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How to make your pre-pandemic digital transformation work in a post-pandemic world

By Jacques du Preez, CEO at Intellinexus

Johannesburg, 02 Nov 2021

The pandemic has been described as the single greatest catalyst of digitisation and digital transformation.

Forced to enable remote work, find new ways to reach and serve customers, and navigate the complexities of a highly unstable and unpredictable operating environment, organisations have adopted digital technologies like never before.

However, what about those (unlucky?) organisations that made large-scale pre-pandemic investments into technologies that are not optimised for a post-pandemic world?

The dangers of sunk costs

For many organisations, the investments they made into digital transformation before the emergence of COVID-19 simply can't provide them with the agility and flexibility they need now.

In our current operating environment, many of these organisations struggle to meet customer demands, accelerate growth and achieve true data-driven decision-making.

Having invested time and resources in on-premises technology, organisations want to realise ROI on their investment before reinvesting in new technologies. It's understandable – digital transformation is often a difficult and expensive process that involves huge amounts of time, capital and manpower.

Even where the benefits of new cloud technologies are clear, going back to the board with a pitch for a new cloud technology infrastructure when you recently completed a time-intensive and costly on-premises deployment is a shortcut to limited career options.

Old tech can't meet new demands

And yet, organisations simply can't succeed in the long term if they depend on technology infrastructure that is not fit-for-purpose, especially when their operating environment has changed so dramatically.

So, what do IT leaders do? Is it a matter of writing off the previous investment and implementing an entirely new wholesale digital transformation project built in the cloud?

No.

What IT leaders in this situation need to do is identify pain points in the current system – for example, a lack of agility in processing varied data sets, or difficulties with effectively managing a hybrid workforce – and look for opportunities to address it in a cloud environment.

It's not a big-bang, all-at-once strategy; look at it more as a transition from the existing architecture to a cloud environment.

A checklist for transitioning to the cloud

  1. Accept that your previous investment will not take the business where it needs to be. This frees you up to focus on addressing what you will need in a more suitable environment.
  2. Don't rush, and be mindful of costs. On-premises deployments typically involve substantial upfront costs, including the capital expenditure to purchase the necessary hardware and software.
  3. Start building in the cloud. Remember, cloud services are offered on a consumption-based model, and if you choose only a few pain points to address upfront, your consumption costs will be comparatively low.
  4. Understand the (lack of) budgetary pressure. On-premises deployments incur the bulk of their costs on day one of the project. In a consumption-based model, those costs are kept low as you are only charged for what you use. You won't have all your data in the cloud from day one, so you can develop solutions for specific problems very cost-effectively.
  5. Remember that cloud is not a strategy. You still need to build your digital transformation project on business principles, meaning business strategy comes first. Cloud is simply an enabler.

Going from on-premises to the cloud doesn't have to be another hugely time-consuming and expensive process. It's not about recreating the original on-premises transformation project, but simply doing it in the cloud.

Instead, organisations have the opportunity to create an inexpensive path that eventually leads to a cloud-first operating model, one that delivers agility, scalability and eventually the power of true data-driven decision-making.

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