The term “digital transformation” (DX) has been part of the business and technology lexicon for roughly a decade now. DX initiatives are key to efforts to find new customers, increase revenue, improve customer satisfaction, and make organizations more competitive and profitable.
But despite the efforts and investments, 76% of organizations today are stuck in a “DX Deadlock” and only 17% have successfully achieved the highest levels of digital transformation – transforming markets with new business models and services, according to the analyst firm IDC.
IDC defines DX as “a continuous process by which organizations adapt to disruptive changes in the market by leveraging digital competencies to innovate business models, products and services that blend the digital and physical, as well as business and customer experiences.”
According to IDC, data lies at the heart of all successful DX initiatives, requiring a focused approach to extracting and developing the value and utility of information. Digitally transformed organizations don’t just automate processes and improve agility. They treat data and information as highly valued assets, and embed intelligence – that combine code, algorithms, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning, and data – into their core business processes.
We agree. We call the first step in the DX process “intelligent integration,” the collection, integration, transformation, and normalization of data, and feel that it is absolutely critical to success. In fact, we’d go so far as to say that skipping or short-changing this integration step risks failure for the DX initiative as a whole.
Done correctly, intelligent integration opens the door to faster and more successful implementations, more agile processes, and ultimately to new, smarter processes through the application of AI and machine learning.
But it all starts with clean data. Get this step right and you may just be able to avoid the DX Deadlock.
Did you miss the recent webinar featuring us and
Dan Vesset, IDC Group Vice President for Analytics and Information Management? Dan described how successful organizations are breaking down organizational and technological barriers to DX; the tenets behind IDC’s strategic roadmap for success; and the Intelligent Core, the data-driven platform that IDC believes will be at the heart of successful DX initiatives for the next 3-5 years.
Full details can be found
here, along with links to watch the on-demand webinar and download the companion IDC report, The DX Platform: A Framework for the Intelligent Core.
