Digital transformation towards a modern workplace…

In a bid to lever­age ful­ly the poten­tial of recent dig­i­tal advance­ments, busi­ness­es in vir­tu­al­ly all sec­tors are embark­ing on dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion projects, which are becom­ing increas­ing­ly com­plex. Although it may be vital to break down infor­ma­tion silos with­in a com­pa­ny, mak­ing employ­ees a cen­tral part of any trans­for­ma­tion strat­e­gy is of equal impor­tance.

“Mil­lions can be spent on dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion projects, but if an organ­i­sa­tion doesn’t train peo­ple how to use the tech­nol­o­gy effec­tive­ly, it just won’t work,” explains Paul Richard­son, head of trans­for­ma­tion at SCC, Europe’s largest inde­pen­dent IT group. “Busi­ness­es must have the capa­bil­i­ty to improve end-user adop­tion. To sup­port trans­for­ma­tion every­thing from user man­u­als to a full learn­ing man­age­ment sys­tem, includ­ing online cours­es and videos, may need to be cre­at­ed.”

When per­formed cor­rect­ly, dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion can turn an organ­i­sa­tion into a mod­ern work­place and effec­tive­ly utilise dis­rup­tive tech­nolo­gies to enable greater col­lab­o­ra­tion, whether with­in the organ­i­sa­tion itself or a wider part­ner net­work. Dat­a­cen­tre mod­erni­sa­tion often lies at the core of dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion pro­grammes that are mov­ing com­pa­nies towards a more agile and dynam­ic work­force mod­el.

“Dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion means dif­fer­ent things to dif­fer­ent peo­ple. What many busi­ness­es want is the panacea for the mod­ern work­place. Every­thing from the Holy Grail of the paper­less office to dat­a­cen­tre trans­for­ma­tion, build­ing new infra­struc­ture and capa­bil­i­ties in the cloud, and embrac­ing a cloud-first strat­e­gy,” says Mr Richard­son.

Dri­ven by a desire to move towards more pre­dictable fixed costs and away from expen­sive, cycli­cal dig­i­tal refresh­es every few years, dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion projects that empow­er employ­ees to work from any loca­tion are on the rise. Work­ing with a knowl­edge­able and expe­ri­enced IT part­ner is essen­tial to guar­an­tee every stage of the trans­for­ma­tion jour­ney, from design­ing a cloud strat­e­gy to full imple­men­ta­tion, while ensur­ing align­ment with busi­ness strat­e­gy.

It’s clear to see how dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion projects can help a busi­ness main­tain a com­pet­i­tive advan­tage. If a busi­ness is not on a dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion jour­ney, they can be sure their com­peti­tors are.

In an age of always-on devices, employ­ees increas­ing­ly need to be as mobile as pos­si­ble and not be con­strained by out­dat­ed tech­no­log­i­cal infra­struc­ture. As the younger gen­er­a­tions enter the world of work, they will want the same fric­tion­less dig­i­tal expe­ri­ence they get in their per­son­al life, for exam­ple a con­sis­tent dig­i­tal expe­ri­ence, includ­ing wifi and mobile inter­net at all times. Com­pa­nies that fail to offer this expe­ri­ence sim­ply won’t be able to attract the best tal­ent.

It’s just as impor­tant to change busi­ness process­es as it is to trans­form the tech­no­log­i­cal foun­da­tion of a com­pa­ny, with a cost­ly dig­i­tal rebuild doing lit­tle to improve the bot­tom line if staff aren’t giv­en the free­dom to work in a way they feel most com­fort­able and pro­duc­tive.

Accord­ing to mar­ket intel­li­gence firm IDC, com­pa­nies are on course to spend $1.3 tril­lion on dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion tech­nolo­gies in 2018 alone, illus­trat­ing the will­ing­ness of busi­ness­es to pay out large sums deliv­er­ing dig­i­tal strate­gies. From com­pa­nies migrat­ing email into Office 365 to mov­ing all ser­vices into AWS or Microsoft Azure, most com­pa­nies are on some type of jour­ney into cloud ser­vices.

Mr Richard­son worked with a glob­al man­u­fac­tur­ing firm to trans­form their lega­cy col­lab­o­ra­tion plat­form. Email, instant mes­sag­ing and video con­fer­enc­ing solu­tions were all sit­ting on old infra­struc­ture in high­ly expen­sive dat­a­cen­tres, and cost­ing the enter­prise dear­ly.

“We helped migrate ser­vices into the cloud that are utilised in 40-plus coun­tries around the globe. This enabled the firm to stan­dard­ise and con­sol­i­date their entire glob­al col­lab­o­ra­tion plat­form and remove the issues they used to have because of sys­tems not inte­grat­ing. The new envi­ron­ment we built for them had a glob­al stan­dard, and enabled them to trans­form appli­ca­tions and oth­er ser­vices on top of the plat­form to fur­ther enable their busi­ness,” he con­cludes.

For more infor­ma­tion please vis­it www.scc.com