What Are The Technologies Used in Digital Transformation?
Rohith Krishnan
In this fast-paced business world changes in technologies often happen within the blink of an eye. Digitization is one of the key deciding factors as far as the future prospects of a business are concerned. Adopting and embracing digitization has become a matter of survival as well as a revival for a business. The road to digital transformation involves the adoption and implementation of a wide array of technologies like Artificial Intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT), cloud, etc.
What is Digital Transformation?
Before we get to see the definition of digitization, let us get to understand what the process is all about. Let us take the example of scanning a physical document and storing it in your phone or, say sending an instant message to your friend. The basic process in all these instances is known as digitization. In technical terms, digitization is the conversion of information in analog format to digital bitwise format.
As per a survey conducted by Gartner, 79 percent of corporates have digitized their businesses to create better revenue streams. Digital transformation refers to the process of adopting digital technologies and solutions by a company. Digital transformation is not a one-step process.
It is a continuous and ongoing process. Digital transformation emphasizes creating a paradigm shift in the way a business operates by revamping the existing organizational structure.
It can be considered as a cultural and organizational change that is brought about by the use of digital processes and technologies. The transformation being introduced by the use of these technologies helps to define new business processes and redefine the existing ones to meet the market and customer requirements.
What are the Technologies Used in Digital Transformation?
1) Cloud Technology
Whenever one hears about digital transformation, what most often strikes the mind is cloud computing. Successful cloud strategy is the cornerstone to the journey of digital transformation. Cloud technology is what helped IT services and white-collar professionals to continue with their work when the pandemic struck at the beginning of this decade.
It is the cloud that paved the way to the emergence of remote and hybrid work cultures. Cloud adoption is seeing a rapid surge these days. Nowadays there are customized cloud solutions and industry-specific cloud services for large-scale services like banking, healthcare, retail, and manufacturing.
Cloud technology can not only enhance the efficiency and productivity of business services but also enable them to offer the best experience to the customers and end-users.
Cloud computing is the cornerstone for business agility. Cloud computing enables agile application development and can be used for driving better flexibility due to provisions of easier scalability.
Cloud computing capabilities can enable organizations to scale their infrastructure based on the business requirements and thereby eliminate the wastage associated with the upfront reservation of resources as in the case of on-premise infrastructure.
2) Artificial Intelligence
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is being widely identified as one of the forefront drivers of the fourth generation industrial revolution. AI capabilities are used to automate most of the day-to-day chores of a business.
It can help personnel to get around the intricacies that are associated with mundane and other repetitive tasks. AI capabilities can be used to analyze, understand, reproduce and mimic actions that are in tandem with the way as to how human intelligence works.
These algorithms can enable a system to work and act in line with the instructions that are specified according to a rule base. AI capabilities can be used for customer service operations and functionalities. AI solutions based on chatbots and virtual assistants can be used for providing automated assistance and response to the customers thereby offloading the customer agents and enabling them to direct their time and energy for other productive operations. The pandemic has accelerated the pace of the adoption of AI technologies.
According to the report titled ‘AI in a Post COVID-19 World’ by AI Journal, about 72 percent of the leaders felt positive about the tremendous role that AI capabilities will play in the future.
About 74 percent of the respondents revealed that such capabilities can make business operations more efficient. AI capabilities based on machine learning and deep learning are revolutionizing the operations of businesses.
Public cloud services such as Google Cloud, AWS, Azure, etc offer the latest capabilities and solutions based on AI. Developers can use these cloud solutions that provide high computing and processing capabilities for deploying their humongous and mammoth databases as compared to deploying local storage devices. Deep learning capabilities are used for applications like image classification. This can be used for pred-diagnosis detection of cancers.
3) Big Data Analytics
In this world, we have more devices connected to the internet as compared to the number of human beings!. Metaphors like ‘data is the new oil’ and ‘data is the gold’ convey the relevance that data has in this ever-changing business landscape.
The large-scale surge in the number of devices has resulted in a data explosion. As per Social Media Today, more than 2.5 quintillion bytes of data are generated each day. The data is poised to explode further in the years to come. In this digital-savvy world data is the ultimate game-changer.
But merely having the data does not serve any purpose. It is extremely difficult to process this humongous amount of data. It is important to collate and organize the data to gain the best visibility and insights. It is here that solutions based on big data analytics come into the picture.
Cloud-based solutions facilitate easy data warehousing capabilities that make it possible to leverage big data analytics capabilities. Data warehousing capabilities can enable enterprises to channel the data from multiple sources and use it to gain efficient and actionable insights. Customer service teams use data analytics solutions to gain better insights about their customers and could be used for activities like customer segmentation, onboarding, upselling, etc.
4) Augmented Reality
Augmented reality is a technology that provides a real-world environment with an interactive experience. The objects that reside in the real world are visualized by computer-generated perceptual information.
This can be across sensory modalities like auditory, haptic, olfactory, and visual units. It can be defined as a system that incorporates a combination of real and virtual worlds along with real-time interaction. Thus augmented reality is a technology that could be used to alter the perception of a real-world environment.
Augmented reality enables users to see the real world with digitally overlaid information. These capabilities are achieved via video see-through and optical technologies using special devices such as smart glass.
5) Internet of Things (IoT)
Digital transformation emphasizes the best usage and exploitation of data. It is here that the relevance of IoT comes into the picture. IoT includes billions of devices that could communicate amongst themselves and exchange data and other information through the internet and other communication networks.
IoT includes the convergence of technologies like embedded systems, ubiquitous computing, and AI. According to DataProt, 58 percent of the respondents identify IoT as one of the strategically important factors that drive digital transformation operations. Companies, irrespective of whether is large or small can deploy technologies based on IoT that could be used to digitize physical products.
6) Robotic Process Automation (RPA)
Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is one of the significant drivers of digital transformation. RPA uses automation tools and solutions, virtual assistants, chatbots, AI, and Machine Learning (ML) solutions to streamline business operations and functionalities.
Such capabilities can eliminate repetitive and mundane activities and can be deployed in processes that demand human-like skills and decision-making. Most importantly RPA solutions can enable teams to save a significant amount of time. RPA solutions can facilitate an easier and faster transition to digital solutions. The future is set to see rapid adoption of such technologies as these can find applications in endless use cases.
7) Digital Twin
The digital twin is a technology that serves as a real-time digital counterpart of a physical object or process. The continual improvement in product design and engineering has facilitated the growth of this technology.
Handmade drawings and drafting have given way to computer-aided and assisted drafting and design as well as model-based systems engineering. A digital twin can be identified as the digital copy of physical objects, products, tasks, and processes.
Using this technology, one can simulate, analyze, and assess the information and results of a physical process. Deploying technologies based on 3D modeling to create a digital version of a physical entity can be considered as a good example of digital twins technology.
This technology is deployed in healthcare services for easier and faster diagnosis by creating advanced and 3D models of the human body thereby enabling healthcare service providers to practice and test the effects of drugs in a virtual environment before using it on human beings.
8) Blockchain
Blockchain is also a driver of digital transformation. It is a decentralized and distributed ledger that facilitates tracking the assets and recording the transactions in a business network.
This technology can be used for applications based on digital currency, bitcoin, supply chain, insurance, etc. Blockchain has led to revolutionization in the way financial services operate by the management of cryptocurrencies like bitcoin. Apart from the speed at which such transactions can be carried out, blockchain can also offer higher levels of security.
Conclusion
Digital transformation is something that is not confined to a single technology. It can be identified as the best combination of technologies that could pave the way to better efficiency and productivity. So if you are in the race to embrace digital transformation, it would be good to keep in mind the technologies that were covered in this article.
Are you looking to improve the efficiency of your applications?
Or embrace automation solutions?
And finally, revamp your infrastructure and improve enterprise mobility?.
The only solution to these requirements is digital transformation. We offer cloud migration services for organizations that are looking to make the transition to digitality.
We provide application modernization services for improving the performance and efficiency of applications. We also employ the latest technology stacks and deploy AI and ML capabilities that can eliminate the hassles associated with conventional processes.
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