How tech transformation is shaping industries

At its heart digital transformation centres around harnessing the power of digital technologies to change business processes to make them more efficient and effective.

It centres around not only offering services in a digital way, but also using technology to transform and dramatically improve services.

Technology transformation is also about integrating these digital technologies into all areas of an organisation, to fundamentally changing how it operates and delivers value to customers.

It is also a change in culture that requires entities to continuously challenge the status quo, experiment, become comfortable with failing fast, yet remaining directionally accurate.

Covered in this article

Key areas of transformation
New transformation tools
Changing processes, culture
Moving to the cloud
Eliminating inefficiencies
An issue of survival

Key areas of transformation 

Although tech transformation is different across industries and projects, several elements remain the same.

To make these changes can mean having to walk away from long-standing business processes that yesterday’s businesses were built upon, in favour of relatively new practices that are still being defined and perfected.

These will include revising business models, making changes to the underlying technology stack, finding ways to innovate with customer experience, and ultimately rethinking company culture as a whole.

New transformation tools

There are many new and innovative technologies that are used to transformation businesses, but perhaps the most compelling are cloud computing, the Internet of Things (IoT), big data analytics, blockchain, virtual reality (VR), and artificial intelligence (AI).

In addition, visualisation apps are being used at more organisations every day, because these tools enable business leaders to collect data on all these current trends and measure their progress towards their transformation goals.

By using visualisation tools, users can improve their data analysis and decision-making, which can help the business achieve greater success. A lot of progress has been made in this area already and is enabling organisations to gain actionable business insights.

Changing processes, culture

It’s important to remember, however, that transformation is not just about changing technology, it’s about making the necessary changes business processes and company culture too.

This is also key to the success of any transformation initiative. It is only through digital transformation that large, well-established incumbents can begin to compete with the nimble, agile startups that are unencumbered by legacy infrastructure.

Moving to the cloud

The transition of traditional legacy systems to new cloud platforms is an excellent example of how tech transformation is changing industries in every sector. Moving older systems to the cloud makes it easier for entities to update and change their applications in response to the demands of modern users.

Here again, digital transformation is able to support nimble and flexible IT operations, by making the current processes far more efficient and effective.

Eliminating inefficiencies

Adopting new technologies to change or remove inefficient working processes is another example of how digital transformation is benefiting business and individuals.

For example, consider the digitisation of paper records. By using technology to transform how a business keeps a record of its information, people can now search through digital records and compel reports in a way that would have been if not impossible, extremely arduous in a time when only paper records were kept.

An issue of survival

Although organisations embark on digital transformation journeys for a wide range of reasons, by far, the most likely reason is that it became an issue of survival.

When the COVID-19 pandemic struck, organisations who were mature in their transformation journeys were able to adapt to remote working with ease, while many who were not, ended up closing their doors.

And in the aftermath of the pandemic, any business’s ability to rapidly adapt to supply chain disruptions, time-to-market pressures, and fast-changing customer expectations has become crucial.