CIOs need to get ready to scale new frontiers of a digital enterprise

The pace of digital transformation has continued to accelerate over the last few years. Year 2016 saw several historical changes that will create a long-lasting impact on the digital transformation landscape, driving enterprises towards the option of ‘pivot or perish’. Smart corporations are increasingly putting digital transformation at the centre of their corporate strategies and changes in 2016 have further accelerated the need for the same.

Key changes in digital landscape The mobile data super highway:

Across the globe, the mobile broadband usage is skyrocketing. As per a recent report from Ericsson, the mobile broadband subscriber base will reach to 7.7 Billion by 2021, amounting to 85% of all the subscriptions according to Ericson Report from June 2016. This scenario is all the more relevant for India, where the mobile data usage is growing at the rate of 50% YoY according to Nokia MBiT Study from March 2016.

This growth is further set to accelerate in India in 2017, with the launch of new 4G services and entrance of new players who will fuel a price war for mobile data. By July 2016, many leading players had decreased their mobile data subscriptions prices by almost 67%.

The current breed of smartphones, which run on the latest versions of iOS and Android, pack enough processing power to be able to handle enterprise applications. For example, Apple’s A8 chip in the iPhone 6 is 50 times faster than the chip in the original iPhone, with GPU that is 84 times faster. Moreover, many smartphones now provide basic ruggedness – such as fall protection, water-proof operations etc. BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) as a trend has also mitigated the risk of shorter smartphone lifecycle on the enterprise. Hence, CIOs today can release enterprise mobile applications and be assured of significant adoption without having to invest in capex for rugged mobile phones.

Overall, this means that the CIOs now can do more with less. At the same time, employees today are behaviourally more tuned to using mobile applications than what one has seen before. And, this is only going to further increase. Therefore, making adoption of enterprise mobile applications much easier.

Many parts of enterprise were earlier not considered qualified for enterprise mobility. As a practitioner, we now see personnel across hierarchy in client organizations carrying smartphones, which can participate in enterprise mobility. This revolution of including bottom-ofpyramid personnel in the digital journey has far reaching implications.

The 3 D impact – digital disruption due to demonetization:

We at Brillio call it the ‘3D’ impact. Demonetisation in India has initiated an irreversible push towards a ‘less cash’ society. This governmental push will force small and medium businesses (SMBs) to adopt digital in a big way. Traditionally, the SMB sector