On the path to Digital Transformation, what is holding you back?
This last week, I attended the Cisco Connect keynote, presented by Doug Good Cisco’s VP of Engineering and Architecture Sales, and it fundamentally changed the way I look at the topic of Digital Transformation. The presentation kicked off with Cisco’s definition of digital transformation “The connection of people, businesses, and things through technology.” It seemed like the 200+ customers in the room were settling in for your typical high level messaging on Digital Transformation but what happened next started to give me the details that I crave as an engineer.
Doug gave an example of two different ways of approaching a wireless project for a retail store, the first approach, the traditional IT approach was to provide reliable connectivity so the users could take advantage of Wi-Fi in the store. No one would doubt that this provides value, but this approach stops short of the benefits of true digital transformation. Doug then provided an example that did more than just provide connectivity, user location data was combined with point of sale information that helped the store determine optimal product placement and better market to the customers. Doug challenged the room, “Anytime you are using technology to launch a new business model, change the customer experience or optimize a business process using technology you have the opportunity to create digital transformation.” You have the opportunity to change your company if you do one of these, if you do all three you can change your industry.
I was intrigued. Now the IT teams in the room had a tangible blueprint to fundamentally impact the companies that they support and maybe even change their industry. Doug covered numerous stories of Digital transformation — not the typical stories you hear about the hot shot start-up that disrupted an industry but instead stories of well established companies that have embraced digital transformation.
One story was shared about a customer who made a product that could easily be duplicated and all of their patents were set to expire, they focused on changing their customer’s experience and in turn experienced significant growth. Numerous examples of Digital Transformation were shared, I don’t want to give away all of these stories, you really need to get to Cisco Connect to hear them directly from Doug or our other great speakers. I promise it will be worth your time! You can find the list of events here.
While these stories make digital transformation seem very tangible, that doesn’t mean it is easy. Running IT for an organization can be difficult by itself but getting stakeholders to work across traditional boundaries or revaluate processes can be challenging as well. IT Infrastructure also plays a critical role and quite candidly many of the processes that our customers use today are tedious and don’t allow them to move at the speed required. As an example, the days of managing thousands of ACLs and performing all network changes manually via the CLI has to end now. Cisco is making significant process with their Digital Network Architecture (DNA) that will allow customers to move quicker. The fundamental message is everyone has to keep evolving. So, what is holding back your organization in your path to Digital Transformation? In a full-on sprint to achieving digital transformation, what is the bottleneck? Is the bottleneck your Users, Applications, or Infrastructure?
