Improving ops efficiency of your Digital transformation Journey
Having the right team for digital transformation is critical. It should be cross-functional and managed by a product manager who understands the value of getting there first. It’s this collective effort that separates a company that wants to make a change vs. those that are still thinking about what to do. This team has to be driven from the top, with weekly reviews by top management.
For enterprises wanting to emulate startup behavior, it’s not enough to set up an innovation lab or make the office look cool. They must understand what problem they’re trying to solve and then try to prove the hypothesis using open source tools, and then go for a technology stack. Use a tech stack that can automate the entire flow of how software is being built and progressed through different environments, i.e. development, testing, production, etc. You should be able to check what features are people working on, which are being used/not used.
A lot of legacy systems in enterprises are siloed, so one approach is to create micro-services, which are thoroughly tested for robustness and scalability. E.g. building a simple service that allows an online e- commerce portal to switch over to the cloud and use it as an extended infrastructure during peak demand.
Who Drives the Journey?
According to Sudhir, opportunity for DX lies on the business side, so most DX conversations typically start at the CEO or CxO level instead of IT. Businesses are worried that competition can come from anywhere and any format, and he cited the example of Google investing in technology to make contact lenses that can detect blood sugar levels. This may reduce the need for people to get diabetes tests done, causing disruption of medical labs business.
On the CIO front, those who understand how IT can act as a differentiator to business will become a crucial part of the DX journey. According to Sudhir, the term their company uses internally for them is the ‘courageous CIO’, as it requires a lot of courage to bring and lead change. Those who don’t will continue to provide back- end support.
The role of partners is also critical, according to Sameer, as customers expect their partners to come up with innovative ideas. Sudhir further added that IT is so central to change on the business side, that partners are needed to explore ideas on how tech can be used.
The Need for an Adaptable Platform
According to Manish Kumar, Delivery Partner, ThoughtWorks India, Digital transformation is about building a platform that can be consumed by various