New WSO2 e-book examines best practices for navigating the digital transformation landscape

Mountain View, CA: Digital businesses are reshaping the landscape of many industries with novel products, services, and business models. Whether starting from scratch or leading an established enterprise through digital transformation, these organisations recognise the need to adapt both their technology strategies and cultures in order to continually innovate and thrive. 

A new e-book from WSO2 reviews cultural factors, technology requirements, and proven strategies for driving an effective digital transformation initiative. The e-book is available at http://wso2.com/landing/free-e-book-navigating-the-digital-transformation-landscape.

The e-book, ‘Navigating the Digital Transformation Landscape,’ incorporates best practices observed by the WSO2 team while supporting customers’ digital business strategies. It sets the context by reviewing two major trends among digital businesses today. 

New digital-native businesses have emerged with digital products, services and business models that are changing how we work and play. Uber as an alternative to taxis, StubHub for buying and selling tickets, SpotHero to find parking spaces, and Fitbit for monitoring activity are three examples.

Established businesses are engaged in digital transformation, reinventing their business models and innovating offerings as the market landscape and technologies evolve. For instance, Netflix has moved from fulfilling video rentals by mail to delivering content online, to becoming a major funder of original content. Meanwhile Starbucks provides a Mobile Order & Pay app that lets consumers place their coffee orders in advance and pick them up waiting in line.

The e-book then examines the primary business drivers of digital transformation initiatives. These include evolving business models where digital solutions increasingly replace physical offerings, enhancing the customer experience using analytics and social media to better understand customers, and optimising operations by digitising processes and enabling data-driven decision-making. 

The e-book also reviews seven key technology enablers—APIs, integration, security, artificial intelligence, analytics, mobile, and the Internet of Things (IoT)—and how they contribute to digital businesses. Next, it examines key approaches to creating a culture that fosters the innovation and agility required to build a digital business. These include democratising IT strategy, prioritising on focused solutions, and the need to open source internal applications and aligning IT closely with the business.

WSO2 then outlines best practices being employed by customers, from startups to Global 1000 companies, to drive their digital transformation initiatives forward. These include:

Creating a staged roadmap with clear milestones to deliver smaller-scale, focused solutions while gaining support for the broader digital transformation initiative.

Cultivating the team to ensure that employees have the right skills and mindset to drive the transformation.

Popularising the proof-of-concept to demonstrate early success and build the confidence needed to foster change.

Creating an internal open source culture that adopts the best aspects of open source organisations.

Using small groups to bring big ideas to market, replacing their traditional, hierarchical enterprise IT structures.

Engaging the enterprise’s broader ecosystem in the initiative, from partners and suppliers to technology vendors and cloud service providers.

The e-book concludes by explaining how WSO2 supports enterprises’ digital transformation initiatives with software designed to meet today’s demands for an agile approach to API management, integration, identity and access management, smart analytics, and IoT.