In the words of Bas Burger, CEO BT Global Services, “Digital transformation is not a destination, but an evolving journey. One that needs innovation, agility and skills.”

But first we need to know what digital transformation implies in today’s context.

Digital transformation DT or DX essentially refers to putting to best use the new age digital technologies. When the worldwide web came of age, it was a revolution. Businesses and enterprises were transformed. Online shopping saw a rapid explosion.

In today’s context the new age digital transformation drivers are Artificial Intelligence and Internet of things (IoT). IoT which enables quick and easy data exchanges between several computing devices, physical devices, softwares, sensors and others is gaining more prominence each day. There is a noticeable growth in the use of edge computing and fog computing.

Competitive advantage

With its sophisticated tools AI is transforming every sector from finance, healthcare, to customer service, information technology, logistics supply chain, ecommerce and so on.

Global spending on digital transformation technologies as per IDC study is expected to be nearly $1.3 trillion in 2018, an increase at a compound rate of 16.8% over the $1.1 trillion spent in 2017. This is expected to cross $2.1 billion by 2019. Digital transformation would give companies a competitive edge and those that refuse to accept the transformation would risk lagging behind.

Plethora of opportunities

Intelligent Automation is bringing in a plethora of opportunities for enterprises. Machines are offloading humans from repetitive, mundane and boring tasks giving way for other creative and challenging engagements for employees.

Reducing man-hours of work

A new report from Juniper Research has found that annual cost savings derived from the adoption of chatbots in healthcare will reach $3.6 billion globally by 2022, up from an estimated $2.8 million in 2017. This growth will average 320% per annum, as AI powered chatbots will drive improved customer experiences for patients.

Great customer relationship

The new age technologies are redefining the customer relationship management.  Companies that have incorporated AI chatbots to handle their customer service operations are witnessing multifold gains. The smart bots are functioning like human substitutes, understanding user queries, giving business insights, boosting sales with recommendations and offering 24/7 service.

Business intelligence and gain in insights through data

The biggest advantage that businesses are gaining through AI is the use of Machine Learning in classifying, processing and analyzing Big Data. Unstructured data makes for 80% of the world’s data. Until the advent of AI, conventional technologies have failed to utilize and read this data set.

New AI technologies are helping businesses get valuable insights through analysis of these data. The Machine are studying patterns, user behavior and trends and revealing invaluable business insights in no time and helping enterprises to take important business decisions.

As experts put it, digital transformation is not limited to introducing technology alone.

Companies need to devise a failsafe strategy to implement new technologies. It goes far deeper in implications. A proper digital transformation would involve a complete change in the organizational mindset and bring in new culture that supports and propels the change.

When it comes to adopting change, it is worthwhile to keep in mind that:

• It is vital for employees to accept change and not resist it
• They should also rule out the fear of losing jobs to technology
• Businesses should devise new strategies to utilize the existing workforce for more creative and challenging works beyond the scope of automation
• Digital transformation should look forward to creating more skill-set
• It should look forward to provide actionable intelligence to specific businesses, encourage innovation and generate more revenue

As IDC “despite the “digital” moniker, there is much more to digital transformation than just technology and this is a continuous process that requires the need to have correct technical new age solutions to specific existential business functions to boost performance and competencies of sectors.