[Column] Sandeep Sharma: Long live digital transformation

There is a reason why the term ‘a New York minute’ has not just come to define the vibrant, endlessly shifting city, but also the realities of the technology-empowered world. The speed at which business, engagement and collaboration take place has become frenetic. In a recent book entitled ‘It’s not the big that eat the small…It’s the fast that eat the slow; how to use speed as a competitive tool in business’, the authors Laurence Haughton and Jason Jennings highlighted the incredible value in thinking faster, making faster decisions and sustaining this speed indefinitely. The reality is that there are small, fleeting opportunities that organisations must catch to enrich and monetise their business. It is the business that recognises this that will thrive in the digital world.

Time has become a commodity for numerous reasons. The models that underlie business, interaction and society are structured along models of linear change and change, as has been repeatedly emphasised by thought leaders around the globe, is exponential. The business is under pressure to redefine itself faster and faster. Those that ignore the relentless press for change will be rapidly left behind, the gap between their ability to keep up and stand outgrowing at a rate they will find impossible to close.

This has never been more relevant than in the telecommunications industry. Existing infrastructure and complex systems are hard to change and yet, those that do invest are not seeing the right levels of return. Gartner found that 69% of digital transformation projects are delivering limited to no returns on investment. It’s an unacceptable failure rate at way too high a cost.

Digital transformation is dead. It isn’t taking the industry where it needs to go as it tumbles beneath the waves of exponential change. The old patterns of thinking and the assumptions that have influenced investment and engagement decisions are not helping the business, they’re hurting it.  It is time to rethink everything. To find the advantages that lie in the differences and use those to differentiate.

Currently, most service providers have developed assets that have been tailored to meet the growing and evolving demands of the digital world. However, there are more considerations lying on the virtual table than the organisation is actually capable of visualising. The assets that will be relevant tomorrow, not today. While their true value and capability are close to impossible to guess, the core pillars that will redefine their development would be relationships, trust, expertise, and ambition. Truly great digital experiences start with the customer - a fact that is still not sinking into the South African corporate mind.

If the customer can connect with your offering and feel that you understand what they want, need and find of value, then their very vague and limited loyalty will lie with you. And this loyalty is hard to build and easy to lose.

The experience, operations, and network need to be connected to augmented intelligence that provides your company with the ability to learn, evolve and serve the customer in exceptional ways. In unexpected ways. This is where the true digital transformation journey should be taking your business, out from underneath the integration of the technology and into a space where everything works together intelligently. It is in this methodology that lies the ability to monetise and enrich experiences that deliver long-term value and tangible business results. 

Sandeep Sharma is the Vice President, Global Enterprise Business at Nokia Software