With remote working becoming mainstream literally overnight, organizations are fastracking adoption of agile, aware, and responsive technologies
The worldwide pandemic has settled the digital-transformation (DX) discussion in favor of its protagonists for good. In the span of last few months, organizations have profoundly realized the deep DX needs for their work-and-business continuity plans.
It would be reasonable to say that remote working, which mostly remained a good-to-have buzzword for long, has become the new normal in no time. From businesses to their partners, everyone has moved to a virtual model while relying heavily on digital infrastructure to create value for themselves and their customers. Throughout the value chain, the need for secure and seamless access has been a key driving force.
No more an afterthought
DX strategies are no longer siloed, incremental, or phased in approach. Instead, there is a whole-of-organization thinking at work, given the new reality that in an increasingly digitalized world, business opportunity can pop up from any node and through any customer touchpoint on the network. Businesses must empower all their workforce, including the remote ones, to respond to those opportunities in a trusted and secure manner. To be successful over the long term, organizations must create that otherwise ‘futuristic ecosystem’ now, to enable their stakeholders to connect securely and transparently without disruption.
The time has come to set a higher standard for collaboration, data security, and identity management through advanced analytics and artificial intelligence.
It’s about survival of the smartest
The most critical element of a successful digital transformation program is a smart strategy based on security, analytics, and automation of relevant processes. With these fundamentals in mind, businesses can move faster through the new normal.
Besides, organizations must adopt a more holistic approach in today’s environment instead of applying digital methodologies in discerning processes or functions. As enterprises embark on digital transformation, they need to think about the best ways to achieve agility, resilience, innovation, and synergies. They must modernize their infrastructure to respond to diverse customer needs and eliminate any data silos that inhibit productivity. Robust security frameworks should seamlessly complement these methodologies.
To stand out in the new landscape, some of the critical areas in which businesses should focus on their digital transformation journey include,
- integrating data with applications in real-time and make it accessible to those who need it for agile action;
- leveraging groundbreaking technologies such as machine learning, and automating processes to obtain quality information and modernized enterprise applications;
- identifying variances in data access and monitoring policies to recognize potential risks and build intelligent workflows;
- mitigating data security issues through proven methods that traverse the ecosystem; and
- providing the infosec team with a 360° view of the organization’s dataflow, i.e., how it is stored, shared, and accessed.
Insight-driven approach
The new ecosystem requires organizations to act more intelligently to be truly competitive and provide outstanding customer experience. This is only achievable when intelligence is derived through an in-depth design approach that leverages technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) and robotic process automation (RPA) to serve customers better.
A design thinking approach should emphasize providing an exceptional experience for all stakeholders, whether they are customers, employees, or business partners. The idea is to keep individual experience at the center of each interaction. This ‘centricity’ will allow enterprises to apply smart-workflow strategies to provide seamless user experience. Such design thinking and DX implementation can fundamentally enhance the digital architecture of an organization.
Obviously, information security becomes a key driver. In order to adapt to the digital needs of users, organizations need to review their security architectures. More emphasis is already being placed on the detection of anomalies and suspicious behaviors that may come from multiple access points. Enterprises are keen to ensure that their security architectures are flexible to deploy and run on-premise, hybrid cloud, or private cloud environments without becoming lodged in silos. The ‘zero trust’ approach, for instance, is already being used in enabling strong authentication across workflows.
Zero trust focuses on a micro-perimeter process that screens various types of user access, data sites, and applications. It allows organizations to identify and address gaps that are vulnerable to cyberattacks.
To summarize, at this stage, it is imperative for organizations to make transformational efforts to understand the new needs of their stakeholders and test them on an ongoing basis. With social distancing guidelines, they spend more time on digital channels and rely heavily on technology to reach out to brands and make new purchases.
In future, to improve customer experience and implement a successful transformation strategy, companies must rely on data and analytics solutions to closely monitor the businesses’ performance and security architectures. By investing strategically and integrating a trusted advisory partner, businesses can boost digital confidence and scale up their digital transformation initiatives with minimal disruption.
Find out more on how data security is driving next-generation DX strategies.
To hear from experts, join our the webinar Best Practices of Data Encryption and Key Management in a Multi-cloud World.
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