Preparing for the 4th Industrial revolution - going Digital

In the recently concluded World Economic Forum - Davos 2016, one of the top subscribed panel discussions was on Digital Transformation of Industries. Large and old companies started thinking deep on digital transformation. How companies need to build trust with its employees, partners and customers in on boarding them into the digital journey, will be the key driver for the 4th industrial revolution, the Digital one.

Below given are key Enablers for digital transformation, which will form the theme for companies to lay out a plan and join the digital revolution.

1. Orchestration of departments by focusing on value chain with user in epicentre through increased collaboration between staff, customers and partners. Digital is not a separate department by itself, rather each department should think digital in improving the customer and partner experience.
2. Careful selection of technology platforms to support integration of solutions across the supply chain. Technology should not be the bottleneck in bringing speed to the business, speed - the new currency of business that differentiates from competitors.
3. Intuitive mindset within company, across all levels of staff and leaders to convert the data (abundant!) to a meaningful information to a pattern that can be translated to a business case to provide better services/products to the customers and generate revenue or optimise cost.
4. Selecting and promoting disruptive initiatives yet stick to core business purpose of the company. In the digital roadmap, mismanagement of initiatives will only create unrecoverable losses to the company reputations.
5. Be informed on the well informed customer. Digital customer is getting smarter day by day. If the companies are failing to be smarter on where the customer is heading to, they fail.
6. Balancing the resources to transform current business processes to digital roadmap and keep investing budget to identify new channels/opportunities is key.
7. Providing safety and security around digital platforms through digital assurance in order to build partners and customers adequate trust, to gain the best in class experience, a result of digital transformation.

Digital Assurance - The future is Now

“Business is exposed to exponentially increasing global market”

World internet usage was less than 1% in 1995. Today, around 40% of the world population has access to internet. A billion user base increase from 2010 and 2014 only. Developed countries such as United States, United Kingdom, Japan and France has more than 85% of the population with Internet. While we reach a state sooner where every other human being will be in internet, the digital world becomes more prominent. With the transparency in internet system and globalization evident, a business can reach out to half of the world population just by being in the internet, at least technically possible keeping aside policies.

“New businesses and Entrepreneurship culture fuelling digital growth” 

Thomas Friedman in his ground breaking book ‘The World is Flat’ has well explained why developing countries has an edge over developed countries in embracing technology. Put it simply, a developed country has to follow upgrades to their technology which is complex and thus costlier than a developing country directly picking a technology. For instance, it was easy for India population to go for mobile phones as most of them were first time users while developed world has to convert their telephone lines to mobile users. A need for unlearning arise. This applies to companies those run on legacy and complex software systems as supposed to the new generation companies getting into the digital world. With less and less of capital cost through Social media and Virtualization, starting a digitally aligned business is possible in couple of hours where as it takes a transformation journey for a brick and mortar company to thrive.

“Digital is in every department, gone are the EDP days”

In 1980’s computer was in clean room and constrained to specialist EDP departments. Gone are those days and industry recognizes the shift where every department in a company is thinking of a digital strategy. Travel companies spend millions for paid search, Celebrities rely more on twitter handles than personal PROs, Marketing departments hire email marketers, Sales teams buy enterprise products, Warehouse linking to a logistics aggregator, Universities distribute laptops, e-Books outsells hand cover books. We have seen how digital strategy in political campaigns played its pivotal role. Digital value chain is unlimited and going strong.

“Keeping pace with digital speed and agility”

Though more businesses are exposed to global users and easy to go digital, it is abundantly clear that the expectation of the digital customer too is increasing. Business demands agility in keeping the products, service and customer satisfaction to world class. Retaining a digital customer and building a brand image across multiple channels yet stay ahead of global competition is the top corporate challenge and requires frequent changes to the way companies run the business. Robust software processes, suitable technologies and round the clock operating model is required. Decisions have to be quick, IT change has to be agile and studying consumer behaviour has to be real time and what not.

“Test the software for Anything - Anytime - Anywhere IT solutions”

While software testing by itself is an assurance function, unless a robust digital vision and strategy exists for an organization, a digital QA strategy is a vehicle without a driver. However, reducing time to market and bringing agility in software testing should be cared. Breaking conventional thinking of testing against the requirements and adapting to the software release process that is of desired agility is essential. Testers with technical skills around Social, Mobile, Analytics, Cloud and the Internet of Things will makes him relevant in the digital world. Tester’s understanding of the product from consumer and business point of view is required. Analytics on user behaviour and user experience, studying his pain points would help assure the quality by keeping user at the centre of test strategy.

Ever growing user channels built to consume a product or service and the ability for the company to stay robust in placing the product or service without confusing the customer and slicing the brand equity will keep a company live in the digital age. We will no longer search for products or services, they will find us in this digital world. Companies failing to leverage the digital graph will only be squashed by it, so is the Tester.