Ahead of his session, "Engaging Digital Transformation Through Workflow Management" at the Workflow Management LIVE virtual event, we invited Akhil Gupta, Vice President, Major Bank to discuss his thoughts on the 4 building blocks of digital transformation success. 

Technology

One of the major struggles of digital transformation is replacing and augmenting legacy technology with fit for purpose cutting-edge digital technology. However, in such a fast-paced world, it can be difficult to not only keep up with new trends, but also separate the hype from reality.

“Every other day, you hear about a new technology, which is being invented or being used by any other organization. Now we have the internet of things, blockchain, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and the list goes on and on” says Akhil. “Microservices is another buzz word.  Microservices enables the decoupling of your application into smaller pieces and delivering it on a regular basis. Now tomorrow, if I have to make a particular change, I know that I have to just make a change and do a test in that particular area only. 

Take for example Amazon, which is such a huge application. If they do not run it in a decoupled way, they will go crazy when they have to roll out a particular feature and then they have to test the entire application. That doesn't work in today's world. So that's why organizations are moving away from the hard coupled applications to the loosely coupled applications. And that is where the microservices is taking place.”

Data 

Organizations are generating more data than ever. Though this surge of data has the potential to unlock a tremendous amount of value, it also presents a number of challenges. As Akhil explains, “You will have some tables and rows and columns, and then you have the particular data with you, where you used to work on. But today, the data is coming from a number of sources. The data comes in from your video feed, your audio, your maps, your documents. Now, when you get this data, you need a pool of data analysts or data scientists to make this unstructured data into a readable format so that it enables the leadership team to take strategic decisions.”

Process

Before you can launch any sort of digital transformation, you have to know and be able to articulate what exactly you are transforming. Real-world process optimization starts by mapping out current process and, in partnership with your stakeholders, creating a future-state vision.

“For digital transformation to be successful, you need a clear roadmap as to what you want to do in the next six months, one year, two years, and five years down the line. To do this, first you must understand your customer needs as well as your internal processes. You need to visualize your organization’s way of working.” Akhil tells us. “You also need to have a clear roadmap involving a variety of stakeholders beyond the silos and the internal and external limitations. 

When I say silos and the internal and external limitation, because at times there are departments within the organization, which work in silos, and when they work in silos, you cannot achieve your digital transformation journey. So this roadmap takes into account that end goals will continue to move as and when the digital transformation is happening, because digital transformation is not just a one time activity. It's an ongoing journey.”

People

Never forget, digital transformation isn’t about technology. It’s about people. 

“Digital transformation is only possible if you have your stakeholders with you. You need to have proper change management in place and you need to communicate properly what it is that you are going to do,”explains Akhil. In addition to technical experts such as developers, “you need people who can articulate the benefits and the pros and cons to the people who are most impacted.”