Digital Transformation is topping the lists as one of the most relevant trends in technology for 2018 and beyond. For companies that have found ways to integrate digital solutions into business processes, digital transformation has quickly proven to be a profitable venture. Forbes Insights reports that a successful digital transformation could even lead to a 7+% increase in gains in sales and profits. Yet, many companies are facing significant challenges in achieving success within their digital transformation strategies. Nevertheless, many seem to be willing to push past the initial hurdles and aim for success in the digital age.
Just how important is digital transformation for today’s businesses? The International Data Corporation (IDC), a global, telecommunications and technology market research and advisory organization, released their predictions for the spread and influence of Digital Transformation (DX) over the next few years. IDC predicts that DX spending will reach $1.2 trillion by the end of 2017, that’s a 17.9% increase over the previous year. (Businesswire, 2017) Further compounding the importance of this strategy is the fact that over 85% of global executives surveyed by Forbes plan to spend at least ¼ of their budget on transformation strategies.
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Yet, it’s not all good news, as IDC estimates that worldwide and across industries, “59% of companies remain at either stage two or three of DX maturity, or what IDC calls a “digital impasse.” (Businesswire, 2017) The report compiled by Forbes Insights also highlights how the gap between those leading and those in the middle keeps growing. Generally, the biggest obstacles for companies tend to be finding experts and dealing effectively with legacy equipment and applications. While these problems are not easily solved, they are not new issues for companies working in tech, which may make it easier for them to implement working solutions.
As with any increase in spending, there is an opportunity for many to benefits, including consumers as businesses move to improve products and services and bring them to the market fast. Big data, cloud services, and social media are predicted to carry a weighty impact on DX strategies and may be the largest areas of investment for digital strategies.
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Fortunately for many companies, the ease and success of outsourcing may allow for more digital transformation opportunities that would have been too costly to implement under a traditional business model. Software outsourcing, in particular, means that high-quality software services are no longer price prohibitive. For your digital transformation, an example of leveraging outsourcing services would be big data outsourcing, which might include outsourcing storage, analysis, collection or even data visualization, to a qualified partner using a nearshore model.
Whatever your means of transformation, beginning sooner rather than later will help keep you ahead of the curve, and in the position to continue providing clients with relevant and improved products and services.
More about Perficient Latin America: PSL´s 30+ year experience deploying mission-critical applications for Fortune 500 corporations and enterprising startups, has given a viewpoint to always seek to understand the business context of a project so that it can be proactive in suggesting better solutions, whether it is from a technical or business process perspective.
