Businesses of tomorrow are the ones that can successfully transition from \u2018things and people\u2019 to \u2018technology and networks\u2019. This is evident in the recent proliferation of the adjective \u2018Digital\u2019 in most C-suite titles and businesses either being \u2018born-in-the-cloud\u2019 or traditional businesses undergoing some form of Digital Transformation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
However, there is no consensus as what \u2018going digital\u2019 actually\nmeans. To some executives, it is the deployment of technology in their current\nbusiness \u2013 also called business process optimisation (BPM). To others it is\nabout a whole new way of engaging with customers, also called the digital\ncustomer experience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Then for others it\u2019s about an entire new way of conducting\nbusiness – the exponential digital business mindset. One would presume that the\nvarious definitions depend on the individual business circumstances including\ncompetition, cost pressures, customer expectations, industry disruptions and\nregulations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
FIRtech CEO Ugan Maistry says that, whilst none of these\ndefinitions are incorrect, every Digital Transformation journey needs to be\nguided by strategy, a business model that supports that strategy, enablers that\nare needed to execute the business model and the orchestration of enablers to\nreach one\u2019s destination.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIf it\u2019s so easy, then why are they failing?\u201d he asks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIn defining the digital business strategy, most executives are\ntaking a blue-sky thinking approach in redefining the purpose of the\norganisation. This might seem revolutionary and necessary at the time, but it\ncould create an execution challenge for IT.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Unrealistic expectations often create complexity in the planning\nand execution phases. The project becomes inundated with technology imperatives\n– cloud, Artificial Intelligence, big data and IoT, without due consideration\nof where and how each of these imperatives will add direct financial benefit,\nvalue differentiation or build brand equity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Instead, the yardstick is the size of the data lake, the speed of\ndata retrieval, data mobility and the reduction of the ICT opex budget. Before\nyou know it, a few years have passed, hundreds of millions of Rands spent and\nthe failed project is attributed to poor organisational structures, inadequate\norganisational change management and a lack of executive support.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Maistry says perhaps it should be evolution and not revolution. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIn the era of the knowledge worker, perhaps the quick wins should\nbe around how we free up the business knowledge worker to be active\nparticipants and leaders in the Digital Transformation journey,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cAfter all, they are the ones with the knowledge of the\norganisational nuances.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They spend their time manually manipulating a melange of\nstructured and unstructured data as resident data jockeys, guiding and mending\nthe business processes with short term fixes and inadvertently creating a\nprecedence of what they regard as acceptable practice, acceptable turnaround\ntimes and acceptable service levels.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Any brownfields Digital Transformation initiative is going to be\ndependent on having optimised business processes, preferably digitised. This\nwill surely remove all friction in the system, ensuring that customers and\nsuppliers can engage with the enterprise in an efficient, timely and\ncost-effective manner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Maistry says Robotic Process Automation is the answer. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cRPA tools offer potential ways to automate repetitive, manual,\nrules-based tasks,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWhilst RPA is not the answer to all automation conundrums within\nthe enterprise, it does offer a compelling alternative to traditional BPM\ntools.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Instead of months-to-years to automate business processes within\nthe enterprise, RPA can achieve similar results within weeks-to-months. The\nearliest versions of RPA technologies were primarily anchored in screen\nscraping technology \u2013 which allowed a software \u2018robot\u2019 to mimic user\ninteractions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
However, RPA technology has evolved significantly since then.\nToday, RPA vendor UiPath offers a host of out the box user interface\ninteraction, integration and descriptor technologies that can be configured to\nmimic business processes in an attended (user monitored, controlled and\ninterfaced) or unattended \u2018lights-out\u2019 mode. This allows one to create a team\nof virtual workers that operate 24\/7, executing error-free, repeatable business\nprocesses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Apart from the use case of reducing manual interventions in\nrepeatable business processes, one can use the technology to reduce headcount\nin batch driven data input and output processes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cOne could also link to legacy or external systems in a\nnon-intrusive manner that would otherwise be too cost prohibitive to integrate\ninto one\u2019s internal business process or avoid major systems re-engineering for\nthe purpose of integrating or automating part of a business process,\u201d added\nMaistry.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Businesses of tomorrow are the ones that can successfully transition from \u2018things and people\u2019 to \u2018technology and networks\u2019. This is evident in the recent proliferation of the adjective \u2018Digital\u2019 in most C-suite titles and businesses either being \u2018born-in-the-cloud\u2019 or traditional businesses undergoing some form of Digital Transformation. However, there is no consensus as what \u2018going […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":28980,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4950,6,399,262],"tags":[386,116,5691,11048,389,11049,390,7531,11050,8255],"class_list":["post-28979","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-analysis","category-insights","category-more-news","category-used","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-big-data","tag-bpm","tag-business-process-optimisation","tag-digital-transformation","tag-firtech","tag-iot","tag-rpa","tag-ugan-maistry","tag-uipath"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28979","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/25"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28979"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28979\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29093,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28979\/revisions\/29093"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28980"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28979"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28979"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28979"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}