At least 40% of all businesses will die in the next 10 years… if they don’t figure out how to change their entire company to accommodate new technologies” The above quote made by John Chambers, Executive Chairman, Cisco System in 2015 is relevant even today.

Digital Transformation is an organisational change that businesses are embracing using new technologies to increase operational efficiencies, productivity or increase value for the customer.

IDC estimates businesses around the world would spend around $1.2 trillion on digital transformations this year and around $6 trillion in the next four years. Success of digital transformation is often measured in ROI and it is a tough challenge to procure funds to implement it. Continuous change would be an ideal approach rather than doing big bang implementation to sustain rapid change in the technologies.

Various research firms like Gartner, Forbes, CIO. com have presented top 5 or 10 trends that would play a major role in digital transformations.

I would like to talk about five trends where most of the companies are likely to invest.

“Success of digital transformation is often measured in ROI and it is a tough challenge to procure funds to implement it. Continuous change would be an ideal approach rather than doing big bang implementation to sustain rapid change in the technologies.”

Connected Cloud Applications

Number of cloud applications have increased multifold and companies face a huge challenge in integrating the cloud platforms.

“Through 2020, integration work will account for 50% of the time and cost of building a digital platform,” says Massimo Pezzini, Distinguished VP Analyst, Gartner As the companies move towards cloud platform, the challenge of integrating the applications will continue to exist and will top the CIO’s priority list.

Artificial Intelligence (AI)

AI is transforming from a buzz word to reality. Nowadays, many enterprises are trying to leverage AI to support and complement their business functions. Intelligent Chatbots/Emailbots are driven by NLP eliminate need of a person to address customer queries. Similarly AutoML are being developed to act as a virtual data scientist to make the systems learn from the datasets and provide meaningful insights to the businesses.

Blockchain

Blockchain has not picked up as expected. It is still in evaluation stage. Various industries and government organizations are evaluating the blockchain technology. It can potentially play a major role in contract management, banking, identity management, insurance and food industries.

Augmented Reality (AR)

Augmented reality has been there for a long time in different forms until the phrase “Augmented Reality” was coined by Thomas P Caudell of Boeing in 1990. AR has been put to use in retail industries like furnishing and cosmetics to give customers real world like experience when they are purchasing products. AR will grow over next few years and will extend into logistics, training, healthcare and manufacturing industries.

General Data Protection Regulation Compliance (GDPR)

GDPR sets out guidelines on the customer data collection process and its usage in European countries. There are many companies which are not in compliance with this policy. “Before year-end 2021, more than a billion euros in sanctions for GDPR noncompliance will have been issued” – Gartner.

Technologies keep on evolving and there will be a time in every company’s life cycle when it has to undergo changes to adapt to the latest technology trends.

Take home point ….. adapting continuous transformation path for future growth is a sign of a successful company.