Accelerating Digital with Modern Platforms

To transform your customer experiences and address dynamic market demands in today’s Digital economy, modernizing your IT landscape, processes, and driving agility across the value chain have become a critical imperative.

Modernization can include moving away from Legacy applications and towards modern SaaS platforms infused with AI, re-architecting your IT landscape with microservices and/or re-engineering applications with DevOps delivery as data moves to Cloud. Through this journey, managing change is a priority as processes become nimble, subsequently, people skills and mindsets need to transform concurrently. The reality is, Modernization is foundational to Accelerate Digital and become a smarter, more adaptive enterprise that can successfully execute business model transformations.

Until about two years ago, Modernization projects were executed in silos; cloud migration, mainframe or application rationalization, API-based strategy, implementing a packaged SaaS and PaaS for specific functional areas, etc. The scope, investments and intent of customers have significantly shifted, where enterprises are approaching Modernization as a strategic priority, not just to keep their IT or process landscape current but as a differentiated proposition to capture market share, integrate acquisitions, introduce new products and accelerate to become digital businesses.  Organizations that are truly adaptive do not just survive but thrive in a fast-paced environment where speed to business expectations are high.

We have analyzed the journeys of about 25 global clients from various industries and observed 5 patterns that were consistent when enterprises transform from a traditional mindset to a smarter adaptive organization.  These patterns are:

1. Value Stream – how is the division or company adding value to their customers
2. Modern Architectures and Cloud Adoption
3. Infusion of Intelligence and AI into products/offerings
4. Culture/People transformation, and
5. Innovative models to source and/or deliver work.

Each of these patterns has maturity levels and is inter-connected. Navigating the roadmap effectively will move organizations closer to becoming agile and adaptive. We call this our Enterprise Digital Journey framework where Modern Platforms are foundational to achieve the acceleration.  We can think of this foundation as “Plumbing”, or even a “Sewage System”. This is the “Digital Core” for front to back office transformation, and has to be future-proof and continuous.

Irrespective of the solutions to Modernization, there are two critical business considerations (unique for each industry or domain) when prioritizing your roadmap:

• Processes that transform across the value chain
• Experience enhancement with Customers/Consumers

These considerations are crucial to an organization for creating a roadmap for digital transformation.