Three Key Digital Transformation Trends 2023 – How to Adopt Them

Visionary business leaders never take the risk of going numb to the global economic scenario and the onslaught of new technologies hitting the market. What technologies are gaining the most traction? How are these technologies shaping the business world? As these leaders look for answers to keep ahead in the digital era, we have identified three key digital transformation trends in 2023 that every business must embrace and shared many tips to help you adopt these trends.

We all know that the year 2023 is going to be critical. Businesses will require dealing with the aftereffects of the global pandemic, Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and the ever-faster development of technologies. A new study by the World Bank states that central banks worldwide are hiking interest rates in response to the current global scenario and subsequent inflation. With that, the world may be edging toward a global recession in 2023. It may lead to a string of financial crises in emerging markets.

Nevertheless, business leaders must find their way out to achieve stability and faster growth. The array of technologies, each with its own promise of revolutionizing the business world, lays out a convincing case that there is a way out for business to keep up their transformation drive and forge ahead in the current digital era.

Some Interesting Predictions Related to Digital Transformation

The premier global market intelligence firm IDC has released a list of digital transformation-related predictions underpinned by a series of drivers, such as a multi-platform digital ecosystem, digital-first business strategies, customer engagement, environmental and social responsibility.

• By the end of 2024, direct investments in digital transformation will account for 55% of all ICT investments, growing at a 16.5% CAGR.
• 90% of global enterprises will prioritize investments in digital tools by 2023 to augment physical spaces and assets with digital experiences.
• By utilizing model-based enterprise concepts, low/no-code platforms, and an enterprise-wide approach to automation, 60% of organizations will profit from disruption by 2025.
• By 2026, 54% of CIOs will use strategic technology roadmaps and re-platforming to enable an agile, data-driven, and collaborative workforce for driving digital business transformation.

Digital Transformation Trends 2023 that Every Leader Should Embrace

1. Go Data-Driven with Analytics

Companies are flooded with structured and unstructured data, and a crucial aspect of digital transformation is figuring out how to extract commercial value from all that data, ideally in real-time.

Businesses need to be proactive in becoming data-driven organizations, where strategic decisions are backed by insights derived from deep data analysis. It requires making data accessible and actionable for all stakeholders, especially at the point of decisions.

Investments in modern business intelligence tools like Power BI, Oracle OAC, Looker, cloud-based smart analytics made available by tech giants like Microsoft Azure, AWS, Google Cloud Platform (GCP, and Oracle Analytics Platforms; data integration platforms like Boomi, Mulesoft, OIC, and data visualization tools like Tableau will help organizations simplify their data analytics and have the power to do more with data. Over 90% of Jade’s clients are in the process or have completely migrated to a scalable cloud platform for their analytics requirements. They have empowered their business user community with tools to make data-driven decisions in real time.

2. Scale Automation with AI and RPA

The entire business industry has been speaking about automation for quite some time, and adoption is also increasing at scale. However, the approach to automation for most businesses is limited to signing into applications designed to automate standard business operations, such as payroll, data collaboration, data sharing, communication, etc. While these are equally relevant and fundamental for a business to operate seamlessly, it's time to derive more value from technologies like Robotic Process Automation (RPA).

Adoption of RPA gets even more important because businesses across the board are investing in technology platforms, but these platforms are subjected to functionality gaps in the absence of proper handholding. Robotic Process Automation significantly fills these functionality gaps, saving time, labor, and cost. RPA, coupled with AI/ML, can fast-track a range of repetitive manual tasks while ensuring accuracy and delivering business benefits like digital transformation, higher efficiencies, and improved customer experience.

While every industry can leverage RPA, the potential for certain industries is massive. For instance, 60% of consumer and retail activities can be automated in the retail industry. From invoice processing and sales analytics to inventory management, enterprise resource planning, and customer support, everything is automatable with RPA. Automating these retail tasks could lead to a 10% increase in revenue. 80% of retailers believe that AI and intelligent automation will soon be mainstream technology. (source- https://www.uipath.com/solutions/industry/cpg-retail-automation)

Getting it Right with RPA Adoption

Companies need to go domain-specific and business-specific to identify the scope of RPA. However, adopting RPA the right way requires navigating through challenges like siloed implementation, technical/management ambiguity, and resource/infrastructure crunch. RPA- focused professional Digital Transformation Services can help here.

The right RPA service partner will be the one that has a team of certified automation experts to engage exclusively in RPA projects. The team should be experienced in leading robotic automation technologies like UiPath, Automation Anywhere, and Power Automate. Also, the partner should be efficient in rendering faster implementations by using technology-agnostic robotic automation frameworks, smart APIs, predictive models, and sentiment analysis.

3. Get More with Cloud

A dynamic business environment that wishes to push innovation to the edge requires robust technical support. Do traditional tech systems suffice here? When it comes to building enterprise tech infrastructure, there has been a paradigm shift to Cloud for its high computing and storage efficiencies.

It has been more than two decades since businesses have been experimenting with cloud platforms to build their capabilities and scale more efficiently while reducing technology risk. But by 2023, businesses will be at that phase where they can't go wrong with their cloud efforts because it leads to unexciting ROI and causes businesses to lag in the competition.

Gartner has predicted that by 2025, over 95% of digital workloads will be deployed on cloud-native platforms. So, it is time for businesses to look beyond the lift-and-shift approach. They must start leveraging the Cloud for more profound digital transformation by using containers, microservices, REST APIs, and other technologies.

Getting it Right with Cloud Adoption

When it comes to hosting cloud-native applications or data platforms, defaulting to traditional implementation models is ill-advised to capture the real value from the Cloud.

Enterprises often go wrong by defining cloud opportunities with their siloed business initiatives. Most cloud adoptions are through a lift-and-shift approach; wherein, on-prem virtual machines are replaced with ones that are off-prem without taking advantage of cloud-optimization levers. Businesses miss having design considerations of how the organization will operate holistically in the Cloud.

Organizations must approach cloud adoption as an integrated project fitting into the overall business-technology transformation. Here is how to do that:

• Identify the business functions or processes wherein cloud platforms can increase revenues and improve margins.
• Avoid the approach of lifting and shifting to the Cloud as a resolution to siloed operational challenges.
• Get clarity of different “as-a-service” options (SaaS, IaaS, or PaaS), and accordingly, choose the sourcing and migration model that aligns with economic and risk constraints.
• Leverage the Cloud to build an integrated IT ecosystem so that multiple enterprise applications, irrespective of where they reside, can function coherently, ensuring smooth data flow across enterprise applications.
• Use this opportunity to simplify and unclutter your business processes. One of our clients was able to retire 40+ business applications in their cloud journey of just two years resulting in enormous savings.

How to Tap the Digital Transformation Trends 2023?

1. Understand the implications of the trends on your business

If the trends are known to all, then why are some businesses more successful or at the forefront of realizing the benefits? It is because their approach is different; it is not limited to identifying the trends for adoption, but they pay more attention to understanding the implications of those trends. This helps the leaders better adapt in the coming years. They don't look for prognostications but focus on exploring realistic scenarios, their implications, and what needs to be done to get ready.

Let's understand it better; when you think of trends, you talk about the latest technologies that are driving changes and shaping businesses in the current digital era. But to open the door to new innovations and business models, you need to catch on to the magnitude of changes that these technologies are capable of. For instance, how the Cloud can exponentially increase your computing power, how advanced AI and machine learning can help you bring in a range of new services and products, or how to enhance your analytical sophistication.

A digital transformation partner certified by brands like AWS, Google, Microsoft, Salesforce and Oracle, can help you see things through clearer lenses.

2. Treat digital transformation as your trajectory to lead with innovation

What does that mean? Isn't every business putting effort into driving innovations in some way or another? They do, but centralized innovation strategies cannot keep pace on their own in the current economic scenario and faster tech developments. Here, you need the power of networking.

When a business thinks of innovating, it must spot, invest, and acquire promising opportunities. In the year ahead, businesses will need to be much more involved in networks outside their organizations to identify opportunities for innovating at the edge. Now how to do that?

Businesses can leverage the networking of their front lines, particularly business domain experts and technologists. Companies must figure out how to encourage their front lines to develop, maintain, and tap into their networks.

3. Focus on building scaling capabilities for your teams

To identify the innovation opportunities that work for the business, domain experts, technologists, and their teams need to build up their scaling capabilities.

Thus, business leaders must retrospect whether their teams are competent enough to scale their capabilities in the changing digital and economic scenarios. Are they provided and resourced enough to identify innovation opportunities and industrialize them across the organization? Does the leadership have the right tools and platforms to scale innovations? This retrospection provides vivid clarity on how you want to progress in your digital transformation journey.

Endnote

For a digital transformation to be effective, it is crucial to understand the expanding needs of consumers, employees, and the organization as a whole. Also, comprehend the potential of new technologies and adopt them the right way so that they reap ROI. Strong leadership is also necessary for firms to make informed decisions about their technology spending.

New-age technologies are the drivers of digital transformation, and high-grade precision is needed as you adopt these technologies. It requires connecting the dots across critical factors such as readiness assessment, road mapping digital transformation, defining roles of the business leaders and stakeholders, implementation and maintenance of tools/platforms, and integration with existing software. The journey indeed gets intimidating in the absence of professional digital transformation services.

Taping digital transformation trends in 2023 is not about resolving siloed business challenges. Instead, it is to identify how to push the whole business into the path of modernization to be in a state where you are innovating. It demands an integrated approach that best comes from the support of a professional digital transformation partner.