How Digital Transformation empowers organisations to be Future-ready and enables 24x7 sales.

Digital Transformation (DX) is not just about digitisation or digitalisation. It is not about IT upgrades to buy faster servers or replacing old software. It is not about sending employees for training and upskilling. It is about integrating the Business Strategy with People, Processes and Platforms with a shift in mindset to operate the business with a new Operating Model. This new Operating Model could be enabled by HPE modern pay-per-use technology services and digital platforms, flexible IT financing that’s tailored for your business with no upfront costs to ensure you can thrive in a post-pandemic world.  

What is Digital Transformation? 

Digital Transformation is an opportunity to reimagine your business to operate from a cloud platform with the power of agility, scalability, and data security. The outcome you seek is to be an intelligent organisation that works smoothly with data, introduces business operations and technology agility that allows you to reimagine your Customer Experience, redesign your Business Processes, unlock maximum productivity for Employees, and deliver maximum value to Customers. It is the opportunity to retain current customers, launch new business models, acquire new customer segments while growing a business that your customers and employees love. 

What if all these opportunities are already available today, now, through HPE digital transformation solutions, with no upfront cost?

Business Operating Model Before COVID. 

Just about one year ago, before the global pandemic, businesses were busy with customer acquisitions, product and service deliveries and day to day administration. IT Administrators were patching computers, adding capacity, and improving the performance of applications, databases and security. 

Then, COVID hit the world. 

Countries closed borders. Global travel stopped. Businesses were not allowed to operate in offices. Shopping malls were empty. Merchants struggled to move their goods. Global supply chain and logistics came to a crawl. Employees were ordered to work from home. Organisations with manual operations and ageing IT infrastructure and systems were the hardest hit. 

When COVID hit the world, HPE was ready to empower SMBs and Enterprises with HPE digital transformation services.

While the entire world was scrambling to figure out how to stay safe and operate in a pandemic, HPE was ready to empower SMBs and Enterprises with HPE digital transformation services. The integration of HPE GreenLake Cloud Services and HPE IT Financial Services could deliver a smooth experience to implement digital solutions. 

For most enterprises, IT functions are either operated by IT departments or outsourced to IT vendors. Making strategic IT decisions such as digital transformation requires board-level approval that takes years to implement. This is exacerbated by IT Managers who have not been equipped with the right tools. 

Even with cloud solutions maturing over the past ten years, business departments are still operating in silos as if it's the year 2000. Accounting software in many SMBs is still not integrated into the CRM system to provide a holistic understanding of customers purchasing history and payment promptness. 

With cloud solutions maturing over the past ten years, businesses are still operating in silos as if it's the year 2000.

For instance, accounting systems are not integrated with the warehouse management system to provide on-demand inventory status. The CRM system is not integrated into the Customer Support system to give the business the speed and velocity to respond to issues and challenges customers are facing. HR systems are not integrated with social media marketing to communicate the culture of the business to attract talents. 

The list goes on. 

Business Operating Model in a post-COVID World.

COVID changed the world. Businesses were forced to adopt new operating models with modern cloud technologies to continue to exist. Employees were forced to change their work habits. Organisations realised that employees can work from home with digital tools. Employees realised they don’t need to commute 3 hours a day to the office. While the office space demands shrunk, demands for digitalisation continues to grow.

While the office space demands shrunk, demands for digitalisation continues to grow.

A recent survey of 650 IT decision-makers worldwide found that 3/4 of companies are currently undertaking digital transformation initiatives. The companies across Asia spent USD16.5 billion on digital transformation projects in 2020, and it is estimated that 70% of these projects could be expected to fail.

‘Digital’ is the problem

Mention the word 'digital' to the operations director for a manufacturing company in India, and he might associate it with going paperless. Speak about it to the founder of a startup in Indonesia, and she may think of data analytics, machine learning and artificial intelligence. If you were to mention it to a regional MNC manager in Singapore, he would probably picture agile teams capable of operating a low-code, no-code software.  

‘Digital’ is a confusing word, which has caused a lot of confusion in businesses large and small.

Imagine ordering your favourite cheeseburger over and over from a Western food cafe that operates through a food delivery platform. Instead of getting your premium wagyu beef cheeseburger, you get everything else from a Chinese beef noodle, an Indian tandoori chicken to a Thai mango salad! 

It’s frustrating!

This is why business leaders and managers must be fully aware of this reality when they frame conversations around Digital Transformation with employees, IT vendors, and digital transformation consultants.

With so much noise around ‘digital’ and ‘digital transformation’, what can business leaders and business owners do to take action? 

Identifying and choosing a digital transformation partner to develop your strategy is key to a successful DX outcome. One such company to consider is HPE. 

HPE has reimagined and redesigned its business into a global edge-to-cloud platform-as-a-service business. HPE is equipped to deliver all your edge and cloud computing demands and digitally transform your business to be future-ready, allowing you to set up multiple online sales channels from multiple online platforms to operate and accept orders 24x7.

Whether you are operating a small business, a regional mid-sized SMB with hundreds of employees or a large MNC with tens of thousands of employees, you no longer have to worry about large capital expenses to launch your digital sales channels or worry about technology complexities when you think about your business and its digital transformation needs. HPE digital transformation integrates HPE GreenLake cloud services and HPE IT Financial Services to deliver a seamless HPE customer experience.  

Using HPE IT Financial Services, you get IT financing and asset lifecycle solutions with pay-as-you-consume pricing to transform your business. With the HPE Payment Relief Program, you can defer payment for up to eight months to launch your digital transformation today!

On top of that, you could leverage the HPE Transition solutions, which enable your business to retire and recover value from your ageing IT infrastructure while migrating to the cloud with HPE GreenLake cloud services. I particularly like these HPE environmental-friendly solutions as the world combats climate change. I feel that I am participating to be part of the solution.

Furthermore, with the HPE Subscription program, you can convert your IT infrastructure and systems into affordable and predictable monthly payments. By partnering with HPE, you can now delete your beliefs about unaffordable and expensive modern cloud solutions because it’s no longer valid. 

The global demand for innovation and agility for IT solutions and digital transformation is at a fever pitch. It would help if you looked beyond your business cash flows for funding. Your IT assets must be measured by how well they contribute to your business goals and fund your digital transformation. You need to innovate, and you need to do it fast. You know that the vast majority of your current apps and data are “systems of record” that run your business. These are your CRM, Accounting, ERP, Helpdesk, and Business Intelligence systems. They must live in data centres for data gravity, latency, application dependency, and regulatory compliance. However, these “systems of record” lack the agility of the modern cloud. 

With a modern cloud-enabled by HPE GreenLake, you could introduce cloud speed, scalability, agility, and an as-a-service model to where your apps and data are today. You can digitally transform the way you do business with one experience and one operating model across your business departments, geographical locations, and distributed clouds.

Now, you can now integrate your apps and data at the edge, in co-location facilities and your data centre as you scale your business. 

HPE GreenLake is the edge-to-cloud platform-as-a-service that comes to you, wherever your apps and data live.

Let’s have a conversation about your digital transformation, the HPE way, now.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

MohsenRuddin Moonshi is the Director of Strategy & Transformation at Scaling-Up! Ventures; Business Mentor at Faster Capital; Strategy Advisor to several SMBs and Startups with 20+ years of experience in technology consulting for SMBs and Enterprise in Southeast Asia.