Retail

Who are you – digitally determined or digitally distraught?


By Snehal Shah & Pradeep Agarwal


Digital transformation at the project level is a recipe for disaster. Digital transformation in silos can never be successful and there must be a holistic approach that would put the company culture first. In the future, there will be two types of companies, digital and non-digital. Legacy processes are hindering the digital future of businesses as they are spending most of their time in upgrading systems and ending up creating more data silo’s with one-off cloud solutions.

A digitally distraught business or organization is one that is caught in indecision about which business processes should be transformed or may be involved in continuous cost cutting measures in order to regroup from legacy investments. Choosing the right partners for digitally distraught businesses is also very difficult and hence they often lose track of the right business decision.

On the other hand, digitally determined businesses are those that have the bigger picture in mind and plan a roadmap towards advanced changes with a view of the entire business. They understand that this transformation is not a destination, rather an ongoing journey. Digitally determined businesses understand that there will be hurdles in the journey, and yet are resolute to overcome those hurdles while still rolling the ball forward at a fast pace.

Most businesses aren’t born digital; they need to build on existing foundations. According to IDC 97% of digitally determined organizations need fully connected procedures across the entire business, however just 5% are fully integrated. When asked about the advantages of having a fully integrated process across the business, respondents cited: increased revenues, increased workflow efficiency and better insights into business operations. Because of the complexity of SaaS deployment, 50% of organizations find it causes technology investments to be delayed. 39% find incompatibility between different SaaS providers a challenge. The greatest challenge is integration between SaaS and on-premises applications.

Four elements that enable an enterprise to be digitally determined are:

  • Being able to scale the business quickly
  • Empowering talent excellence
  • Responding to customer demands quickly
  • Reducing steps in a workflow or process

Recently in a global survey of digital leaders, the surveyors were able to segment out 53% of digitally determined organizations and 47% of digitally distraught organizations. The digitally distraught are either running digital as an impromptu effort; running multiple digital strategies initiated by the line of business; or operating with a short-term perspective. Hence, these organizations become distraught. Without unified efforts or high expectations of short-term ROI, it is very difficult to bring about a major transformation. On the contrary, this study also found out that 31% of digitally determined organizations have one integrated strategy, where all the digital innovations across various functions or business lines of the organization are in place. Moreover, it also found that 22% organizations adopt digital transformation as their sole business strategy for growth.

Digital transformation helps businesses to break down the silos so that there is “one source of truth” for every function in the company. The integration extends from the frontlines of the business all the way to the back-office. As stated earlier, there will be only two types of organisations – digital and non-digital and that will also be the differentiation between successful and unsuccessful businesses. Digitally distraught organisations can still pick up things, re-think their strategy, choose a suitable partner for their journey and can become a future-ready, modern, connected company.

The digital age has unleashed unlimited potential, as well heightened risks. The burgeoning connections are leading us towards unseen opportunities of growth, innovation and creative value. In order to bring these opportunities to play, enterprises need to revolve their businesses around digital potential, which will digitally empower every procedure, innovation and customer experience. Juicing out maximum potential from the ever-growing connections between people, organizations and other peripheral things is a success prerequisite. Within today’s digital connections hide the solutions to the most urgent business challenges and the potential to build seamless, interconnected experiences that empower employees and amaze customers is a must.

The irony is that while companies must renew their IT to drive their transformation initiatives, they don’t have money to invest in new projects because of the expense of running the existing IT. That reality requires them to rebalance their IT portfolios to spend less on support and maintenance and more on innovation, but even that effort also requires investment. To date this has been a conundrum faced by almost all organizations.

To keep on bolting on new digital tools to thrive in this digitally occupied age is an exaggeration of resources and finance. Instead, put digital connections and platforms at the heart of your enterprise to develop new ways of working, drive innovation and maximise value in every interaction. It’s time to think, act and be Business Digital.

Snehal Shah is CFO, Century Textiles & Pradeep Agarwal is Senior Director, ERP Cloud, Oracle.





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