Enterprise Journey to Becoming Digital

Do you want to be a digital enterprise? Do you want to master the art of transforming yourself and be at the forefront of the digital realm? 

How can you change your business to achieve this? 

Derive new values for yourself, and find better and more innovative ways of working. Put customer experience above and beyond everything as you find methodologies to support the rapidly changing demands of the digital world. 

Your transformation will be successful only when you identify and practice appropriate principles, embrace a dual strategy that enhances your business capabilities and switch to agile methodologies if you have not done it already. 

The journey to becoming a digital maestro and achieving transformation traverses through four main phases. 

• Becoming a top-notch expert with industrialized IT services – by adopting six main principles 
• Switching to agile operations to achieve maximum efficiency – so that you enjoy simplicity, rationality and automation 
• Creating an engaging experience for your consumers using analytics, revenue and customer management - because your customers come first; their needs and convenience should be your topmost priority 
• Availing opportunities for digital services – assessing your security and managing your risks 

Becoming a top-notch expert with industrialized IT services

There are five key transformation principles that can help you realize the full potential of digital operations and engagement.

• Targeting uniqueness that is digitized 
• Designing magical experiences so as to engage and retain your consumers
• Connect with digital economics, and collaborate so as to leverage your assets
• Operate your business digitally, customer experience being the core
• Evolving into a fully digital organization through the side by side or incremental approach 

Initially a digital maturity analysis has to be performed, followed by adoption of a targeted operational model. Maturity can be divided into five different levels: initiating, enabling, integrating, optimizing and pioneering, which are linked to seven different aspects: strategy, organization, customer, technology, operations, ecosystem and innovation, of which the last two are the most critical. The primary aim should be to cover all business areas that are impacted by and impact digital transformation. 

Before taking a digital leap, the application modernization wheel should be adopted. Identify your targets, which will act as main drivers. Determine application states, and then come up with a continuous plan. This is referred to as the Embark phase, during which you understand the change rationale of your applications, and then improve metrics, which drive changes. During the Realize phase, you analyze ways in which you can change your operations and speed up your delivery. In the process, you have to improve quality, while ensuring your product line is aligned with your business needs. You establish DevOps, beginning from small teams, and then moving forward using new technologies. 

The third phase is Modernize, during which you plan and implement your architecture such that your apps are based on API services. The last stage is Optimize in which performance is monitored, and improvements are made when and where they are necessary.

Switching to agile operations to achieve maximum efficiency

Data centers now feature several applications, suitable for the IT, telecommunication and enterprise sectors, but their offered services have to be responsive to the changing trends and demands. Ericsson brings agility into the picture so as to achieve efficiency through automation. This can be made possible with the NFV Full Stack, which includes a cloud manager, execution environment, SDN controllers and NFV hardware. The solution is capable to support automated deployment while providing you flexibility through multi VIM support. Check out this blog post to see a demonstration of a virtualized, datacenter and explore their vision of future digital infrastructure. 

NFV’s potential can be fully achieved only when the hybrid networks are properly managed, which dynamic orchestration makes a possibility. The approach taken automates service design, configuration and assurance for both physical and virtual networks. Acceleration of network virtualization is being realized through the Open Platform for Network Functions Virtualization (OPNFV), a collaborative project under the Linux Foundation that is transforming global networks through open source NFV. Ericsson is a platinum-level founding OPNFV member, along with several other telecom vendors, service providers and IT companies leading the charge in digitalized infrastructure. 

Creating an engaging experience for your consumers 

Customer experience is the central focus when you are in the digital realm. Customer experience should be smooth, effortless and consistent across all channels. 

Design a unique omnichannel approach for your customers. This means that you should be able to reach out to your customers through mobile app, social media platforms and even wearable gadgets. Analyze real-time data, and use the results for improving purchase journeys obvert different channels like chatbots and augmented reality. Advanced concepts like clustering and machine learning are used to cross data over different domains, and then take appropriate actions. For instance, if you were a Telco, you should be able to offer a new plan, bundle or upgrade to each customer at the right time. All of the analytics data can also be visualized for a complete understanding through which the customer journey can be identified, and the next best action can be planned out.

 Availing opportunities for digital services 

Complexity increases when all your systems are connected, and security becomes a more important concern. You should be able to identify new vulnerabilities and threat vectors, and then take steps to protect your complete system. And this protection should extend to your revenues, and help you prevent fraud. 

A Security Manager automates security over the cloud as well as physical networks. The two primary components are Security Automation and 360 Design and Monitoring. New assets are detected as security is hardened, which are then monitored continuously. 

Additionally the Digital Risk and Business Assurance enable your business to adapt in the dynamic environment while reducing impact on your bottom line. Assurance features three levels: marketplace, prosumer and wholesale assurance. The end result is delivery of a truly digital experience. 

Want proof that the above methodologies do work wonders? Two of Ericsson customers, Verizon and Jio, have already been nominated as finalists for the TM Forum EXCELLENCE Awards.

I also encourage you to join and/or follow TM Forum Live this week. If you’re headed to the conference, be sure to check out the Ericsson booth and connect with the team to learn more and discuss your digital transformation journey. 

If you would like to read more from Ronald van Loon on the possibilities of Big Data and IoT please click 'Follow' and connect on LinkedIn, Twitter and Youtube.