A Five-step Digital Transformation Plan for ICT and Media Companies

Though companies in communications, media, and technology sectors share the common goal of accelerating their product and service delivery, most are invariably hazy about the specific digital transformation that truly fits them

Being in the throes of sweeping technological changes, digital transformation has always been a priority for companies operating in communications, media, and technology sectors. Facing tough competition, churn, and constant change, many companies tend to pursue the same digital initiatives as their peers play ‘catch up’, acting on the fear of missing out, or worse, fearing extinction. Such frenzied implementation of digital transformation projects is often misguided, and gives mixed to negative results, which further fuels skepticism.

Though companies in communications, media, and technology sectors share the common goal of accelerating their product and service delivery, most are invariably hazy about the specific digital transformation that truly fits them. It helps to stop, think, and ask questions to arrive at the right mix of digital transformation that they can readily pursue. How do people, processes, and technologies come together to solve existing problems? More importantly, where, and how to start the digital transformation?

At the base level, most companies in these sectors share these five common business imperatives while pursuing digital transformation. Here is a ready-reckoner that elaborates these five imperatives as a five-goal approach that companies operating in the communications, media and technology sectors need to pursue.

GOAL 1: ACCELERATE PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT

In a typical scenario where a product manager approaches IT to move quickly on a high-priority project, the IT team may complain about a lack of resources. Most IT teams in these companies often work in reaction mode, and deny resources because of improper planning. When faced with such constraints, business groups often spend huge money to get high priority projects done on an ad hoc basis. A wiser decision would be to invest that money in a cloud-native application development platform. This not only takes care of the pressing issues, but also becomes a catalyst to align business and IT better by making teams agile, and more collaborative.

GOAL 2: ALIGN BUSINESS WITH IT STRATEGY

Misalignment between business imperatives and IT strategy happens often in communications, media, and technology companies. While business thinks forward, IT teams are mostly concerned with ‘keeping the lights on’ and want to maintain the status quo. To overcome this deadlock, companies should adjust their organizational structures, so that the development team and operations team do not have to lock horns for accessing the limited IT resources.

GOAL 3: BREAK DOWN SILOES

In many media companies, each department or business unit has its own IT team that function in isolation. This in turn prevents them from leveraging each other’s work, slows down new product development, and kills agility. If a company employs separate IT teams, it should also strive to bring them all together. This can be achieved by sharing the same development platform, data architecture, and code repositories. Doing so helps increase agility, accelerate development cycles, and cut costs at every level.

GOAL 4: DESIGN THE BEST USER EXPERIENCE

Today, customers around the world expect a smooth, curated digital experience with a fluid and easy user experience on all fronts. It is, therefore, vital to place the user at the center of software design, and work towards providing a delightful user experience. Moving from a monolithic application that places undue restrictions on user experience, the way forward is to change to a micro-services architecture. By building applications that connect via application programming interfaces (APIs), software development teams can add or delete features at ease. So if a user wants something new, IT can modify a set of microservices without touching and re-testing the others.

GOAL 5: DRIVE COST EFFICIENCY

When communications, media, and technology companies decide to develop cloud-native applications, they face the twin barriers of a lack of a proper platform, and a scarcity of talent. This can be fixed by rationalizing their applications portfolio by ranking them according to their business value and cloud-readiness, and developing them on a SaaS model (Software as a service). This mode of development is easy to scale up or down based on changing requirements.

Looking forward, companies can succeed in these five goals by following a strategic approach. The first step is a concerted move towards developing a plan to move their applications to cloud-native platforms. The second step is to closely align IT with business by bridging ownership between these two organizations. The third, and the most important step forward is a laser-focus on users, taking their feedback seriously, and marching ahead towards providing the best user experience.

FACING TOUGH COMPETITION, CHURN, AND CONSTANT CHANGE, MANY COMPANIES TEND TO PURSUE THE SAME DIGITAL INITIATIVES AS THEIR PEERS PLAY ‘CATCH UP’, ACTING ON THE FEAR OF MISSING OUT, OR WORSE, FEARING EXTINCTION