Changing from the inside out

With artificial intelligence (AI) on the tip of everyone’s tongues today it seems that more and more businesses are asking how they can transform their operations.

We have been here before, though: cloud computing, hybrid working and any number of other approaches to enterprise technology have, time and again, upended the way things are done.

And yet, it is no secret that the pressure really is mounting on businesses to digitally transform.

Despite the ‘digital’ in digital transformation being, fundamentally, about technology, in fact the process should be driven by human factors, principally business needs.

Key to this is the initial discovery phase, which involves looking at the business, its systems and platforms, any pain points and, naturally, where it wants to go. Seen this way, digital transformation is, fundamentally, a problem-solving process.

“Most clients, when they engage with us, have an underlying problem they want to solve and they come to us to validate assumptions,” said Brian Flynn, chief technology officer at Ardanis.

For instance, one organisation realised the customer experience it was giving to clients had fallen behind that of their competitors and turned to Ardanis to quantify what, exactly, they should do to improve.

“They had rough ideas on how to do it, but realised it would not only involve updating the front-end, but also re-architecting the stack.”

Oftentimes the ‘problem’ that triggers a digital transformation can be a good one to have.

“Another client came to us because they were experiencing a lot of growth and they realised their customer service function, as it was, wouldn't scale. It would just become too expensive. They engaged with us to plan a solution as we had been doing research and development around AI,” Flynn said.

Naturally, then, Ardanis deploys solutions that explicitly respond to its clients’ needs – and which look to the future. This avoids an all-too-common problem: organisations that rush into technologies, even ones that have a proven track record, for their own sake often enjoy subpar results.

“There are a lot of examples of failures in digital transformation when it has been technology-led,” he said.

Indeed, as enterprise technology as a whole has moved away from so-called ‘big bang’ projects and waterfall development, instead favouring incremental and ongoing change, the results have got better and better.

The reason why you need to do a digital transformation is that you may not have been innovating continually, so it is an opportunity to change that

This does not mean, however, that major change cannot occur; it just needs to be done in a manageable and rational manner.

“The way we outline it, if companies need to do a big digital transformation project we say ‘OK’, but once that is delivered you still need to look at outcomes, trends, the service, the offering. It goes beyond the initial build. In fact, the reason why you need to do a digital transformation is that you may not have been innovating continually, so it is an opportunity to change that,” Flynn said.

The changes are deeper than just technology, too, with culture and process change being high on the agenda. This requires not only buy-in at board level, but also successful engagement with the people in a business.

“We worked with one client who was very project-based. What they did was very slow and cumbersome, with a lot of interactions. We suggested thinking more around a product mindset. That’s a significant change: instead of thinking around horizontal organisation you’re looking at product verticals,” Flynn said.

Infrastructure can be re-thought, but while cloud is generally the right answer, there are reasons some organisations stick with on-premise even as they digitally transform. This underscores the fact that while digital transformation will see new technology introduced, it should not be led by the tech itself, Flynn said.

“Your choice should be driven by what the company needs to do and where it wants to go. It’s all down to the business,” he said.