GEC NEWS WIREDo you call yourself a digital organization? If yes, why?
As you know, digital transformation changes the way you engage with your stakeholders. It can also change the way that your employees engage with your organization, in addition to that you communicate to all your stakeholders whether that be customers, employees, shareholders or the general public. The second area of change is how you operate; how you fulfil the purpose of your business or organization. This is about digitizing your business end-to-end; whether it be on the shop floor, how you change prices, how you deliver or how you logistically coordinate yourself to perform the tasks.
Finally, how business models innovate and to become a disruptor model in their fields and utilize digitalization as business enabler. We are in a digital transformation curve and currently in the second stage.
Going by the regional trend, what do you think would be the top 3 projects that the CIO’s would be embarking upon?
CIOs roles are changing, oversee business beyond traditional IT to innovation and transformation are the major responsibilities. Going by the regional trend I would say a typical CIO would scale out his business more to cloud, focus more on implementation of Artificial Intelligence and machine learning to improve the business decisions. Crypto currencies are going to be another major game changer in this region.
What are the key technologies challenges faced by your sector?
Digitization requires a new level of trust
- Trust is required for all stakeholders
- Employees, customers, shareholders, partners. In order for trust to be effective, info-security will have to become one of the key investments and without strong cyber/ info-security capabilities it will be impossible for companies to earn and maintain the trust of their customers, employees and shareholders, particularly for financial transactions. This means cyber-security becomes a fundamental part of the value of the product or service that the customer receives. Protecting privacy and security of digital assets / products are going to be the major challenges in future.
What kind of vendor/solution provider engagement do you look forward to in 2018?
I would focus our digital investments on customer-facing solutions. But it can extract just as much value, if not more, from investing in back-office functions that drive operational efficiencies. A digital transformation is more than just finding new revenue streams; it’s also about creating value by reducing the costs of doing business. Any vendor who would have a cost-effective solution to push businesses to improve the customer experience across all channels would be a winner.
