Digital Transformation Trends Give Aussie Businesses An Edge
Digital transformation is raising the bar on how businesses compete for customers. These trends could make or break an Aussie outfit in the coming years.
The innovative use of technology has earned Australian industry leaders a world-renowned reputation for being on the cutting edge of emerging trends. Nevertheless, global thought leaders have recently been putting a laser focus on digital transformation and considering ways it can prove valuable to goal achievement. Technology insiders anticipate that Aussie’s decision-makers are gearing up to increase their digital transformation footprint.
“Over the next two years, digital transformation spending in Australia will grow to over 55 percent of all ICT investment from 45 percent today, with big growth in data intelligence and analytics to generate information-based competitive advantages,” IDC Australia and New Zealand director of research Louise Francis reportedly said. “This will enable businesses to move beyond islands of innovation projects to a holistic and embedded approach.”
While the digital transformation of information has already caught steam in wide-reaching sectors, the IDC and others see changes that could have a substantial impact on profit-driving tasks as well as cultural positioning. These are digital transformation trends Aussie business leaders would be wise to consider going forward.
1: Cultural Mastery of Digital Transformation
It’s not uncommon for CEOs and entrepreneurs to understand digital transformation as a profit-driving tool. Acting on that philosophy can put the workplace culture in jeopardy because it can drive a wedge between the values of employees and the overarching organisation’s efforts.
“Technology is a part of digital transformation, but unless leaders can ‘win hearts and minds’ throughout the process, efforts can stall or be less successful than they could be,” Deloitte Risk and Financial Advisory Carey Oven reportedly said. “Part of any successful transformation has the appropriate tone at the top to champion it. It also requires support and buy-in by those in other levels of the organisation. Leaders would be wise to gauge the so-called ‘mood in the middle’ and ‘buzz at the bottom’ to help close the gap between the desired and actual state of organisational culture and behaviour.”
According to an IDC report, 50 percent of all Australian organisations will master aligning digitisation with cultural traits such as empathy, employee empowerment, and become more customer-centric by 2024.
2: Uptick in AI-Powered Organisations
Businesses are expected to increase AI investment to enhance personalised customer service and minimise human friction. Research points to upwards of 95-per cent growth in AI integration with Machine Learning and simple automation being the most prevalent uses. Business leaders can anticipate that industry competitors may jump on the trend to use AI in settings such as loan approval automation, fraud detection, healthcare, warehousing, and retail behaviour, among many others. The IDC indicates that “AI-powered organisations will respond to customers, competitors, regulators, and partners at least 20 percent faster than their peers” by 2022.
3: Collaborative Value Growth with Stakeholders
Research points to a fast-growing trend among approximately three-fourths of digital leaders to evolve their network to enhance the roles of an ecosystem of customers, outlying stakeholders, and valued partners. Such collaborative ecosystems are quickly emerging, and they allow organisations to introduce new products and services into a digital environment where confidence already exists. The driving force behind this digital transformation is that outfits are creating inherent customer value.
4: Increased Reliance on Analytics
Thought leaders are expected to double-down on analytics in 2020 and beyond. The use of proven data has allowed upstarts and CEOs of large corporations alike to make the type of informed decisions that support goal achievement. The more data that is collected and analysed for sometimes subtle competitive advantages, the more likely an outfit is likely to succeed.
“Companies that still aren’t investing heavily in analytics by 2020 probably won’t be in business in 2021,” CMO Network’s Daniel Newman wrote in Forbes magazine. “There is far too much valuable customer data to be collected, processed, and turned into insights for any company to remain competitive without making full use of modern analytics tools. Every major tech company has already figured out that the future is in data — most specifically, the real-time processing of it — and so, regardless of what industry you’re in, analytics will again be one of the most dominant focal points of digital transformation in 2020.”
