by Thomas Clarke –
Innovative technology solutions have rapidly changed how we do so many things in our lives, from shopping online, to getting a ride, to managing an enterprise-wide, cloud-based infrastructure.
So, why stop there?
When so much of our businesses and daily operations are shaped by processes and workflows—which, in turn, influence how much our staff gets done, how our customers experience our brand, and how competitive our business is—it makes sense to digitize and automate wherever possible. With business process digitization comes the power of automation, data-driven insights, and increased operational efficiency.
But where does your organization start on this journey, and how do you create a sustainable plan to digitally transform your operations? That’s where a digital transformation strategy for your IT operations comes into play.
Here’s what you need to know about crafting your own digital transformation strategy.
What a Digital Transformation Strategy Means for Your Business
Choosing to pursue digital transformation is about more than just upgrading your enterprise technology or your business devices. Creating a digital transformation strategy is also:
- An opportunity to turn your business processes, IT operations, and customer experiences into situations that drive more value, efficiency, and impact
- An approach to changing the way business gets done using the tools that facilitate collaboration, security, engagement, and visibility
- A way to put actionable information and insights into the hands of your customers and your team members to help them make better decisions in real time
- A chance to create a unified vision for the next chapter of your operations while laying the foundation for new services and core capabilities
Together, these elements help your organization to be more agile, responsive, and secure in the face of new risks, business opportunities, and customer expectations. The end result? You maintain your competitive edge.
Leading Digital Transformation Trends to Shape Your Strategy
Every organization’s digital transformation strategy will be unique to its current capabilities, values, and goals. However, the larger economic and technological forces that shape it do have some commonality.
Some of these common digital transformation trends include these realities:
1. The Understanding That Tomorrow’s Workplace Isn’t Within a Physical Building
The workplace of the future is not just a high-tech building. It comprises technology, people, and processes that are aligned and unified to create a seamless digital experience.
To maintain productivity, organizations need access to cutting-edge communication, video, and content-sharing solutions to extend collaboration across every facet of their operations. Successfully introducing and fully leveraging virtual team collaboration tools will dramatically impact operations by changing the way employees analyze, design, deliver, and operationalize products and services.
2. The Continued Rise of Cloud Technology Adoption
Organizations today need to understand the true costs and realistic benefits of public, private, and hybrid cloud computing models when it comes to deciding which services and migration approaches make the most sense for their operations
Cloud solutions offer flexibility, scalability, availability, and the cost-effectiveness of shared resource utilization models to meet evolving business requirements. However, organizations need to determine which model best fits their security, operational, and performance requirements. They also need to stay on top of changing cloud capabilities and evolve with these changes.
3. The Increasing Challenge of Data Management
When it comes to asset management, capacity planning, change management, information security and analytics, organizations need to understand the potential for significant operational and cost-savings benefits in how they manage the data flowing through their enterprise.
Today, organizations need to invest in the data analytics and real-time processing they need to handle and capitalize on transforming this data into information to drive decisions and future growth. This can include, for example, increasing the use of virtualization and high-bandwidth applications that require enhanced networking solutions.
4. The Ever-Present Role of Cybersecurity
As business processes evolve, organizations need to transform how they identify and mitigate risk across their organizations. Security threats are constantly morphing. The technology and best practices organizations can use to identify, analyze, and combat these threats are helping security professionals ensure high availability and security standards are met.
Take the Next Step in Crafting Your Digital Transformation Strategy
Crafting a digital transformation strategy involves serious analysis and a robust process, plus input and buy-in from stakeholders from across your organization. It requires a knowledge of industry trends, cutting-edge solutions, and even the common pitfalls and accelerators that can influence its implementation success.
That’s where having the right partner can make or break the effectiveness of your digital transformation program.
RCG’s broad technical expertise, knowledge, and industry experience allow our team to keep our customers at the forefront of new IT trends and next-generation services, accelerating their technology adoption to be at the cutting edge. Whether we’re in the trenches with our partners implementing new end-to-end business processes, improving how users connect to services and information, or identifying new operational efficiencies, RCG is ready to be a partner in making your digital transformation strategy a reality.
Want to learn more about how to define and implement your own digital transformation strategy? Take a moment to contact an RCG expert now and line up your own personalized consultation.
Works Cited
1. The Enterprisers Project "What is digital transformation?" Retrieved from https://enterprisersproject.com/what-is-digital-transformation
