The future of digital transformation – the sum of all parts #5
PHASE 4: TECHNOLOGY
In the penultimate blog in this series on digital transformation, we’re exploring the fourth step in the process – technology. By this stage, an organisation will have built a full picture of its operations and services; examined the applications it uses and assessed the full suite of data at its fingertips.
Now it is time to think about how digital transformation will be delivered technologically.
The technology that underpins a business needs to be designed in a way that enables the technical environment to facilitate new digital initiatives and services.
Organisations must consider if and where they can modernise legacy systems to support their digital transformation. It is not always necessary to start building out new digital solutions. The adaptation of existing systems can prove effective and is a cost-effective way of embarking on the journey.
Many organisations may currently use large-scale enterprise solutions for core line of business systems like HR, Finance, etc. To ensure these can be included in the transformation journey, organisations must consider how digital solutions will integrate with these key systems.
How should organisations build out and adapt their enterprise architecture to support digital transformation? The architecture must provide a platform that simplifies the development of digital services.
Most organisations will be coming from the traditional starting point of on-premise architecture, which will work well if it is managed and planned to support the changes that digital transformation brings.
However, many organisations are moving to the cloud due to its affordability and flexibility. The cloud ensures activities are seamless, secure, scalable and reliable. It supports iterative development and makes adding new components easy. It simplifies advanced analytics, efficiently retrieving data from multiple sources and enriching it to provide valuable insight.
Finally, it is a cost-effective and efficient way of developing new services, products and solutions – vital in today’s rapidly evolving and competitive digital marketplace.
Neueda will work with you to understand where you are on your journey and what the best fit is for you. An example of this approach is a project we completed with one of our customers in the Energy and Utilities sector.
Rapid changes in the energy sector inspired the company to develop services to support new consumer capabilities and demands. They sought digital solutions that would enhance their services whilst integrating with their existing IT systems.
We worked in partnership with the customer to understand the potential digital services and what a single platform to support these might look like. Within three months we delivered a cloud-based platform, using Microsoft Azure, designed to support and integrate with existing
IT systems, simplify the testing and development of new digital services and improve data analytics from a wide range of sources.
The project has future-proofed our customer by empowering them to drive a pipeline of new, modern, digitally-led products and services in an ever-evolving, competitive marketplace.
My final blog in this series will look at how we should approach digital transformation in a holistic manner to ensure the best chances of success.
Originally published here.
