A digital transformation success story
Global spending on technology and services that enable digital transformation (DX) is expected to reach $2.3 trillion by 2023, according to the IDC Worldwide Digital Transformation Spending Guide.
In this fast-growing sector, 73 percent of enterprises failed to realize sustained returns on their digital investments.
I recently interviewed Nourdine Bihmane, EVP Business Platform and Solution at Atos, one of the international leaders in digital services, to tell us about Atos digital transformation success story.
On the 26th November, Atos became the digital champion and took the lead of 2019 Forbes CAC 40 Digital Index. So, congratulations on these results! Could you tell us what was the key for this progression in two years?
It has been a long-term evolution, but our good progress is due to a combination of top-down and bottom-up approaches:
● Digital transformation was set as a top priority by general management. Appointments were made at the very first level. An entire team was put in place along with key investments. Atos Group is implementing a global roadmap and all management is involved
● The Group permanently delivers innovative solutions to our clients. Now we turn this inherent force towards our employees. Many communities (incl. talents groups or our global experts) are contributing their share to enhance, re-design and re-engineer our processes and bring us innovative solutions that we benefit from
● As a result, many tangible outcomes are available to our employees and starting to materialize externally
What role did digital workplace play in this success?
Digital Workplace is at the heart of Atos’ end-to-end IT offering, as the Group delivers the entire scope of IT solutions for large enterprises. That part is the most directly in contact with any users. Everyone is working with a cell phone and nearly everything today, could be done from it! We are talking here about any single tool of communication, collaboration, obviously mobile and social, such as Office 365, Teams, or G-Suite, Analytics, produced either by our partners or some apps we produced inside Atos. For example, Atos produced a great App called OneSource that allows for any CIO to manage its entire IT organization from their cellphones. As a result, Digital Workplace is often the most expected and also appreciated by any user of our customers, whether internal Atos employees or by our customers. Everyone today wants the best set of tech tools to give themselves the best means for unleashing creativity and or giving the highest productivity. The many great stories of super happy employees help me and my team to create new great stories.
According to Dell’s latest barometer, France has one of the lowest digital maturity scores and finishes second to last with a score below the European average. What role can Atos play to reduce this gap?
This barometer encompasses the entire country which indeed shows big gaps in digital maturity. Atos is aiming, together with its large number of global partners (Dell Technologies Group, Google, AWS, Microsoft, SAP, NetApp, Hitachi, Intel,..) to help private and public administration to reach their next IT level. Bear in mind that this switch is never easy. So, we do our best to facilitate to the smoothest and most seamless transition to ramp-up their IT equipment and their agility. To sum up we work with all stakeholders, incl. European institutions, we promote all technologies, and sometimes we team-up with some competitors to help the country be at the right level or become a global leader in technologies. As an example, we work with the CEA in France on the next European mission to Mars!
Digitization is a fundamental issue for some companies, what are the main roadblocks to understanding it for your customers?
Of course, you have technical barriers, but that’s our job to solve these roadblocks. The real roadblock for me is the change of mindset. Switching technologies is not complicated, but change management remains the toughest part. Who, will do what, tomorrow? Let me share with you that digitization is indeed a bold move; many CIOs admit it to me! For me and our Group it is our duty to find all best solutions to remove any roadblocks and I can tell you I do it personally every single day!
In the near-term, quantum computing could play a pivotal role in the dialogue between companies and customers. What will be its role? How soon will it become a reality?
A very short-term predictability and an even greater accuracy. The potential is so great and it’s a reality already today! Our customers are not awaiting. They have plans to benefit from the many outcomes, including super-fast modelization, big analytics or cybersecurity. Many public administrations both in Europe and in the US have already bought our quantum machines. I am very excited, as it’s only the beginning of the journey. Come and join us into this great journey in Atos. We are the only European player in Quantum!
About this article
This article has been written by Khaled Ghrissi, digital transformation consultant and student on the Grenoble Ecole de Management’s Advanced Master in Digital Business Strategy. As part of a content creation assignment, students are given the task of writing articles based on their digital interests and disseminate the articles online. Articles are marked but we make minimal changes to the content.
Thanks for reading! James Barisic, Programme Director, MS DBS.
