We are living in an interesting age where the word ‘Digital’ runs in our DNA. The reach, depth and intensity of Digital Transformation are immense in all our lives. From the beginning of a day by the alarm on your smart phone, to the Fitbit in your hand that counts the steps of your morning walk to the digital money you have paid for your grocer or the meeting you attended with your geographically separated team mate in Skype, adds to the influence of the word digital in your everyday life. The word Digital Transformation is one of the most discussed words in the IT world since 2010. Now, after 6 years, the question is, apart from the promises that the digital transformation unfolded before us a few years before, has it lived up to its promise? The Blitz 2017, the annual tech fest at Happiest Minds, explores the answer to this question in the form of an excellent panel discussion with the participation of eminent panelists including Manjula Sridhar, Founder, Argbyte, Dinesh Goel, Head, ISG India, Anupama Prakash, Co-founder Workbench Projects and Shubhendu Sharma, Founder Afforest. The panel moderation was done by Puneet Jetli, CEO, Digital Transformation and Enterprise Solutions, Happiest Minds. The thoughts/ insights as shared by the panelists and the moderator.
It is interesting to explore how much of disruption and innovation is happening at an enterprise level in terms of Digital Transformation. In the year 2010 people had high hopes and started focusing only on digital. Now in 2017, if we look back, we can see that the adoption rates of digitalization are different, the degree of progressiveness are different, but nobody can deny the fact that digitalization is entrenched in all global organizations and no executives are unaware of the power of digitalization in business. The digital is definitely transforming our business, personal, professional and social aspects of our life. It has disrupted and continues to disrupt all the industries by making them agiler in terms of performance, increasing the efficiency and providing a compelling customer experience.
The change that Digital Transformation brought in all our lives us that we can see the QR codes used by even the street vendor. It has brought in greater convenience and flexibility in our lives.
For example today, if we want to do a complete blood test, we don’t need to go to a clinic, 3 km from our home, do the registration, wait for the turn , give the blood sample and again come down to collect the test results and the medical practitioner. In this age of Digital Transformation, we can get all this done with a simple touch on our smart phone. The person will come to our home, collect the blood sample, we can pay using digital payment options, the copy of the result will be shared with us and our doctor as an email or WhatsApp message and he/ she can assess the issues if any. We have saved a large amount of time and money with the kind of digital disruption has presented for you. The same is applicable in other instances like banking and retail where the service comes to you rather than you step out and access the services.
Instances are umpteen to analyze the power, reach and value creation of Digital Transformation in business as well as in a common man’s life. Be it in environmentalization or performing arts, or almost all the aspects of our life, digital is definitely going to redefine the way traditionally it was. The most interesting factor is that this Digital is not putting an end of Physical, but it is getting blended into a new form of ‘Phygital’.
On an enterprise level digital is showing an evolutionary logic from the traditional causal logic. Many enterprises are adopting DT with greater enthusiasm. They are creating Digital hubs to nurture innovation, implementing interesting programs like reverse mentoring where the young next generation digital enthusiasts mentoring the CXO’s to be up to date with the happenings and opportunities in the world of Digital Transformation. Be it is a small startup or an enterprise, keeping in sync with the mindset of Digital is significant.
If we analyze the reach of Digital Transformation, we can see this disruption is not up to the speed in the rural India and businesses see there exists a huge business potential in getting Digital Transformation to the last mile of rural India. Education and Finance sectors are two impactful areas where we are witnessing progressive changes in rural as well as urban India and there exists real unsung heroes behind this revolution. However, still, there are many issues that need to be addressed like illiteracy, network connectivity, and accessibility to the device to fill the gap. We can call this gap as a digital divide between rural and urban India which can be considered as a short term phenomena. When Digital Transformation matures we can see the slow blurring of the so called ‘digital divide’ in the coming years.
Apart from the positive outcomes and promises of Digital Transformation, we all should think about whether there is a darker side of this digital. Digital Transformation powered SMAC technologies is all about understanding more about the customers or the users and providing more personalized solutions and services. Knowingly or unknowingly we are giving a large quantity of our personal data to the larger internet driven world. While doing this it is imperative and at the same time challenging to have a clear demarcation between privacy and personalization.
The panel concluded that, every organization that perceives the opportunities of Digital Transformation should be ready to rethink their data protection laws and privacy policies to provide a smart, secure and connected experience for their clients.
Bhavya is a former Happiest Mind and this content was created and published during her tenure.
