Since the beginning of its massive expansion in 1996, the Internet has become an indispensable tool for people, educational institutions, government agencies and companies.
It has also been
almost eighteen years since the world was shaken by the birth of e-business and
its most beloved son: e-commerce or e-commerce. Today all this already exists
for all of us what seems to have been from the beginning of civilization.
Information
technology has developed and advanced by leaps and bounds, accelerating
dramatically over the past two decades. We passed the first platform
(mainframes),
The second platform
(client-server scheme) and currently the third platform (cloud, social
business, big data and mobility) are heavily used all over the world.
It is not
surprising to anyone that the Fourth Industrial Revolution, a term coined by
Professor Klaus Schwab at the World Economic Forum in Davos in 2016, has
already confirmed its reality, and, as we said in this forum, the question now
is not whether it materializes or no. Rather, now the question is how I did not
stand aside.
What, then, follows
in this evolution of information technology? Just to begin with and as a
derivative of the Fourth Industrial Revolution came computational convergence,
and now we have its cousin, digital transformation.
To begin with, we
can say that digital transformation is new opportunities for business strategy
that arise due to the emergence of technology. More precisely, we can state
that - "... it is rethinking the organization through the use of digital
technologies to improve the organization and its service to its
customers." - (Margaret Rose. Author and Administrator of WhatIs.com,
TechTarget Learning Center and IT Encyclopedia)
Here, when we say
digital, we mean the use of technologies that generate, store and process data;
Whereas, when we talk about transformation, we mean fundamental changes in the
day-to-day activities of an organization - from the types of products and
services it produces to the way they are delivered.
To support all this
a little, we will take into account and of course that for us and for this
problem, an organization that needs transformation (be it a company, a
government agency or a service provider such as healthcare) usually responds or
seeks to respond quickly. on changes in the market and consumer demand for a
product or service.
It is important to
clarify that the simple implementation of a technology does not in itself lead
to digital transformation "as such", but changing the organization in
order to harness the potential of these technologies does.
A 2011 training by
the MIT Center for Cardinal Commercial and Capgemini Consulting examined 157
CEOs from 50 companies with annual revenues of $ 1 billion or more. The study
found that transformation organizations need to rethink their underlying
business and operating models, as well as their end products and services.
An example of a
successful digital transformation company is Nespresso. Specialty coffee
machine maker Nestlé Group, Switzerland, has implemented a cloud-based customer
relationship management system that offers customers multi-channel access to
business opportunities.
shopping and
customer service - you can still contact the company through the website,
mobile device, or by visiting a store. A unique 360-degree view of each of its
customers has allowed Nespresso to expand into more markets and improve sales.
In another example,
the Schindler Group used the Internet of Things (IoT) and cloud computing for
its digital transformation. The 141-year-old Swiss company has partnered with
Apple to install smart sensors in elevators and escalators it manufactures.
Now, when a component starts to fail or the machine stops working as expected,
the sensor data alerts the back-end system, which uses an intelligent rule
engine and a custom iOS mobile app called FieldLink to assign the job to the
technician.
Despite all the
benefits, digital transformation is a struggle for many organizations, and
there is no single plan for success. Research from MIT and Capgemini has shown
that successful digital transformation does not happen from the bottom up;
should be driven out of vertex.
