Digital Transformation: Another Step Closer to Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030

“Every business is a technology business” – a core realization that executives in Saudi Arabia and around the world have had over the last year. In today’s world, businesses need to adopt the latest technologies to remain competitors in their industries. Saudi Arabia recognizes this challenge, placing innovation at the center of the Kingdom’s 2030 vision . This is where digital transformation steps in.?

The concept is best described as the process of utilizing digital technologies in order to create new – or alter existing – business processes, cultures, and customer experiences to enter new markets and/or change how a business functions. In short, integrating digital solutions allows for easier, smarter, and more efficient operations. A key factor in digital transformation is recognizing the full potential of your technology. I encourage you to steer the question away from how much faster you can complete your tasks. Rather, question what your technology is really capable of and how your business can benefit the most from your technology investments.?

Generally, there are 4 different types of digital transformation:

Process Transformation

A remarkable focus of corporate activity has been on business processes. Data, analytics, APIs, machine learning, and other technologies grant corporations valuable new means to reinvent processes throughout the corporation – with the aim of reducing costs, decreasing cycle times, or increasing quality. Process transformation allows for the creation of significant business value and adopting technology in these areas is quickly becoming a norm for companies that want to remain competitive.?

Business Model Transformation?

Nowadays, some companies are using digital technologies to revamp traditional business models. Business model transformations are aimed at the essential building blocks of how value is provided in the industry, rather than the finite areas of the business.?

Domain Transformation

This area can unlock immense opportunity but there’s the challenge of disruption. New technologies are redefining products and services, obscuring industry boundaries, and thoroughly inventing new sets of non-traditional competitors. Interestingly enough, what many executives don’t acknowledge is the very genuine opportunity for these new technologies to unlock entirely new businesses for their companies beyond currently served markets. And often, it is this type of transformation that offers enormous opportunities to devise new value.?

Organizational Transformation

In the long run, the way digital transformation presents itself technologically is through the complete restructuring of organizational mindsets, regular processes, and individual capabilities within businesses. Corporations that are readily adaptable in this regard take active steps to make these changes in their frameworks. They do so through realizing the agile workflows, bias towards testing and learning, decentralized decision-making, and greater reliance on business ecosystems that this fast-paced and ever-evolving environment demands. For instance, Experian is a consumer credit agency that completely transformed its organization by integrating agile development and collaboration into its workflows and by shifting company-wide employee focus from equipment to data. This is one of the most successful examples of digital transformation brought to the fore through revamping inherent procedures within corporations.

With this clearer understanding of digital transformation comes the ability to articulate its existence in Saudi Arabia. In fact, digital transformation is a fundamental facilitator for realizing Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 – geared toward constituting a forward-looking society, a thriving economy, and an aspiring nation – by constructing a digital society, a digital economy, and a digital nation.

In order to coordinate this shift nationwide, the National Committee for Digital Transformation must overcome impediments and expedite the implementation of digital transformation initiatives throughout dozens of Government entities. According to statistics released by Accenture, 74% of executives in Saudi Arabia recognize that their organization’s business and technology strategies go hand in hand and are indistinguishable from one another. Furthermore, Accenture surveyed more than 6,000 businesses and tech leaders from 27 countries (including Saudi Arabia) to investigate the pandemic’s impact on businesses globally. The results display a general effort to adapt by using the latest advances in technology. This is reflected in the 86% of Saudi organizations that agree that a cloud-driven transformation is critical for the agility and resilience required this year, which “truly indicates the fast-evolving nature of business in the Kingdom, especially post COVID-19.”

Not only does Saudi Arabia provide a strong foundation for multinational corporations to base themselves in the Kingdom, but the country also acknowledges the importance of repositioning their businesses in the digital economy. The Kingdom has and continues to demonstrate great potential to achieve its 2030 goals through how it uses technology as a means to transform.