

Irrespective of which industry you look at, you will find entrepreneurs hustling to kickstart their digital transformation efforts which have been lying in the backdrop since several business years. While a considerably easy move when you have to alter your digital offering according to the customers’ needs, things become a little difficult when you start planning digital transformation for your business. A difficulty that mobile applications can solve.

There are two prime elements which businesses need to focus on when planning to digitally transform their workflow and workforce: adaptability and portability. And by bringing their processes and communications on mobile apps, they are able to hit both the targets in one go.

Here are some statistics looking into why enterprises need to count mobile application in, in their digital transformation strategy –

Although the above graph should be a reason enough to take mobile apps seriously, there are some other numbers as well.

57% of the digital media use comes in through apps.
On an average, any smartphone user has over 80 apps out of which they use 40 apps every month.
21% of millennials visit a mobile application 50+ times everyday.

While the statistics establish the rising growth of mobile apps, what we intend to cover in the article is the pivotal role mobile applications play in digital business transformation. To understand it from the entirety, we will first have to look into what is digital transformation and what it entails.

What is digital transformation?

Digital transformation means using digital technologies for changing how a business operates, fundamentally. It offers businesses a chance to reimagine how they engage with the customers, how they create new processes, and ultimately how they deliver value.

The true capabilities of introducing digital transformation in business lies in making a company more agile, lean, and competitive. The end of the long term commitment results in several benefits.

Benefits of digital transformation for a business

Greater efficiency – leveraging new technologies for automating processes leads to greater efficiency, which in turn, lowers the workforce requirements and cost-saving processes.
Better decision making – through digitalized information, businesses can tap in the insights present in data. This, in turn, helps management make informed decisions on the basis of quality intelligence.
Greater reach – digitalization opens you to omni-channel presence which enables your customers to access your services or products from across the globe.
Intuitive customer experience – digital transformation gives you the access to use data for understanding your customers better enabling you to know their needs and delivering them a personalized experience.

Merging mobile app capabilities with digital transformation outcomes

The role of mobile applications can be introduced in all the areas which are also often the key areas of digital transformation challenges that an enterprise faces.

Technology integration
Better customer experience
Improved operations
Changed organizational structure

When you partner with a digital transformation consulting firm that holds an expertise in enterprise app development, they work around all these above-mentioned areas in addition to shaping their digital transformation roadmap around technology, process, and people.

In addition to a seamless integration with the digital transformation strategy of an enterprise, there are a number of reasons behind the growing need to adopt digital transformation across sectors. Ones that encompasses and expands beyond the reasons to invest in enterprise mobility solutions.

The multitude of reasons, cumulatively, makes mobility a prime solution offering of the US digital transformation market.

How are mobile apps playing a role in advancing businesses’ internal digital transformation efforts?

1. By utilizing AI in mobile apps

The benefits of using AI for bettering customer experience is uncontested. Through digital transformation, businesses have started using AI for developing intuitive mobile apps using technologies like natural language processing, natural language generation, speech recognition technology, chatbots, and biometrics.

AI doesn’t just help with automation of processes and with predictive, preventative analysis but also with serving customers in a way they want to be served.

2. An onset of IoT mobile apps

The time when IoT was used for displaying products and sharing information is sliding by. The use cases of mobile apps in the IoT domain is constantly expanding.

Enterprises are using IoT mobile apps to operate smart equipment in their offices and making the supply chains efficient, transparent. While still a new entrant in the enterprise sector, IoT mobile apps are finding ways to strengthen their position in the business world.

3. Making informed decisions via real-time analytics

In the current business world, access to real-time analytics can give you a strong competitive advantage. Mobile applications are a great way for businesses to collect users’ data and engage with them through marketing transformation messages designed around the analytics based on their app journey.

You can use real-time analytics to know how your teams are performing, analyze their productivity, and get a first-hand view into the problems they are facing in performing a task and how it’s impacting the overall business value.

4. Greater portability

Portability in an enterprise ecosystem enables employees to work as per their convenience. While it shows less impact in the short term, in the long run, it plays a huge role in how productive a team is.

By giving employees the space to work as per the time and location of their choice, you give them the space to boost their creativity fuel and in turn productivity. One of the results of using software that enabled our employees to work according to their terms and conveniences for us was greater business expansion ideas and an increase in overall productivity of the workforce.

Tips to consider when making mobile apps a part of the digital transformation strategy

If at this stage, you are convinced that mobile applications are a key part of digital transformation efforts, here are some tips that can help your strategies for increasing the ROI on your enterprise app –

Adopt mobile-first approach – the key factor that separates enterprise apps that are winning is how they don’t treat apps as the extension of their websites. Their software development process is strictly mobile-only. This in turn shapes their entire design, development, and testing processes.

Identifying the scope of mobility – the next tip that digital transformation consulting firms would give you is analyzing the operations and workflows for understanding which teams, departments, or functions would benefit from mobility the most. You should not start reinventing a process which works okay, you should look for areas which can be streamlined, automated, or valued through mobility.

Outsourcing digital transformation efforts – when we were preparing An Entrepreneur’s Guide on Outsourcing Digital Transformation article, we looked into several benefits of outsourcing digitalization to a digital transformation strategy consulting agency. But the prime benefit revolved around saving businesses’ efforts and time which goes into solving challenges like – absence of digital skillset, limitations of the agile transformation process, or the inability to let go of the legacy systems.

8 Digital Transformation Trends to Watch

Posted on 30/01/201919/06/2021 by Tushar

As businesses try to adjust to the new normal, many will be looking to technology to help them move forward. Digital transformation trends can give enterprises a competitive advantage but investing wisely means keeping abreast of innovations and up-to-date with trends and developments. To help, here are some of the main digital transformation trends keeping boardrooms excited.

Analytics

Analytics has transformed the decision-making process, providing data and insights that help businesses identify problems, opportunities and solutions. The vast quantities of data available for analysis, including real-time data, means companies which don’t make use of it are at a serious disadvantage. It has applications in all areas of business: procurement, operations, logistics, marketing, communications, security, finance and HR; and with sophisticated analytics tools easily deployable in the cloud, it’s becoming much more widely used.

AI and machine Learning

AI and machine learning trends are the ideal partners for data analytics and enable businesses to do much more with their data. They speed up analysis, automate large scale processing in the scalable cloud and remove the bottleneck caused by human analysts. They also learn and adapt from previous analyses while providing results in user-friendly, easily digested, graphical interfaces that non-IT staff can make sense of.

5G

While the consumer generally sees 5G as a way to improve smartphone c

onnections and speed up downloads, the deployment of 5G infrastructure will have a much wider impact that many businesses can benefit from. It will, for example, hasten the development of IoT infrastructures, such as smart cities, intelligent transport networks, smart vehicles and smart industry. At the same time, we’ll see a wider range of connected devices, making it easier for businesses to take advantage of the IoT and the valuable data it generates.

Wi-Fi 6

The next generation of wi-fi, known as both Wi-Fi 6 and AX Wi-Fi, provides up to three times faster processing and wireless connection speeds. Even better, it enables networks to handle far more connected devices, which is helpful considering the proliferation in wi-fi enabled gadgets being used in the workplace and the increasing amounts of data they send and receive.

Blockchain

Although it’s often associated with cryptocurrencies, blockchain has many valuable uses in businesses, such as tracking the origin and movement of goods in the supply chain and providing financial audit trails. It has applications in healthcare, real-estate, media, energy and local government and can be used for a wide range of purposes.

The reason for its increased use lies in the number of service providers, including Amazon, Microsoft and IBM, who are developing subscription-based ‘blockchain-as-a-service’ platforms and thus making it easier for businesses to put it to good use.

Robotics and automation

There is a historical pattern of businesses shifting towards automation in response to a recession. Following the 2008 crash, for example, 25% of supermarket checkout assistants in the UK were replaced by automated self-service checkouts. The crisis following the 2020 pandemic is likely to see the pattern repeated, however, with more advanced robotic processes and AI interfaces available, more skilled workers could see the brunt of redundancies. Where roles aren’t completely replaced, workloads may be reduced, enabling existing staff to be upskilled.

Connected transport

Although this is only happening on a small scale at the moment, automated and remote-controlled transport is already taking place. Drones are being used to ship medicines to remote Scottish islands, restaurants and supermarkets have been using automated robots, developed by a Cambridge company, to make local deliveries during the lockdown and the UK coastguard has just announced plans to use drones to assist with coastal searches.

Expect to see these technologies becoming more widely available and, thanks to 5G, being put to uses in more places. Many businesses can take advantage of these technologies, helping them deliver products and services quicker and without the need for a third-party delivery company.

Customer experience

According to a survey by Adobe, senior executives see customer experience as a bigger priority than investment in new products and services as it offers significantly more opportunities for growth. The key areas where development will take place are in omnichannel shopping, personalisation and frictionless payment, with technologies like data analytics and AI providing the insights needed to deploy these in the way that customers will appreciate.

By enhancing the customer experience, brands can develop both loyalty and trust. As a result, customers will engage more, share their needs and give feedback, enabling companies to develop their products and services in response.

Conclusion

Digital transformation not only affects all sectors; it also has an impact on all aspects of a company’s operations. Those that adopt and utilise the technologies mentioned here can reap the enormous benefits they offer. Being able to make use of these technologies, however, requires companies to make use of the cloud, as it is here where they are most easily and affordably accessible.