How Digital is Transforming the Future

These days people are being more digitally creative than ever before as they attempt to stay connected, keep working, and keep the world running during COVID. Digital advances have been happening constantly over the past three decades but the last few months have shown some big leaps; and it’s unlikely we’ll ever go back to “normal”.

In its essence, digital transformation encompasses the development of any tools or solutions that improve our processes, products, or experiences. But what might those transformations involve for our future? A special edition of AppDynamics titled “Agents of Transformation” revealed that IT professionals are prioritising the digital customer experience, continuing use of remote working tools, and maintaining more flexible resourcing.

The Digital Customer Experience

Over the past few months, we’ve seen in-person businesses pivot at the drop of a hat to offer their clients services in the only way they can – virtually. Large conferences, gym classes, trade shows, and even wine tastings have all moved to digital platforms and they seem to be working. For the foreseeable future we can expect to see more and more innovations in this space, as tech companies work to make their virtual platforms more accessible to everyday businesses.

As well as this, there have been advances in machine learning technology and its implementation. Rather than huge leaps forward, we can expect to see continued increases in incremental changes which add value to our days. Machine learning is a form of artificial intelligence which can be applied in almost any industry, making it hugely popular for developers and hugely useful for the wider community.

Flexible Resourcing

While it’s long been known that businesses which succeed are those who can be agile and innovative, recent times have made that clearer than ever. Flexible resourcing extends beyond the physical capabilities of businesses to their talent increasing their skills and knowledge, nimble technology use, and experimentation with new, and sometimes untested, digital tools.

For instance, the recent AppDynamics report suggested that “64% of technologists are currently being asked to perform tasks and activities that they’ve never done before.” With pressure like this though, comes less testing, rushed strategies, and potentially a disregard for future-proofing. For tools and advancements which are going to act as more than just a band-aid to current pain points, we need to make sure our technologists are equipped with real-time visibility and insights.

Remote Working

While it started as a necessity, the global, corporate workforce has shown that they’re capable of, and are potentially even more productive, working from home on a regular basis. When clear expectations are set and employees are supplied with the right technology, then telecommuting can have multiple positive impacts ranging from cost-savings to sustainability. SaaS and the cloud have made all of this possible by allowing us to connect and communicate in real time. 

Because of the positive results we’re seeing from the current situation, it’s estimated that 25-30% of the workforce will be working at home on a multiple-days-a-week basis by the end of 2021. This is compared to only 3.6% prior to the COVID outbreak.

Telecommuting poses additional concerns for businesses though, as it can increase the risk of unauthorised systems access, internal IT infrastructure vulnerabilities, increased bandwidth costs and data breaches. If your organisation is moving towards this structure (or already has with the latest COVID restrictions), we’ve created a checklist of minimum safeguards you should put in place which can be accessed in our report here.

We’re happy to talk you through the report, or answer any other questions you may have, so please feel free to contact us via our form and we’ll get in touch as soon as possible!