What Does Becoming Digital Mean?
There is much hype about digitalisation and even more discussion about what it is and how organisations embrace it. At HighPoint we view digitalisation from three perspectives:
(i) Digital on the Outside
This is where digital is obvious to see. It’s how you engage with your customers, driving new and innovative ways to deliver services through digital channels. It’s Click-and-Collect, Customer Apps, Support Portals, Chat-Bots and Automated Services. It’s about differentiating through service delivery that is responsive, personalised and effective.
(ii) Digital on the Inside
This is where organisations integrate Applications and data to automate business processes, streamline information flow across the organisation and leverage data to gain valuable business insight. Here processes can digitally traverse systems removing duplication, automating manual tasks and driving efficiencies. It’s also about utilising the wealth of digital information to analyse trends, performance and make better informed business decisions.
(iii) Digital First
Digital First or Digital Transformation is what underpins both of the above. It’s about creating an environment that accelerates digital innovation and supports agile development. It’s providing an infrastructure that is dynamic, resilient and can digitally connect every part of the business, and it’s about providing the tools, analytics and automation that enable you to transform how you manage and operate your digital environment.
So Where Do You Start?
Digital Transformation is not an application you can simply buy and plug in. It’s not a token digital gesture like a customer app. It’s a programme that takes you on a journey to becoming digital on the inside, digital on the outside and ultimately becoming an Agile Enterprise.
At HighPoint we see this transformation journey to becoming an Agile Enterprise as a number of distinct executive sponsored programmes of change that touch every part of your organisation. From defining how technology underpins your business strategy via a Digital Business Architecture to the necessary organisational change required to keep up with the demanding rate of change and innovation to keep and attract new customers, HighPoint have the experience to support executive level stakeholders through a roadmap of incremental change towards the ultimate destination through our service engagements:
(i) Application Assurance
The first step is to ensure that your critical business applications are accurately identified and understood. Are they meeting the performance, security and agility requirements of the business and more importantly your customers? Technology has advanced significantly in the area of sophisticated analytics, cognitive machine learning and the automation of environment provisioning and management Application Assurance provides you the in-depth insight that enables intelligent workload placement and optimisation to business-critical applications to ensure that these consistently perform in the best way possible.
(ii) Secure Software-Defined Infrastructure
The creation of your Digital Business Architecture enables the provision of a hybrid scalable infrastructure with integrated security through an architectural approach, leveraging automation and policy-based orchestration & provisioning that reacts to the changing business demands. With an open extensible platform for your developer ecosystem using secure containers and microservices you can place control in the hands of the business through self-service
(iii) Next Generation Operations
The Services Automation platform provided by High Point delivers a tightly integrated suite of service enablement applications that support organizations in meeting the challenges of managing converged infrastructure environments. Leveraging real-time network, sensor, application and consumer analytics for the identification of new opportunities and threats to dramatically improve systems availability, productivity and efficiencies in IT management.
How do you start?
Make no mistake about it, the world is going digital fast and the phenomenon of digitalisation is reaching an inflection point.
Every company in every industry will be dramatically affected, and it is the responsibility of CEOs to lead the charge by building the right capabilities for their companies to remain relevant in the digitised environment, achieve growth, and fend off competitive threats. For some CTOs, it’s their first time embarking on a digital transformation, meaning they are in unchartered waters and the same is likely to be true of their team.
The journey to digitalisation is complex and wide ranging. Having an experienced partner by your side is key. Working alongside your executive stakeholders, the transformation service engagement offerings from HighPoint are designed to help you navigate and accelerate your transition to the Agile Enterprise.
If you would like to explore more about the topic of this blog, please contact the HighPoint team at digital.transformation@highpoint.com or call us directly on +44 1895 262 350.
Written by Neil Dearman, Head of Technology, HighPoint