with their competitor in the competitive environment of the market. There are multiple objectives of business transformation including market share, customer satisfaction and cost-cutting. If we talk about the customer satisfaction, it is one of the major dimensions of business on which any organization must focus regularly. In the last decades, we were using the traditional business system where competition was also less and nowadays the scenario is just contrary [2].
In almost every sector we are getting the support of recent technologies like Internet of Things, Artificial Intelligence, Blockchain, etc. For example: - if we talk about the Healthcare System, we can monitor our patient remotely where communication plays an important role in terms of Wi-Fi Connectivity, Zigbee, etc. Such communication medium is also being used for the tracking of assets, remote workers, and shipping with the help of GPS. In the recent trends, we are using RFID tags for the identification or monitoring of devices, patients, pets, tracking of trucks and all which makes our work more convenient. In the education system, the processes have become modernized which makes the learning easier in terms of e-learning resources, in terms of smart classes, use of various teaching and learning aids like audio-visual aids, etc. [3]. A variety of businesses whether they are dealing in manufacturing of several audio-visual aids or dealing with providing various services plays an important role in the education system. It increases the productivity of the education process [4]. Apart from this, we are also having the technological support for the research and development. If we talk about the automotive, there are various options for the crash avoidance, fleet management, establishment of smart factories, smart homes, etc. There are a lot of options for the media/entertainment in terms of set-top boxes, smartphones, smart televisions, self-service, smart home gateway, etc. Companies like IBM, CISCO are spending huge amount for incubating technologies which helps in the implementation of smart city concept as well [5, 6].
4.1.1 Business Transformation
The term transformation has become a buzzword today which is used in various ways to run the organization smoothly which makes the process easier and productive. Corporate Renewing Centre organized a conference at INSEAD where the term business-transformation was defined as “A fundamental change in organizational logic, which resulted in or was caused by a fundamental shift in behaviors” [7]. While defining transformation in detail, following four constructs were given:
Re-engineering: It is a technique to improve organizational efficiency by redesigning the business processes so that the organization may get self-aligned for future and raise its market share and profit margins.
Restructuring: It is required whenever a business model of the organization gets changed due to any reason or factor for the survival of the organization and ultimately for the growth of the organization. It reduces the cost, emphasizes on main items, adopting recent technologies, proper utilization of resources available, etc. Merging with other companies can also take place.
Renewing: It’s a continuous and knowledge oriented process because there are various changes which are faced by the organization on a regular basis and some of them have the potential for major strategic change in organization’s operations which add the stability factor for the organization. For example, when a new technology is in the market, strategy has to be reviewed to find out that organization would get benefited by adopting it or not?
Regeneration: It is a technique which reproduces the organization so that they become capable of incorporating the new employees while organizations are losing the old and experienced employees and at the same time an introduction of new employee’s capabilities, attitude and goals takes place. In today’s world almost all the organizations are getting changed and hence facing with regeneration. Regeneration improves the current business processes and primarily revising the ways and other opportunities available [7, 8].
As we observe from the current scenario where people prefer online shopping just to save the time and also they are getting good quality products or services at their doorstep in the competitive environment of the organizations, hence lots of businesses are taking the initiatives for adopting the business transformation from traditional system. In the next section, we are going to discuss digital transformation, various technologies which support digital transformation and its challenges. In INDIA we are moving towards the implementation of smart city concepts as well, so we need smart environment where automation of the processes in majority may take place [9, 10].
4.2 Digital Transformation and its Big Trend
4.2.1 Digital Transformation
The term “Digital transformation” has become the first choice of the market leaders who are adopting recent technologies for adding more values to their valued customers, employees, and other stakeholders. Digital transformation reforms various businesses processes, IT operations and corporate culture of the organization [11]. It uses digital technologies available in the market for the designing and implementation of a process to make it more productive or valuable for the organization. The motive behind this is to use recent technologies not only for the sake of repeating existing services digitally, but also to apply technology for the transformation of those services into something considerably more better as improved alternative. In digital transformation, several recent technologies can be considered like cloud computing, Internet of Things (IoT), blockchain, big-data, data analytics, and artificial intelligence. Many projects based on digital transformation have major contribution in the competitive environment for the large organizations to compete with quicker and purely digital competitors. Other types of small business organizations are also moving in the same direction hence the use of recent technologies has been increased nowadays [12].
4.2.2 How Important is Digital Transformation?
According to the survey done by IDC (International Data Corporation), the worldwide investment on various technologies which are required for the implementation of digital transformation including hardware, software, and services has reached to $1.3 trillion by the year 2017. Companies dealing with the technology research expect costing to almost double as compared to now and by the year 2021 the overall investment for digitalization will exceed $2.1 trillion globally. A survey has been conducted by IT analyst Gartner regarding business issues of the business leaders as well as some technological aspects. Around 460 business leaders including CEO and senior executives has participated in the survey. Figure 4.1 shows the CEO top business priorities for the year 2018 and 2019. 62% of the executives said that the initiative was taken by the management or the management had a transformation program to transform their business more digitally. More than half (approximately 54%) of the executives said that the objective of their respective digital business is totally transformational, whereas 46% of the executives said that the motive behind the initiative taken by the management is optimization [13]. Above data can be represented and easily analysed with Table 4.1. Approximately half of the executives were agreed for the objective as optimization.
Figure 4.1 CEO Top Business Priorities for 2018 and 2019 Source: Gartner.
Table 4.1 Various objectives of organizations for transformation given by 460 executives.
| S. No. | Percentage of executives answered | No. of executives answered |
Objective
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