The digital transformation began gaining momentum in 2020 and continued since now, as the world gets affected by the economic downturn led by the Covid pandemic. While the pandemic has made it difficult to predict the future digital transformation trends, it is most certainly going to emphasize strategic and urgent needs as the pandemic persists. So, let’s find out some of the possible keys to digital transformation, businesses should take into account as they enter yet another year filled with unforeseen events. Only time can tell the scenarios that people will experience in the future, but for the time being, here is a list of digital transformation keys in 2022.
1. 5G Network
While implementation of the 5G network was projected for 2021, it could not come to fruition due to the pandemic putting a prolonged halt to all industrial activities. However, the deployment of 5G in the 6GHz bands continued through the year and has significant growth potential. 5G has already been launched in several parts of the world and is expected to fully function by the end of 2022. The superior experience will drive more businesses to adopt the super-fast networking and devices that support it.
2. IT infrastructure for Hybrid Cloud
With the hybrid cloud model already making its mark in enterprise environments, more small and medium-sized companies are also paying close attention to their IT infrastructure. Most of them are using the public cloud in one way or another.
The unification of various systems into a hybrid cloud environment is the basis of digital transformation for even technologically advanced companies. The Digital Business Survey by IDG found that multi-cloud environments, software-defined storage and networking, IoT, edge computing, and of course Artificial Intelligence (AI) are the most commonly adopted technologies.
These trends are expected to continue in 2022, with cloud-based technology and AI algorithms driving business in every conceivable way.
3. A robust Disaster Recovery Plan
Experiencing some of the dreadful events of 2020, it’s almost comical to review the business continuity plan of 2021. Disaster recovery will lay the foundation for a speedy recovery from unprecedented events, hurting a business’s revenue stream. However, to survive in the long term, businesses have to build their resiliency against these events. Having a recovery plan will give them more control over tackling unknown situations.
Business continuity will be the top concern for blue-chip companies that try to sustain themselves in the competitive working environment. Employees will be more frequently trained to deal with the crisis moving forward and would also be made capable of having a robust recovery plan after being stuck in one place due to the pandemic.
4. Innovation-Driven and Agile Operations
To remain versatile, businesses must keep themselves closer to innovation and development and ensure a considerable software and technology budget for testing, developing, and validating products. Businesses will try to be in an equal position where they gain more robust control over their operations while improving the consistency of their innovations.
This will ensure that all the existing tech resources of the businesses are being sustainably utilized while the digital transformation managers get themselves one step closer to the main objective. This needs a DevOps approach to IT management – implementing Lean and Agile practices and focusing on speedy service delivery.
DevOps is a complete change in culture and application development lifecycle. It enables different teams to collaborate using technology towards a single goal of process improvement in a functional area. This is what you really call transformation.
Companies would also have to be more determined to develop creative ideas to keep their operations on track so innovations cannot be delayed. You need to become more streamlined if you want to keep track of the progress of your transformation initiatives.
5. People-First Approach
It has become more apparent how keeping employees as a priority is critical for a company’s overall success. When employees are satisfied with a company’s operations, they are more likely to align their vision with the management’s objectives.
Especially during the pandemic, employees who stayed through the difficult phase of the organization were once valued by the management and were compensated for their commitment and hard work.
Communication principles will be effective for change management in the future because employers will be more satisfied and employees can feel involved. They will be treated as the primary drivers of digital transformation as digital products result from employee creativity.
While most businesses might assume the most significant enabler of digital transformation to be technology, they are majorly mistaken. It is majorly the people. And, this is also a substantial problem in today’s market as most people don’t have the appropriate skills and strategy to leverage digital capabilities.
6. Composable Businesses
As the pressure to innovate continues to rise, organizations are likely to seek greater agility, leading to an increased drive to composable and event-driven architectures. Hence, it is critical for businesses to invest more in research and development, which would make them closer to their stakeholders’ needs.
At the same time, they try to build their brand presence and garner more attention for their contribution to society. Cutting-edge solutions and hyper-automation tools will be the key to long-term prosperity, and digital transformation that will enable firms to operate with a higher ability to cater to more comprehensive needs.
7. Digital Value supported by Automation
Businesses need to adopt automation wholeheartedly. With the increased adoption of remote work post-pandemic, automation has gained even more importance, especially in the areas of marketing, sales, customer service tools, and customer support.
Hence, it will be critical to determine the rate at which redundant work is being replaced with automated technology to speed up the process and enable the firm to cater to the broader needs of the market at a smaller time frame. Full-stack automation will help you transform the customer experience with tech tools such as:
- Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system to increase your sales pipeline
- Ticketing Routing systems for customer service automation and reporting
- Social media monitoring system for tracking brand mentions, building an audience, and improving PR
8. Default Security
As more and more business assets move online, companies are likely to increase their spending on protecting these digital assets and ensure not being exposed to cyber-criminal activities, which is essential to successful digital transformation.
Whatever the digital transformation is going to be, management has to ensure they have the right leadership skills to tackle the situation that comes their way. On the other hand, employees must be more open to helping companies build their brand positioning so they can be better placed to suffice the challenges and emerge stronger than before. Hence, the age of digital transformation will also make the managers emphasize maintaining a strong connection with the existing employees.
Digital Transformation Facts
According to the sources of IDC, global investment in digital transformation has already grown by 17.1%, which rounds off to a staggering $2.3 trillion by 2023. The geographical region spending the most on digital transformation is the United States, followed by Europe and China. The financial sector will observe the most extensive digital transformation among other industries. Still, enormous investments are expected to be made in robotic manufacturing, as experts forecast the expenditure to double within three years. An exponential shift of companies to B2C e-commerce is also likely to take place through 2022.
Achieve Digital Transformation with Comidor
Digital transformation is happening in every industry, and it’s important to create a strategy including all the digital transformation keys for the transition. With more and more people making use of digital technologies and solutions, it becomes important to have a platform that helps you with your digital transformation initiatives. Comidor Low-Code Hyperautomation platform enables organizations to go digital with less time and resources. It helps them automate, integrate, and extend their operations. Our platform provides an integrated suite of productivity and knowledge management tools along with cognitive automation capabilities for automating end-to-end processes, developing custom Low-Code apps, integrating existing systems, and connecting to everything.
Author bio:
Ankit Thakor is a marketer by trade and a football player by passion. He is a Saas Marketing Specialist at SoftwareWorld. He specializes in using compelling content to capture consumer dollars for world-class SaaS brands.
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