A Digital Transformation is in Your Future

Vicki Vaughn

March 09, 2018

Digital transformation through technology across industries is rapidly improving business activities, processes and capabilities benefiting everyone involved.

Last month I attended Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise (ALE) Connex18 where the focus was on helping industries pursue a vertical-focused, outcome-based model that addresses digital transformation of their industry(DXI). No matter the industry you are in, there is no doubt that digital transformation (DX) will touch your world and will evolve and transform the way you work, collaborate and relate to others in whatever field you are a part of. 

What is a “digital transformation”?
A “digital transformation” is a rapid transformation of business activities, processes, and capabilities that results from leveraging opportunities presented by digital technologies. A “digital transformation of an industry” (DXI) is the transformation across an industry benefiting everyone involved.

Digital transformation of your customers
What I learned at Connex18 is that digital transformation improves the experience of everyone your enterprise touches and especially your customers — whether they are students, patients, passengers, another company or the public —  by increasing your employee’s efficiency and accelerating processes. It changes how work is done by modernizing your work and the ways you communicate amongst colleagues and with your customers.

When your workplace digitally transforms, it will gain simplicity, mobile collaboration, agility, innovation and efficiency in its operations. Not only are there technology improvements, your organizational structures and business models evolve as well to create better overall performance. This includes improved financials such as increased revenue and profitability while providing your customers more options and making it easier to work with you.

The numbers say it all

While at Connex18, some of the interesting stats that I picked up is that whether I realize it or not, the world is becoming a DXI economy. By 2019, personal digital assistants and bots will execute only 1% of the transactions, however they will influence and drive growth among the organizations that have mastered using them. And, 40% of digital transformation initiatives will be supported by cognitive / AI capabilities, providing timely critical insights for new operating and monetization models. Initiatives such as IBM Watson.

Connect everything
Connex18 highlighted many of the benefits of DXI including being able to connect everything. It has become increasingly important in the past decade or two to be able to connect. It’s why social media is so popular and important in most people’s lives. Everyone wants to stay connected – to each other, to their devices, and even have their devices connect to each other. This is the promise of DXI – the ability to connect and shape tomorrow’s success through connections throughout your industry. The platform that makes it possible needs to be high performance, reliable, secure and automated.

Analyze this - for a better customer experience
DX makes it possible to analyze large quantities of data to gain insight into your customers and their needs. It can drive strategic initiatives to guarantee the quality of service, improve retention rates and provide customers with a life time of value increasing their loyalty to you and your company. With the right information and sales incentives based on the knowledge you’ve gained, you can offer your customers what they need when they need it.

Some things in life are free
With the rollout of new technologies comes new models. One such model is the “freemium” business model. The concept is that you provide a basic product or service for free. It usually has more up-scale product that is the same basic freemium product or service that includes additional features or functionality for a fee. 

Additional, new business models include communications platform as a service (CPaaS), Unified communications as a service (UCaaS) and network as a service (NaaS). 

To the cloud!
The cloud is redefining the way enterprises acquire and use their technology in the DXI economy. With CPaaS, your company could lease whole elements of your communications infrastructure – such as a PBX or data center using a cloud. UCaaS is similar in that other services could be hosted in a cloud instead of on site (on premises) – services such as instant messaging, presence information, voice, and more. NaaS offers the same benefits in that you could have your whole network infrastructure hosted in the cloud. These options off your company ways to save money by only paying for what you use. This is especially beneficial in industries, such as education, where demand is cyclical based on whether school is in session.

So, what does DXI mean for your industry?

While there are many benefits from digitally transforming, there were some strong specific benefits for each industry discussed at the event, such as:
- In healthcare, a key DXI benefit is the ability to securely share digitized patient information with appropriate care providers
- In education, DXI helps provide a secure site, improved Learning Management System integration, engagement services, and multicasting for broadband services 
- In transportation, DXI helps safely increase public transit capacity, safety and comfort while reducing risks and costs. It also provides a way for extended geographical coverage and local storage.
- In hospitality, DXI increases revenues by enabling differentiation from disruptive competitors. DXI from ALE provides an outcome-based model, guest services and bots, room automation, internet of things (IoT) services and UCaaS.
- In government applications, DXI facilitates citizen engagement while ALE platforms provides means for local storage, an app partner ecosystem, Rainbow CPaaS, software-based encryption and multicast for closed circuit TV (CCTV).

Why wait to transform your life and your enterprise?
I have a hard time coming up with a reason why you should wait to digitally transform your enterprise – whether you’re in transportation, government, education, healthcare or hospitality. The benefit to your bottom line will become apparent as you take advantage of these new business models.

As a starting point, you should consider a vendor that offers a single foundation that allows all platforms to be integrated. One such platform is Alcatel-Lucent Rainbow™, a hybrid-cloud solution that features an open and powerful architecture that provides highly functional communication and collaboration services for all market segments. Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise has created solutions based on its platform and products to address various industries and vertical markets including hospitality, healthcare, education, transportation, and government. 

Additional information
Additional information on digitally transforming your business can be found on the Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise website.