Digital Transformation - Here are the three ways it can happen

Part 2 comes after 6 years of the original post - "How to thrive in the world of digitization".

A lot has happened. Internet is now considered an essential service like water and electricity. Almost 4.66 billion people were active internet users as of October 2020, encompassing 59 per cent of the global population (Source). Around 4 Bn people are active social media users. The global cloud market is around 62 Billion in 2020 and is expected to grow at 20 CAGR YoY by 2025.

Lately, I enrolled on MOOC on The Business Opportunities of a Digitally Transformed Economy 

It was a course that talked about how to digitally transform your organization and prepare it to navigate the technology and business changes for the future. Experts talked about many things which can transform our future in the next 5 years. Three things that stood out for me are :

1.) SuperSpeed Connectivity: 

With the advent of 5G, we will unleash new potential for machine-to-machine interactions. New opportunities will evolve as the enhanced speed of data transfer will define new business models. It will unleash a new era of technological progress. A classic example, is refrigerators replenishing food items that are running out of stock.

2.) The emergence of sophisticated algorithms:

New algorithms especially leveraging Machine learning algorithms will be something to watch out for. Here there was a special mention of GPT 3 - an autoregressive language model that uses deep learning to produce human-like text. My personal view - it will have a significant impact in the areas of marketing, customer service, and process-centric business. One of the classic examples can be the machine studying the writing pattern of a user and writing emails/ content on behalf of a user. Looks promising.

3.) Move towards more sustainability:

The new generation faces severe challenges of climate impact. There is more awareness towards making this planet a better place to live. Sustainable products and activities are already getting ingrained in our society and are already seeing results as Sustainable companies outperform other companies. Along with price and quality, the carbon footprint of a product will be something that companies have already started mentioning in their products.

There were also mentions of how humans will elevate their roles to be more business process-centric as machines take up the task of automation more. Internet of Things (IoT) still is very relevant but data interoperability remains in the grey areas as no uniform standards have been set till now.

I frequently write on Enterprise applications and ERP markets. You can reach out to me at @subhankarp