In the wake of the pandemic organizations are redefining their digital strategies. CIO’s have to now confront the new challenges that come with modernization.
The repeated and varied number of lockdowns across the world has pushed organizations towards prioritizing a digital-first approach to capture the market and reinventing the way they operate.
The flow of interaction in the pre-pandemic world was from customer to organization and now it has turned the other way round from organization to customer.
Through digital channels direct to the customer has become the new path of business success.
With the dynamics in the market changing organizations are redefining their digital priorities raising new questions & problems for CIOs and IT leaders to find answers to.
The three key challenges associated with modernization of enterprises :
The need to focus on cybersecurity
Businesses were forced to modernize faster with additional focus on security. Organizations are looking to provide better customer experiences, achieve operational efficiency and resilience faster at full scale.
Modernization of enterprises initiatives that would typically take 5 years are now scheduled to complete in 1 or 2 years.
While prioritizing faster time to market, security should not be ignored. Modernization should go hand in hand with security. Breaches in cyber security can destroy customer trust and affect brand value resulting in loss of revenue.
To achieve faster modernization of enterprises and security controls the following approaches should be followed by organizations.
- To ensure faster and secure delivery of business features using Agileand DevSecOps approach
- Low-code/no-code tools for faster development.
- Using smart automation across the entire application lifecycle.
Pressure for modernization without the increase in budget
The fashion, aviation and discrete manufacturing industries were most affected by the pandemic. Most pressure was faced by Fashion retailers as stores closed due to reduced business. Due to travel bans the aviation industry was under revenue pressure.
CIOs need to prioritize the following activities by reducing the cost associated with non-essential IT expenditures.
- For operational elasticity and capex, move to the cloud.
- Next gen technologies and open source for modernization needs to be adopted at a reduced budget.
- Automating modernizations can reduce costs upto 40%.
- Glance for self funded modernization programs.
Tech talent shortage
Modernization requires highly skilled talent which is always very scarce. Additionally, working remotely with a dispersed workforce was new for many organizations hence resource management became difficult.
The best practices to follow to effectively manage the talent crunch are:
- Continuous learning to upskill and reskill with next gen technologies.
- Removing the dependencies on talent through too-based reverse engineering for modernization.
- Creating an approach that is location agnostic.
- Reduce annual activities by embracing automation and reusability.
- Next-gen IT skills must be democratized with alternative groups of developers.
With the pandemic, organizations have been forced to reimagine their offerings and strategies. Most organizations have accepted this as the new normal, they fear business disruption and the challenges associated with it, like time cost and talent that is holding them back.
To thrive in this highly competitive post-pandemic world, non-disruptive modernization will be the key to success.
How can Kilowott’s BXT framework enable modernization of enterprises?
The Business Experience Transformation (BXT) model innovation challenges the status quo – reimagining current functions and processes to transform for the present and for the future.
Articulating the aspirations and expectations of the organization for its engagement with the digital world and of putting the customer at the heart of everything it does.
Customers’ needs and expectations are the overriding consideration in deciding what services to provide, how and through what channels.
Empowering the staff to think and act digitally, to be innovative and to seek ways to transform business processes and services for more engaging customer experiences.
Provides the criteria by which to prioritize digital initiatives so resources and energies are directed and planned appropriately.
The model is intended as a tool to define current and target states of maturity; however, it is not prescriptive as to suggest a best way to achieve the target state. It provides guidance on the development of BXT.
The level to which an organization needs to be mature in each area/dimension is dependent on your own business strategy (focus of the business), business model ( business configuration/design to realize the business strategy), and operating model (capabilities to be executed against the business strategy and model).
The model can be validated at different stages, by assessing what level “As is” against the desired, “To Be” in terms of the given maturity levels across the whole organization or individually across the dimensions/pillars which make up the Organization.
It not only addresses implementing better technologies, but also addresses aligning culture, people, structure throughout the organization. based on strategy, business model, and operating model.
To decide between adopting an evolutionary or a revolutionary approach, you should start with a thorough evaluation of your operations to determine the best path forward. The evaluation process should include assessing the following considerations:
- – Workload – Audit applications and software to determine their business value, criticality and where there are opportunities to modernize. Assess workloads holistically in context of the go-forward business direction.
- – Architecture – Review infrastructure elements, performance and ROI to assess where newer technologies can deliver better outcomes.
- – Financial – Evaluate spend to find budget burdens and ways to optimize resources to support current operations and prepare for what’s next.
- – Uncertainty – Weigh the potential for business interruption, as well as any related implications on business processes and organizational culture, against the goals of your legacy system modernization project. Consider the risks of preserving the legacy system in its current state, such as upkeep for out-of-support systems or those with limited support resources.
- – Execution – Determine whether new skill sets, training, and processes must be taken into account when calculating modernization costs and deadlines.
- – Planning – This is for system security before, during, and after modernization to avoid data loss, outages, and exposure. Organizations should confirm adherence to legislative and industry compliance regulations in the new environment in the security plan.
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