on their policies and process, rather than information and its insights. These firms which are moving slowly in the market getting left behind in the competitive race. Gartner says “two-thirds of business leaders believe their companies must pick up the pace of digitalization to remain competitive”.
On the other hand, speeding up the development is quite tough. “Digital” is normally viewed as a complicated art which is understood by fewer experts. In so many cases, entrepreneur gets filled such knowledge gap through highly paid consultants who bring the publicity of digital transformation as a replacement for measurable business value.
4.3 Transformational Technology
In a current scenario, we are observing that the technologies are emerging, resurging and converging at once. Throughout the world organizations are trying to put themselves to beat its competitor through incorporating and practically applying inventive business models based on technology to make a distinction among others. Besides this framework, Technology Industry Innovation Survey was done in 2019 by KPMG and in that survey IoT (Internet of Things) was ranked the uppermost driver of business transformation for the upcoming three years. Everything whether it may be wearable health devices, homes and cities, are considered as “smart” in the current scenario and connects to a wide variety of devices and applications to assist the customers accordingly.
4.3.1 Internet of Things
The Internet of Things or IoT is one of the most demanding technologies among other key technologies required for digital transformation. With the addition of various sensors and devices in the network there is an exponential growth in the data also. Such stored data can also be utilized for business transformation through digital technologies. Utilization of tiny sensors has changed the world, which has allowed for rich information collection and well organized systems. Industries such as manufacturing and retailing have setup trucks, storage services, and factories with Internet of Things (IoT) devices and other smart tools which can be used together information about how they are used and provide insights and how the things can be optimized.
The other term i.e. Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) which has become an expertise in separate field, allows the organizations to gather the data on their machines itself and tools which are based on machine learning or AI is used to analyze that data and give recommendations accordingly. Such systems can be utilized to improve the safety of employees at their workplaces and those places can be highlighted where costs could be reduced. Organizations can analyze and find the weak places and make out how to limit disruption in service or handle problems before they occur.
4.3.2 Robotic Process Automation
Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is a technology which lets the people to configure the software or a “robot” to integrate various actions of human who interacts with the digitalized system for running the business processes. The interface of RPA is used to gather the data and manipulate applications as humans do. Robotic Process Automation contains the software bots which assists to automate manual activities of business processes. RPA is treated as the fundamental step of intelligent automation which utilizes the strength of machine learning and true artificial intelligence. Various basic tasks related to offices are being performed by soft bots in all over the world and even they are involved in decision making processes also. RPA improves the performance of the system by adding up the humans capabilities in a machine.
4.3.3 Automation and Artificial Intelligence
Forrester recently said that organizations in all over the world are increasingly moving towards automation for various tasks which is used to be handled by human beings. It is bringing the change in the workforce at basic level, highlighting fears of mass job losses in the next coming decade. But this field is also improving the enterprises in better form in a several directions. Complicated and critical jobs, time-consuming jobs at factories being done by robots, keep people away from the positions which affect physical health of a worker. It has been also introduced into other areas like customer service, where so many companies are now using automated systems for responding to basic queries and complaints from the customers. Organizations are using AI for even everything ranging from security to human resources, which allow computers to handle jobs that have become expensive or redundant. Although uncertainties of automation and AI are in existence, recent reviews have proven that peoples are interested to adopt the automation and utilizing the capabilities of robots which can handle tedious tasks [18].
4.3.4 Blockchain
However, digital transformation is no longer a choice for businesses; it has become essential for the survival of business in the recent competitive environment. Blockchain as a new technology is likely to bring a dramatic change for business transformation in the coming decades. Blockchain technology came into the picture a few years back as a part of the bit coin revolution and at present it’s a promising technology which can transform the business in various ways. It has given impact to almost every industry and every business which requires more organized business processes. As a crypto currency effort, blockchain was initially criticized but now it is in the initial implementation phase because of its wide applicability. The total investment for the blockchain solutions worldwide is predicted to touch the figure of $11.7 billion by 2022. Banks and other financial institutions have used blockchain technology for almost everything to simplify the processes like loan applications. One of the banking group in Canada have used blockchain for providing more power to individuals so that data collected by the financial institutions can be accessed by them. A large number of industries have started research for verifying the effectiveness of this technology, and it has a great impact on supply chain. Major business leaders like Walmart in retailing and McDonalds in fast food are now using blockchain to supply materials and food.
A well-known and one of the leading company in blockchain i.e. IBM has recently got the project of “blockchain system development” by Brazil which would be used to manage the country’s birth and death records.
Google, Facebook, Twitter, and Amazon are some of the leading companies that have a great impact on our society and as a revolutionary innovation they have improved the actions which have changed the way of communicating with each other, way of thinking, ordering food online, or booking cabs. A large number of professional communities like scientists, developers, and researchers have contributed to the successful implementation of new technologies designed to address almost all the requirements of humans.
4.3.5 Cloud Computing
The recent concept of cloud computing has completely replaced the limitation of infrastructure and increased the capacity of companies whether it is small company or the bigger one. Companies need not to have the expensive IT infrastructure or not to invest for maintenance procedure. As per the survey of TechRepublic, around 70% of the companies are using cloud services or planning to use it. Businesses can move their most of the services to the cloud and can easily manage them. There is no headache for scaling up the infrastructure in case of the business expansion. The lesser prices available for cloud computing services have motivated the companies to adapt it. Hence, even smaller companies are able to access tools that were beyond the reach previously. Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google, Microsoft, and Alibaba are the biggest providers of cloud computing services in the market. As per the available models of cloud computing like Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Software as a Service (SaaS), cloud computing is gaining popularity and it will be one of the major elements in the next decade. According to the latest report of Forrester says that the cloud market will touch $411 billion by the year 2022. Additionally report says that the four leading vendors of cloud will produce 75% of the whole $75.4 billion cloud infrastructure market
