Your journey towards digital transformation – Is it time to get started?

The world is now becoming more digitally mature with billions of people, devices, and applications being connected to the internet. This concept of a ‘connected world’ has been brought about by the rapid and constant innovation of technology, and companies and individuals alike are hopping on board to reap the benefits. Eventually, every enterprise, irrespective of the industry they operate in, will need to follow a digital transformation path to remain competitive. And they need to get started now, rather than later. 

The invent of mobile devices means everything needs to be done quickly and on the go. People today don’t find the need to meet with an enterprise representative to fulfil their requirements. The closer a service or product is to their fingertips, the better. From an enterprise’s point of view, they need to proactively find innovative ways to take their businesses to customers and be increasingly visible in customers’ environment via various channels. 

They also need to change the way they interact with various stakeholders such as customers, partners, and suppliers, and adopt a more open approach. This helps enterprises to extend their capabilities and build on other’s capabilities to innovate faster and in a collaborative manner. The ultimate goal is to expand business opportunities and boost revenue.

To remain competitive in such a volatile environment, as an enterprise, you need to adopt and adapt to ever-changing technology developments, which would help you to get closer to your customers and extend boundaries. To be easily accessible to your customers, you need to expose your capabilities with connected devices through mediums, such as social media and mobile applications. 

With a combination of API management, social integration, identity management capabilities, and analytics to capture data on customer behaviour, you can build a closer connection to your customers. A similar set of requirements are needed with a greater focus on API management – to expose all your services as APIs – to enable innovation and create opportunities and ideas that can be then sold to your customers. Additionally, you need mobility, connected devices, and devops to extend your boundaries as part of enablement to encourage people to be more innovative, iterative, and agile in terms of how fast they can take an idea to market.

Gain an edge over competitors within your industry 

Digital transformation is not confined to a particular industry, but rather helps any enterprise to become a leader in their space. For instance, connected retail allows retailers to provide their customers with a seamless journey from digital to physical, linking their online and mobile retail experience with their experience in-store; for example, loyal online shoppers of a retailer can be given discounts through their mobile devices when they are in the vicinity of the physical store. 

Connected health helps to integrate patients to the doctor, hospital, emergency care providers, pharmacies, and insurance companies, enabling a more efficient, cost-effective healthcare service. For example, when a patient is brought to a hospital after an accident, the doctor should be able to instantly access their medical information to check for any existing conditions or allergies and the insurance company should be immediately notified of the incident without the patient having to get involved in any way. 

Even a fairly complex and highly regulated industry like finance can prosper by being connected as consumers are now looking for online financial experiences that go beyond the web. They’re opting for systems that are socially connected, interactive, mobile-enabled, and simple and easy to use. To meet these requirements, financial institutions need to develop a next-generation financial infrastructure that will seamlessly connect with all their existing backend systems. 

For example, an account holder of a bank would rather transfer funds through a mobile app on the go rather than wait for the bank to open and go to its physical location. The same is true for the transport industry. For example, a taxi company might aggregate location and fare data from the vehicles in the field and run fraud detection algorithms to analyse the data and make sure taxi drivers don’t manipulate fares.

Being connected doesn’t only apply to corporates and individuals. Even governments and education systems can reap its benefits. Many governments across the world are now adopting an e-government approach where they can provide innovative and specialised electronic services that provide high levels of quality information, convenience, and transparency to citizens. Connected education gives students and educators faster and more efficient ways to offer as well as access educational information. This concept supports high user turnover, frequent provisioning, diverse roles, and the growing use of online mobile and web apps.

Choosing the right middleware platform is key 

To achieve digital transformation and become a connected business you need to adopt a platform that’s integrated with multiple capabilities required for your specific needs. You also need to seamlessly integrate this platform with your existing legacy systems. This holistic platform needs to support key functions such as API management, integration, security, analytics, mobility and governance. You need to be able to choose which components of the stack you require and integrate it with your enterprise’s architecture, a key advantage offered by WSO2’s complete middleware stack. Such a platform will help you build your ideas, innovate on it, and create the value you need at the lowest possible cost, time, and effort. 

Today, maintaining visibility in the customer’s environment, approaching them before they seek you, enabling a generative platform that makes way for users to innovate, and extending your capabilities and leveraging those of others have become a necessity rather than an option for business continuity. By connecting your customers, devices, and applications through an integrated platform you will enable your enterprise to expand its businesses, increase revenue, and ensure better return on investment while staying ahead of the game.

(For comments/feedback on this article email [email protected]. To learn how WSO2 can help you in your digital transformation journey visit http://wso2.com.)