In Part 1, we looked at how the way change is implemented is evolving, the benefits of building a great support team and how an external view can provide a clear roadmap for an organisation. Having established these, we can now look at how business analysis can be used to leverage a global supply chain for competitive advantage.
Stephen R. Covey famously said, “If there’s one thing that’s certain in business, it’s uncertainty.” The prescience of these words is clear in a time when key decisions come with such a wide range of risks, possible outcomes and potential technology solutions.
And it’s also true that the problems themselves change and evolve; in my 15 years of working with businesses to enable change, I’ve never solved the same problem twice. Businesses are continuously looking to innovate to gain a competitive advantage or adapt to market conditions.
Delivering on the promises of Intelligent Automation can be overwhelming, especially if the hype is oversold and you’re not made aware of the potential blockers and challenges that could derail your ability to scale.
Should enterprises move their business-critical systems to the cloud? Most enterprises, especially the ones looking to modernise their legacy systems & processes would answer in the affirmative- ‘a resounding yes!’
Cloud adoption is the latest computing paradigm that has taken over the IT industry. Enterprises are adopting cloud computing services to transfer increasingly significant pieces of their business to the cloud to make themselves much more competitive. By leveraging cloud services, they can deploy their software systems over a pool of resources. Recently, Fitbit moved all the data associated with its Care Management and Coaching Platform for healthcare providers to Google Cloud —giving Fitbit the scale it needs to integrate with large hospitals and insurers. Similarly, Kroger Co. USA’s biggest supermarket chain migrated all its websites and mobile applications to cloud. Cloud-based services have amassed popularity among public organisations as well, with almost half of the US government organisations actively using cloud services.
Cloud-based services have gained attention across the industries, however, the potential for increased uptake of the technology is still large. As per Gartner 2019 forecast report over the next three years, 44.6 percent of smaller organisations along with 37.7 percent of midsize and 40.4 percent of larger organisations plan to migrate to the cloud. However, ‘how to migrate to the cloud?’ is still an unanswered question for many organisations. To minimise the potential risks associated with the migration, it is important to have the right migration framework to improve the maturity level and consequently trust into legacy-to-cloud migration.
To ensure successful cloud migration, enterprises should focus on how to move to the cloud. Cloud is more than just a hosting platform and simply moving all the data to a cloud platform cannot be classified a successful migration as it is not sufficient to tap into the possibilities that a good cloud migration strategy could render. It prevents you from taking advantage of the cloud’s unique capabilities to create something entirely new, the right way. Some case studies have illustrated that having the right cloud migration strategy can be a significant differentiating factor between a successful migration vs. failure of investments.
A successful cloud migration requires the planning and execution of a comprehensive strategy that sets migration goals, creates a timeline, anticipates challenges, and defines the project’s success.
Here are four important stages to ensure a fast and uneventful move to the cloud:
Under political and public pressure, government services providers are under intense scrutiny to provide value and right first time delivery. To reduce public expenditure, public bodies including the NHS, Ministry of Justice and DWP were challenged to transform their technology to modernise services and deliver improved value for money. To achieve this, Government departments procured large scale IT vendors’ services that offered economies of scale and simplified delivery.
A global systems integrator accountable for delivering 7 national UK public sector IT modernisation programmes chose Mastek as their end to end testing delivery partner. They required a partner with a strong testing capability, adaptable capacity and attractive pricing model, together with a trusted history of consistent supply to deliver 7 key UK programmes.
Project Deep Blue is a Mastek initiative that encourages engineering graduates to create innovative technology solutions for non-profits to address challenges faced by them in solving real-life social problems. Currently, in its fifth season, this unique programme acts as a bridge between the industry and academia and has amassed tremendous popularity in the engineering community for offering students the opportunity to design, develop and build solutions in a project-like environment. Over a period of three months, students are guided by their assigned mentors to successfully develop solutions to address various social problems in the field of education, healthcare, and citizen services – facilitated and identified by Mastek Foundation.
In FMCG, F = Fast. Retailers need to adapt to rapid changes in consumer attitudes and the marketplace. Every aspect of retail operations has the potential to make or break the customer experience. AI technologies are breaking down barriers and making it imperative for retailers to adopt a globally competitive retail business model. The power of machine learning has made it possible for businesses to continuously scrutinize customer behaviour data and generate alerts when the time is right for the next best action.
To leverage the many opportunities offered by new digital technologies, enterprises are changing their approach and adopting an “automation-first” mindset. RPA is usually the first step on their automation journey, providing highly effective process automation, integration and increased productivity. However, it still relies on the “human touch” to interpret unstructured data, provide conversational understanding and decision-making. To move towards full automation, solutions need to be smarter.
Successful RPA adoption requires successful adoption of the ‘Automation First’ mindset. Businesses embarking on a digital transformation journey should carefully weigh their options, align changes to their growth plans and define a clear set of strategies before taking an exploratory plunge.
To deliver value and accelerate growth, enterprises need to change their fundamental approach and add speed and accuracy to the various business processes. New digital technologies present both game-changing opportunities for-and existential threats to-companies whose success was built in the pre-digital economy. Digital transformation is a pre-requisite for sustainable growth and in some cases, survival of enterprises in the current dynamic and pace-driven market.