In Gartner’s IT Roadmap for Digital Business Transformation, it notes CIOs have a burning common question: What is the best way to scope, scale and lead a digital transformation programme that can deliver financial results? It goes on to state that CIOs and IT leaders can avoid common pitfalls and lead smart, effective digital transformation by following a set of best practices.
Choosing the right development platform not only makes a difference, it is also a good place to start but first let’s factor in the pandemic and how it has affected business goals.
Is there light at the end of a COVID-19 tunnel?
Forbes reports the post-coronavirus world will be driven by whatever technology strategies companies implement now and notes that integrating modern technologies into business operations is a requirement for success as businesses move into the ‘new normal’.
It stresses there is a window of opportunity right now for organisations of all sizes to undertake improvements that will scale over time.
So, is there light at the end of the tunnel? Of course! Technology developments and innovations have proceeded at an exponential pace in the wake of COVID-19, with one of the outcomes being that companies realise the benefits of fast-tracking digital transformation. Those businesses able to use technology well to keep going and rethink their future operating model by fast-tracking digital transformation will be the ones ahead of their competition.
According to a recent Frost & Sullivan survey of business and IT decision-makers, digital transformation will be the top strategic business priority in a post-pandemic environment.
It states it is no wonder businesses across every industry and geographic spread were suddenly forced to reinvent themselves to a digital/virtual world, rather than a physical one, as contact with customers, employees, suppliers and partners is now restricted to online interactions.
In this brave new world, applications offering services to customers, bringing new products to life, enabling collaboration among employees, and turning content into business insights, are highlighted as the predominant business enablement tools. To prepare for a software-fuelled future, many companies seek to modernise their application development processes.
There is no question that the pandemic restraints added an urgency to meet digital transformation goals – now crucial to the very survival of many businesses.
This Frost & Sullivan report – conducted just six months ago – explored the perceptions and experiences of IT and business leaders as they delved into the effect on business strategy goals of technology implementations and low-code platforms.
The conclusions drawn from the report offered simple and effective ways for businesses to modernise their organisations’ application creation approach in a manner that benefitted both IT and the business stakeholders.
Marrying tech application with strategic business goals
There is no question that the pandemic restraints added an urgency to meet digital transformation goals – now crucial to the very survival of many businesses.
The Frost & Sullivan survey of large enterprise-level organisations in the US and Europe recorded the following as the top strategic business goals:
- Digital transformation: 61%
- Business efficiency: 44%
- Innovation: 41%
- Customer-centricity: 32%
- Data-centricity: 31%
- Revenue growth: 27%
- Market extension: 22%
- Creating or maintaining competitive differentiation: 16%
Digital transformation came at the top of the 2020 survey, with different industry sectors, for example, healthcare, rating it even higher at 73%. Tertiary education institutions proved to be more interested in innovation (45%) and data-centricity (39%) than business efficiency (29%) or revenue growth (13%). This is understandable at a time when most universities are confined to remote learning.
These statistics reflect the reality that as remote working, video-conferencing and digital collaboration have become the business modus operandi around the world, the need for reliable connectivity is obvious as it is the only way to run efficient digital businesses and rollout effective applications.
Modernising application development processes
The Frost & Sullivan survey highlighted the fact that organisations devote a lot of effort to solution/application development, with over half (54%) of respondents stating their business applications are developed or customised in-house. The remaining applications were identified as licensed software or software as a service subscriptions with little customisation or integration.
As such, companies understand that development processes play a major role in the achievement of their goals. The report showed the vast majority, nearly 80% of enterprises surveyed, believe a modern development approach is essential to success.
Specifically, they cited their top goals as follows – ranked in order of importance with the percentages of respondents who rated the goal as crucial or very important:
- Integration of new apps (cited as very important by 73% and as the most important goal by 17%). The ability to easily integrate with existing systems and content improves productivity (easier search, fewer swivel-chair data transfers) and generates greater business insights.
- Security (cited by 76%): In a multi-cloud or hybrid infrastructure environment, security functionality is often embedded into the app rather than bolted on to the endpoints.
- Collaboration (cited by 70%): Best practices, including DevOps, require stakeholders from various IT and business departments to collaborate on the app development process.
- Alignment of features with user needs (cited by 69%): Ever-evolving external factors and user preferences require a means to ensure applications remain relevant, not just at time of release, but ongoing.
Interestingly, the survey revealed that respondents rated “low cost” at the bottom of the importance rankings, with only 56% stating it is very important.
I would interpret this result as follows: cost is always a factor and even more so in a pandemic-consumed economy where budgets have been diverted to activities to protect health and safety, but clearly business and IT leaders are more interested in investing wisely to meet their goals than in looking for a low-cost, low-return bargain.
In my third and final article in this series, I will reveal five milestone markers to successful digital transformation.
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