Author: Sergei Zhmako

Everywhere we look today, we’re seeing and hearing signs of the seismic shift happening in the workforce—across almost every industry. Automation, artificial intelligence (AI), and machine learning are transforming human-machine collaboration to increase efficiency, cut costs, and support the productivity of human workers.

The key to the change is striking the right balance in the synergy between automation and human collaboration. For leadership, balancing human capabilities with the right technological tools to drive innovation and achieve strategic growth is the key to finding an optimal path forward. It’s an ongoing process that requires business leaders to assess and reassess the right mix of tech tools to enhance human intelligence in their workplace.

The Impact of Automation and AI

Automation and AI are revolutionizing industries by alleviating repetitive, time-consuming, and mundane tasks. Team members are freed from the repetitive tasks of the classic assembly line and can focus on the strategic and creative endeavors that require a human touch. While the trend of embracing advanced technologies is taking off in almost every industry, there are some key areas where technological advancements are causing the most significant shift.

• Data Processing and Analysis: AI algorithms can analyze and process vast amounts of data head-spinningly fast. For industries such as healthcare, marketing, and finance, this helps uncover new insights and connections to better serve customers and clients.
• Customer Service: In an area where human touch is critical, virtual assistants and AI-powered chatbots help direct traffic flow. These tools free up valuable human agents to handle nuanced and complex customer needs, improving response times and customer satisfaction with outcomes.
• Manufacturing: Automation has enhanced the precision and efficiency of the manufacturing industry in many new and exciting ways. Not only does this protect workers, but it reduces errors, improves production efficiency, and accelerates the time-to-market for new products.

The Role of Human Collaboration

With all this technological change, certain concerns can arise amongst business leaders and their human workforce. While tools like AI and automation have many advantages, the reality is that human abilities and skills remain irreplaceable. Creativity, critical thinking, empathy, and complex problem-solving skills are areas where humans excel. Successful business leaders recognize that technology tools support human talent, increase job satisfaction, and eliminate those rote, time-wasting tasks.

So, how can leadership find the right balance in this paradigm shift? How do we embrace the latest technologies to enhance human work? It’s true that there are science fiction-like concerns brought about by the hype surrounding AI’s potential. No one wants to be replaced by technology (and even with advanced automation, technology is nowhere near running business processes without a human element).

There are a few steps that leadership can take to ensure that they reap the benefits of AI and use it as a powerful tool to support and enhance the workforce:

1. Determining Complementary Roles: Identify where your human expertise and the technological process overlap and where they do not. For example, AI technology can handle data analysis, but human marketing experts need to bring creative strategies and decision-making based on those insights.
2. Investing in Team Training: Many workers have concerns about AI and automation because they seem like nebulous concepts that require high levels of expertise. It’s much easier (and wiser) to invest in training your existing team to upskill on digital literacy, data interpretation, and other technological tasks rather than seeking out new talent. Continuous learning increases your employee buy-in and helps them stay adaptable while you retain that all-important institutional memory.
3. Fostering Collaboration:  Teamwork is always critical, even between AI systems and humans. AI integration increases your team’s access to data, which, in turn, supports better risk analysis, strategic planning, and creative, data-driven decisions. In short, it makes your team even better.

Strategic Implementation of Automation and AI

What is the best way approach to maximize the benefits of automation and AI for your team? It can be tempting to buy into all the options at once and to feel like you need to “keep up” with all technology tools to get better results. But like all decision-making processes, slow, steady, and deliberate will ultimately yield more success.

• Start with a Needs Assessment: Again, not every business needs every technological tool. Various sectors may find that they get better outcomes when they leave higher-level tasks to their human experts. Consider all the factors like the complexity of the task, the potential for operational efficiency, pitfalls, and potential benefits and cost savings.
• Set Clear, Measurable Objectives: What will a successful outcome look like when you implement automation and AI tools? How will you measure improvements to efficiency, enhancements to customer experience, or cost reduction? It’s important to set clear goals to help guide your implementation strategy rather than taking risks with sweeping changes that are too fast, too soon, or lacking foresight.
• Select Tools Carefully: Again, every business doesn’t need automation software or AI tools. Instead of trying to fit your needs to the new tools, consider your actual business needs and budget. Whenever possible, look for scalable solutions that grow along with your business and integrate with your existing processes and systems.
• ​Use Pilot Programs: Test, test, and test again. Start with small-scale pilot programs to measure the success and effectiveness of automation in a certain area. These insights should play a critical role in your next steps before a full-scale rollout.
• Monitor Outcomes and Adjust: Technological growth isn’t a one-and-done process. You’ll need to monitor your automated systems and processes, go back, and make adjustments. Set up benchmarks and regular, frequent reviews to help you stay on track, ensuring your investment in technology is generating target outcomes.

Balancing Budget and Benefits

Automation and AI have substantial benefits for many companies, but it’s important to look at the financial aspects in the short and long term. Will automation streamline the manufacturing process in a way that will ensure product quality? Will AI capabilities enhance the customer service capacity of your human operators and offer better performance?

It’s important to prioritize high-impact areas. Look at the tasks that can be automated to impact your bottom line. Often, these areas include data analysis, customer service automation, and supply chain management.

Cloud-based AI and automation tools are often a strategic choice because they offer flexible pricing models along with scalability. It allows you to try a solution for your business without investing in hardware and infrastructure right away. You can instead focus your budget on training and implementation.

Evaluate your ROI regularly to make sure your automation initiatives are still a sound investment. Look at more than short-term cost savings and labor costs. Keep an eye on metrics like productivity gains, quality improvement, and customer satisfaction.

IBA Group: Your Partner in Automation and Human Collaboration

​It can be challenging to navigate the complexities of integrating automation with human collaboration. Think of it as a symbiotic relationship rather than a question of replacement or scaling down. How will technology enhance the abilities of your team to make them more effective, productive, and successful?

At IBA, we support businesses across many sectors in their technological endeavors. We can help you find tailored AI and automation solutions that align with your business goals, meet your budget, and grow with your organization. We can also offer training and support to ensure that your workforce is equipped with the skills to collaborate effectively with technology. We prioritize ongoing support to ensure smooth integration and steady performance.

​The future of work is being shaped by the integration of automation, technology, and human collaboration. The key to longevity and success in this environment is to find the balance between leveraging technology and empowering human talent. It’s important to stay creative and innovative as you forge ahead.

If you need customized solutions, expertise, and support to harness the power of automation and human collaboration, please reach out. Together, we can help drive your business to new heights with a workplace where technology and human ingenuity thrive.

Author: Sergei Zhmako

The reality of today’s world is that if your business wants to stay competitive and relevant, it needs to embrace digital technology. Digital transformation is happening, fundamentally changing how businesses perform and deliver value to customers. Transformative technologies like artificial intelligence (AI), cloud computing, and the Internet of Things (IoT), are rewriting the rules and setting a high bar.

These technologies are not just tools but your allies in making your business processes efficient, personalizing customer experiences, and automating decision-making processes. With unprecedented levels of real-time data collection and analysis, you can make everything more personal, effective, and transformative. Here’s how to harness this power and help your company not just survive but thrive in the changing landscape.

The Scope of Digital Transformation

What does digital transformation mean? It encompasses the comprehensive integration of digital technology into nearly all business areas. It reshapes how organizations operate and how they engage with customers. It means delivering products and services in record time.

The use of advanced technology, such as AI, data analytics, and RPA (robotic process automation), streamlines your business processes. These tools automate rote tasks and optimize supply chains. They enable you to make decisions with real-time, in-depth, organized data.

As every business leader knows, the smoother your business processes are, the better your efficiency and resource management. Automating business processes can help reduce costs and save time. In a Salesforce study, 73% of IT leaders estimated automation saved time by 50% and reduced overall costs between 10 and 50%.

It’s not just about savings in business processes, though; it’s about providing a better customer experience. Digital technologies like IoT and personalized AI recommendations offer customers engaging, tailored experiences. These experiences and interactions improve satisfaction and build deep loyalty. Never before has data been so easy to collect and analyze for personalization.

A corporate culture that embraces digital transformation also encourages innovation, flexibility, and forward-thinking. A company’s culture must prioritize learning and development to thrive in the evolving landscape. Change should be embraced, and employees should think creatively about how digital tools can enhance their work, making their jobs better, less stressful, and more enjoyable.

Embracing digital transformation in your business means helping your team recognize that intelligent automation tools can help them become more successful. These tools don’t threaten to replace your employees’ innovation and creativity but rather free them up, so they have more time for the “good stuff.”

The Strategic Importance of Digital Transformation

Through the adoption of new technologies, you can propel your business beyond your competition. When operations improve, greater value is delivered. At the core, digital transformation fosters innovation, efficiency, and customer satisfaction. The results? A sustained competitive advantage.

• Innovation & Efficiency: Technologies like cloud computing offer a scalable infrastructure that allows you to experiment and ultimately deploy new services. Automation and AI remove repetitive processes from employees, allowing them to be more creative and strategic.
• Customer Satisfaction: Customers and clients expect personalization. In an Infosys consumer survey, 86% of respondents reported that personalization impacts what they purchase. Companies that leverage technology to provide real-time customer support and more personalized experiences are rewarded with happier, more satisfied clientele.
• Data & Analytics: Data doesn’t lie. The most significant aspect of digital transformation is how it allows companies to collect, analyze, and store vast amounts of data. Everything from behavior patterns to market trends will enable businesses to make stronger, data-driven predictive decisions. The data can help pinpoint new market opportunities and anticipate needs to keep you a step ahead of the competition.

Step-by-Step Transformation

If digital transformation’s benefits sound pretty appealing, you’re probably wondering, “How do we get there?”

Digital transformation of your business isn’t a radical overnight switch. Like all decisions, it’s crucial to take a deliberate, researched, and phased approach that aligns with your long-term strategic goals.

Where to start? Typically, the best place to look is the areas of your processes where digital technology would offer an immediate impact. Where are the repeated tasks? What are the arduous parts of your employee’s roles?

Begin with a thorough assessment of your business. Look at where you stand now and your five-year plan. The decision of what to digitize first should be driven by factors like the potential ROI, improvements to operational efficiency, customer expectations, and your capacity and infrastructure to support new technologies.

Often, it’s best to start small. For many companies, a good starting point is digitizing customer interactions. This might mean launching an e-commerce platform, developing a mobile app, or deploying chatbots in your customer service.

Another area of focus, especially for businesses in the manufacturing sector, is the automation of back-end processes. Consider the merits of implementing an ERP system or adopting automated inventory management solutions. These digital tools can help minimize errors, reduce ordering costs, and improve efficiency. They also help provide a foundation for more advanced initiatives such as predictive maintenance and smart machining with IoT.

By starting on small, “quick win” areas you can start to cultivate the critical digital culture in your organization. You’ll upskill your workforce and set the foundation for more complex digital transformation efforts in the future.

The Role of Strategic Expertise

In any business sector, from finance to manufacturing to retail, digital transformation is a complex, multifaceted journey. It will change your business processes, how you interact with customers, and your company culture. You should not make this move without expert guidance.

There are a broad range of digital tools available. Strategic experts know that there is no one-size-fits-all strategy. Each undertaking must be tailored to meet your company’s specific needs, stakeholders, customers, and community.

Even a step as simple as selecting the best technology and vendor to align with your digital strategies can be a huge undertaking. A strategic expert will bring their experience to the table, along with a solid grasp of technology trends, the latest advancements, and industry-specific technology solutions. They will help your company avoid some of the pitfalls and risks of leaping before you look.

The benefit of engaging with strategic experts is that they can support your internal team. Your IT team likely holds strong expertise in your company and even your industry, but they may lack a larger view of how the latest digital tech is transforming the market landscape as a whole. Consultants can offer a fresh perspective and cross-industry knowledge that may guide you to innovative solutions.

Strategic experts can help you accelerate the digital transformation process with best practices to avoid common mistakes. They can also be vital to empowering and even upskilling your internal team, helping them build their capabilities for sustained digital transformation efforts.

Common Challenges in Digital Innovation and How to Overcome Them

Transforming the digital infrastructure of your business is essential for progression and competitiveness in nearly every industry…but it’s not without growing pains. When business leaders move toward digital transformation, they often meet with some internal resistance. Here are a few of the most common obstacles:

• Resistance to Change: Many people resist change, especially when it comes to their livelihoods. They may worry about job security, fear the unknown, or simply feel comfortable with the status quo.
• Technical Debt: Is your technology infrastructure robust and up to date enough to integrate with new digital solutions? If legacy systems aren’t up to par, you have technical debt, which may require a significant resource investment to resolve.
• Skills Gaps: Advanced digital technologies require human expertise, and as you implement these innovations, you may find gaps in your workforce’s skills.

Fortunately, none of these challenges are insurmountable. It’s well worth the effort to plan for and address the challenges of digital transformation early on. Start shifting your approach today for more success down the road. Here are some strategies to help you address the issues that often arise during digital transformation:

• Implement Change Management: Change management is a dressed-up term for helping employees cope with changes in the workplace. Clear communication is almost always the answer to alleviating change anxiety in your organization. That means being transparent about the benefits and goals of digital transformation and what it means for individuals. How will digital changes offer benefits that can motivate and align staff?
• Including Employees in Planning: Involve your team from all levels in the planning and implementation of digital tools. Employees on the “frontlines” can often anticipate concerns that may be overlooked by leadership. The added benefit is that employees involved in decision-making have more buy-in and are more likely to advocate for the change.
• Establishing a Continuous Learning Environment: Shift your company culture to embrace continuous learning and professional development. Training and upskilling help fill skill gaps and recruitment challenges. Look for ways to equip your existing employees with the tools to transform their skills (and confidence) with your company’s technology.
• Using Pilot Programs and Phased Rollouts: Almost all changes are smoother when rolled out in a controlled, measurable way. By starting with a pilot project, you can target a specific process or area of your business to see how digital change works. Red team and test security, implement feedback and adjust as you go, to continue building momentum.
• Recognition and Rewards: Everyone appreciates recognition. Implementing reward systems for teams and acknowledging their efforts can help build enthusiasm and support for your digital initiatives. Change takes work and effort—show your team that you see their hard work and appreciate it.

Looking Ahead: The Future of Digital Transformation

So, where is the new digital frontier taking us? As technology and markets continue their accelerated evolution, it’s hard to predict how quickly the landscape will change, but it is undoubtedly changing. Companies must be flexible, adaptable, informed, and ready to shift with market conditions to thrive in a dynamic environment.

Digital transformation isn’t a one-time project or update. It’s an ongoing process of improvement, adaptation, and discovery. New technologies emerge, consumer needs change, and companies must assess and integrate innovations in their operations to stay ahead.

Some ways to stay flexible in a changing digital landscape include:

• Adopting Scalable Solutions: Look for scalable and modular technologies so you can expand and modify your capabilities without extensive (and expensive) overhauls.
• Using Agile Methodologies: Agile practices across your company will help promote a culture of quick responses and continuous improvement.
• Reviewing Strategy Frequently: As the landscape changes, your roadmap must adapt. Regularly review your digital strategy, technology stack, and workflows to ensure they align with your goals as well as shifting market dynamics.
• Embracing Feedback: Establish robust feedback loops from customers, employees, and market experts. Listen to the feedback and incorporate it into your plans as you pursue opportunities to innovate.
• Investing in R&D: Research and development have long helped companies stay ahead, and it’s no different in today’s more digital world. Leadership should review research, test, explore new tools, and expand their horizons.

Digital transformation is a requirement for most of today’s businesses that want to stay competitive. The market is fast-paced, innovative, and technology-driven. Start with a clear understanding of the way that strategic integration of some of these tools can benefit your company’s unique needs.

Address internal resistance through effective change management and upskill employees with a culture of continuous learning and professional development. By maintaining a flexible approach and fostering an environment that embraces innovation and agility, you’ll find the right steps to forge ahead with success.

If you’re wondering which technology tools and transformations would fit your business effectively, reach out. We offer an array of technological solutions and innovations to help your company maintain a competitive edge.

Author: Mark Hillary

I wrote recently on this blog about the use of SAP to create Digital Twins, a digital representation of a real system so it can be more easily monitored and controlled. As I mentioned earlier, this has been a common practice in aviation for several years. Engine manufacturers will always maintain a digital version of every engine they sell and ensure that the digital version is updated in real-time using sensors on the real engine.

In aviation the advantage of doing this is obvious – it allows for more efficient maintenance and safety procedures when the digital engine allows engineers to monitor real engines remotely. But I believe that the launch of SAP’s Leonardo system last year will really start accelerating the use of Digital Twins as a common business strategy.

It is a combination of technologies and strategies that are creating this possibility, but the three important ones are:

1. The Internet of Things (IoT); as the real world fills with sensors and connectivity as standard for almost every electronic device we will reach a point where systems such as a Digital Twin are essential just to stay on top of what is connected and what information it is reporting. In the home, this may only be devices such as a Kindle, iPad, Echo, phone, lightbulbs, or heating thermostat, but in the industrial environment it can easily be more complex and difficult to control.

2. Artificial Intelligence (AI); with so much data being created constantly by sensors we will need to apply AI principles to the data just to make sense of it all. For example, if your home thermostat detects patterns in the way that you prefer your home to be heated then it should be able to anticipate what you want before you change the settings.

3. Machine Learning (ML); the ability to look at every action and outcome by every sensor inside a network will allow the system to learn about the ideal outcomes and then to suggest recommendations in future based on earlier learning.

It is really the IoT that is at the heart of this development. Imagine the complexity of a modern industrial facility – a large brewery or car factory for example. Across the entire property will be doors, windows, pumps, and various robots that all need to be coordinated. Most companies with these facilities will already have some sort of control mechanism, but the Digital Twin makes an assumption that every component (pump, door, assembly-line robot) has in-built sensors. By taking a feed from all of these sensors we can build a complete virtual mirror of the plant.

The IoT facilitates this by ensuring that the real-time sensor data is available, then the AI system goes to work on spotting potential problems or just process flows that are unusual and alerting workers to places they need to check.

I have seen this type of system deployed for an office management system where every light, heater, door, and window is modelled in the system. I believe that we will see the Digital Twin concept growing much faster as companies find that they can create enormous efficiencies by improving what they do and spotting problems before they happen.

As Forbes magazine recently suggested, it will soon be impossible to plan any kind of digital transformation for your business without creating a digital twin first. The processes will be simply too complex for any one manager to understand from start to end. Not only do you need to map out all the existing components, you need to apply AI to oversee how the entire system is working.

Without these deep insights into the way your business functions at present any transformation plans will be impossible. Digital Twins are not just for those obsessed with being able to manage their existing IoT infrastructure, they are becoming an essential tool for managers who want to see how the future of their business might look.

Author: Mark Hillary

Cloud computing has transformed how the enterprise uses both storage and applications. Local storage is no longer a requirement with remote server farms immediately managing any requirements and applications using cloud resources to cope with heavy loads – such as online retailers on particularly busy shopping days. All these benefits of the cloud have become normalised, but could we be achieving more with cloud-based services?

A recent feature in ZDNet suggests that we can – digital transformation. Most enterprises view digital transformation through the lens of a change in business model, for example a retailer with a focus on in-store sales shifting their attention to apps. However, the ZDNet research shows that enterprises with a requirement to quickly change business model or offer an improved digital service could be more effectively exploring cloud-based services.

The research group IDC claims that spending on digital transformation in 2017 topped $1.3 trillion, so this is a market where a lot of enterprises are spending, but are they getting the best value and results from that investment?

The problem in many cases is that the technology makes the problem look simple. The cloud, Big Data, the Internet of Things (IoT) – on the surface all these technologies are easy to understand. Executives can sit in the boardroom and proclaim that we need a business strategy that builds on the IoT, yet it is one thing to declare that you want to use a certain type of technology and another to figure out how to make that an integral part of your business in a way that delights your customers.

This is where ZDNet believes that a focus on the cloud can pay dividends. Too many enterprises do not have an efficient or well-structured IT department. There are disparate apps spread across different storage facilities and no easy way to share and analyse data across all the business applications being used. Rather than focusing on technology-led solutions, such as what can we do with AI or the IoT, it makes more sense to fix this central core of the organisation by using cloud-based services. Fix the platform and your applications and data use will naturally transform.

Secure cloud access is a proven technology and it is simple to deploy if you hire a good partner with cloud expertise. The initial focus can be on storage, but you can build out from there to centrally manage business applications and data.

This approach can drive digital transformation in your business, not because it is a radical change to manage storage or apps in this way, but because once you organise your systems around this central core, with strong business application support and the ability to share data across systems, you will be able to quickly design new solutions that could only ever work in this environment.

Sometimes it is better to build the platform and let the solutions arrive through innovation, rather than trying to build the solution on day one. Once you have a platform in place that allows data sharing, then the ideas will flow and your teams will automatically start exploring digital transformation options that are driven by business needs – not just technology.

IBA Group has been exploiting the capabilities of cloud computing, as well as other CAMSS technologies (cloud, analytics, enterprise mobility, social media, and security) to provide end–to–end business transformation services to our customers. In 2015, IBA Group opened its data center that offers various types of cloud services, including IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service), PaaS (Platform as a Service), and SaaS (Software as a Service).

Author: Andrew Dvirnyk

Digital transformation is a hot topic inside and outside of the IT industry. However, just because digital transformation is often on people’s minds does not mean that it is automatically an “easy sell” to internal teams.

In fact, getting buy-in for digital transformation from individuals within your organization can be a challenge. Not only that, it can be a challenge so significant that it threatens to cost your organization some of its most valuable assets: time and money.

So, you might be asking, what can I do to garner support for digital transformation from key players in my organization? What compels stakeholders to make the right choices for digital transformation? And what do these individuals need to know to help put my organization on the right path to successful digital transformation?

That is some of what we are diving into here, along with tips for how to get the buy-in you need to engage in the digital transformation projects that you determine are best for every level of your organization.

Understand Digital Transformation

The first step in the process might not be the most obvious to those of us who are leaders in the digital transformation space. But remember to take the time to explain to stakeholders exactly what digital transformation is, how it impacts your organization, and what opportunities it creates.

Just as importantly, make it a priority to communicate to the key players in your organization what failing to embrace digital transformation can mean for the health and longevity of your organization.

What is Digital Transformation?

One of the challenges to digital transformation buy-in is the fact that, by definition, digital transformation encompasses a significant shift in the way organizations do business. It also requires a shift in the way employees carry out their daily tasks, as well as the very tasks that those employees are required to perform.

The exciting part about digital transformation, of course, is that it utilizes innovative technologies to create new ways of doing business that are more automated, efficient, and error-proof. Digital transformation touches every facet of an organization, from internal operations, to customer experience, to the organizational culture itself.

And while this creates tremendous opportunities for innovation and improvements, it also often makes it difficult to get buy-in because, frankly, change is hard. And many within your organization are likely to be resistant to it. Understanding the roots of this resistance and coming up with ways to communicate the value of digital transformation by empowering rather than alienating employees and other stakeholders is key to getting the buy-in you need, and, ultimately, to the successful adoption of digital transformation.

Articulate the Value of an End-to-End Solution

If you want to get buy-in for digital transformation (and you should!), start by taking a holistic approach to the value it provides your organization. What we are talking about here is an end-to-end solution.

This means that you are presenting your stakeholders with an opportunity to resolve multiple issues and achieve multiple goals through one simple, focused approach. With digital transformation, you are offering reduced cycle times, improved efficiencies, fewer errors, lower cost over time, and additional high value results. And for as much value as digital transformation adds, it does so with simplicity. In many ways, this is the beauty of innovations of this type. It makes the complicated easy. It solves problems and improves processes at every stage.

Understood in this way, buy-in becomes much less of a challenge. This is because it becomes clear that, with the technologies you are proposing, you are offering value at every level. And you are reducing complexities at the same time.

Use Workshops to Educate about Digital Transformation

One of the most effective ways to get buy-in for digital transformation is to educate employees and stakeholders at all levels about the value that digital transformation gives your organization.

Remember that part of the education process involves understanding the perspectives that members of your organization are bringing to the digital transformation conversation. Instead of trying to convince them in a vacuum, meet their fears, concerns, and perspectives head on. Take the next step and demonstrate, with empathy, the value of digital transformation within your organization.

Begin by focusing on the power, value, and opportunity that these innovations present. Alleviate fears about robots replacing humans. Hone in on all of the ways in which robotic technology and automation improve employee experience and the overall operations of your organization.

At the same time, use these innovation workshops, built to excite your audience about the idea of digital transformation, to address fears about rapidly changing technology. Automation can be a daunting topic, not because the technology behind it is so difficult to understand, but because the reality is, automation is changing the way we all work. And it is doing so at a rate of speed that many are not yet ready to embrace.

Educating through workshops and other initiatives, as well as creating open dialogues, helps to ready employees and stakeholders for change. That readiness allows for buy-in initially and throughout the transformation process.

Account for Reactions to Change

Knowing that digital transformation ultimately improves day-to-day employee experiences and the overall efficiency of the organization does not automatically mean that the transition will be smooth.

It would be a mistake to underestimate how difficult it is for individuals (even those who work in technology-driven jobs) to accept change. As you navigate the digital transformation process and as you work to get buy-in for digital transformation within your organization, take into account the legitimate fears that come about as a result of the changes you are presenting.

Individuals will feel like they are giving up their power in the face of automation technologies. It is your responsibility to show how automation empowers employees. They will be concerned about how automation and other technologies will change the ways they work. Show how these technologies improve their day-to-day experiences.

Introduce new tools and technologies in the context of education and value. Explain how changes will work, what the processes will look like, and how individuals benefit at each stage. Highlight the ways in which employee expertise will stand out, rather than be replaced.

Humanize the Workforce

As you lead these conversations, keep in mind that there is a way to look at this seemingly radical technology transformation that is both positive and productive. Yes, automation does replace some human tasks. What automation also does is enable individuals to build and to use new skills.

This is a particularly important point for us at IBA Group. One of our primary goals as an organization that his truly SMART (Sustainable, Multi-Faceted, Automated, Reliable, and Trusted), is to humanize the workforce. You may ask, “How does IBA Group aim to humanize the workforce if they are automation experts?” and this is an excellent question.

We believe that humanizing the workforce happens when automation enables us to eliminate the repetitive and boring work that talented people are forced to spend too much of their time doing in the absence of automation. We commit to using automation technologies to help our customers focus on work that adds value for their customers, and for their employees.

Provide a Path for Onboarding

No project, not even the smallest one, can be completed successfully without a clear path for onboarding. Now, since digital transformation of an organization is certainly not a small project, the need for a strong, mutually agreed upon onboarding path is even greater.

When it comes to getting organizational buy-in for digital transformation, the onboarding path needs to include some key elements. Start by acknowledging that the path to change is a challenging one. Then, identify what operations will be changed when the robots are added to the organization. Next, explain all the ways in which those operations will change as a result of introducing the robots into the organization.

Knowing the what and the how enables your organization to move forward on a clearly defined path. This enables you to set appropriate expectations and create processes to achieve goals. Keep in mind, though, that as with any solution, the introduction of RPA technology and other digital solutions associated with digital transformation, does not automatically resolve all issues. Nor does it mitigate all risks. In our next article, we dive into some of the risks and limitations associated with digital transformation, and how transparency related to those risks and limitations can actually help to motivate your organization around digital transformation.

Questions about Automation and Digital Transformation

Even if your organization is ready to embrace digital transformation, you are likely to have many questions about RPA, automation solutions, and other innovations that can improve the way you work. Our engineers have decades of experience working with emerging and established technologies to improve efficiencies, reduce costs, and increase productivity across organizations and industries.

Reach out to us to take your next step on the digital transformation journey.

Author: Andrew Dvirnyk

There are a variety of ways to motivate your organization to embrace digital transformation. In making the compelling business case for digital transformation, you want to be sure to include the aspects of the technologies that are innovative, exciting, and something that your organization can be proud of.

Work with the Marketing Team

One effective way to do this is to create engaging conversations and build energy around the digital transformation concept, and the process itself. To do this, turn to your marketing teams. Create and share videos within your organization. Host lunch and learns and other internal events that help members of your organization understand and feel excited about digital transformation to the point where buy-in and overall institutional support is the obvious and best choice.

When you are working with marketing to create these experiences, make it a goal to showcase the automation process and reveal how it will operate in your specific environment. Taking this approach enables you to appeal to and demonstrate your understanding of how employees feel about digital transformation in your organization.

Remember Empathy

Build this content and these experiences with empathy. Understand, as we all do, that change is a challenge. It requires stretching on the part of employees, and it may cause them to encounter some fears they have about their roles in the organization and their future within it.

Based on this understanding of how many employees are likely to feel, zero in on all the ways in which digital transformation can improve current working conditions, specifically the day-to-day responsibilities that can overwhelm or even bore employees. Be sure to explain the ways in which improved efficiencies and improved quality also improve the experiences of employees.

Also, remember to take into account the fact that many of the employees that you are looking to appeal to have expertise and significant, hard-won pride in their work. Acknowledge this. Demonstrate the many ways in which digital transformation benefits from and builds on their expertise to create better outcomes and better experiences for them and for your customers. It is the marriage of employee expertise and digital transformation that is the most beneficial for the organization and the individuals who bring it to life.

Highlight Positive Impact of Digital Transformation

People tend to have a favorable opinion of things that make their jobs, and their day-to-day experiences easier. Use this opportunity to highlight the many ways in which digital transformation improves daily operations within your organization.

Start by looking at output numbers. Successful digital transformation decreases errors. Start from this point of view, then dig down into the many ways in which RPA adds value across the organization.

From systems integration to reduced cycle times, your organization is faced with the opportunity to improve performance, quality, efficiency, and cost, all while making it easier for employees to get their jobs done.

Don’t Forget to Communicate Risks

Keep in mind, when educating executives and teams about digital transformation, it is equally important to identify the limits and the risks involved as it is to outline all the ways that digital transformation improves organizational efficiencies and outcomes.

As with any redesign effort, digital transformation has its own limitations. Understanding and planning for successful outcomes with this in mind helps to ensure the success of digital transformation projects. A key piece of this puzzle is communicating the limits of the technology to stakeholders as transparently and accurately as you communicate its benefits and opportunities.

The objective here is to communicate challenges, risks, opportunities, and benefits to promote successful adoption and achieve goals. The question is, what are some of the most effective and impactful ways to do that?

Use an Automation Hub

Automation hubs provide a place for employees to voice fears and concerns, as well as to share helpful ideas and creative solutions related to automation within the organization. This is collaboration at its best. Automation hubs push digital transformation forward in a way that optimizes the skills and creativity of all members of an organization.

Using the automation hub model, teams are able to identify and confront challenges and risks, and to apply the right technology solutions to resolve them and improve operations.

Understand Management Roles

Building on the automation hub concept, embrace management roles for bringing about successful digital transformation. Begin by taking a look at the process assessment phase. In this phase, in the management role, you should work to identify the human capital potential. Look at how individual employees can improve the overall digital transformation process by activating their unique skills, expertise, and approaches.

Listen to every member of your team. Digital transformation provides everyone with the opportunity to redesign how your organization works from the inside out. This is the chance to work together to improve processes, embrace technology solutions, create efficiencies, and highlight your excellent work. It is your opportunity to improve both the experiences of your employees and the experiences of your customers.

It is at this juncture that motivation works for the benefit of the entire organization. When you are able to build community around digital transformation and creative technology solutions, you have a unified team working together for the success of the organization and the benefit of your customers. In this context, digital transformation becomes an engine for employee loyalty and, ultimately, customer loyalty.

Roadmap

Of course, none of these goals can be achieved alone. IBA Group is expert in the roadmap to scaling digital transformation. We understand the technology, deployment, and conversion. And we have led projects of this type in multiple countries for many years.

What we have learned has become our gold standard for SMART solutions. We start with core processes. Here, we isolate where we can achieve substantial, immediate value. And we demonstrate that to stakeholders. This is the beauty of RPA. You get quick, accurate, usable results.

Next, we help evaluate the results of automation so that you can present those results to stakeholders in meaningful ways. This is critical for digital transformation buy-in and motivation. But buy-in is not enough. You need to be certain that you are building something that will last and that will continue to deliver value to your organization.

That is why our next step is to create an Opportunity Assessment Framework. This includes creating a library of reusable, evergreen content. We provide examples of usage and a Centralized Knowledge Base comprised of all relevant Operating Documents and Best Practice Guidelines

Scale

On the next step in the digital transformation journey, we at IBA Group work with our clients to set goals that aim to bring about significant growth. Here is where we need to take a moment to acknowledge the complexity of digital transformation and the importance of working with an expert partner like IBA Group.

When it comes to business operations, there is a wealth of unstructured data to tackle. As a result, organizations are faced with a significant challenge when it comes to automating that data. Take a Help Desk scenario as an example. In this scenario, as we move through the digital transformation process, the aim is to automate Help Desk work with analytics. Due to the unstructured nature of the data associated with the Help Desk, the process, that ultimately simplifies operations across the organization, is extremely complex to set up.

In order to resolve this rather significant issue, IBA Group applies our 360-degree expertise in Intelligent Automation. Here, we add add value in all dimensions: general; functional; technical; and people. We set up a governance model and we collaborate and communicate to progress to successful digital transformation and the increased efficiencies that come with clean, structured data.

Fill the Expertise Gap

We partner with clients who are ready for digital transformation by filling in the expertise gap within organizations. Empowered by our knowledge, experience, and commitment, we educate organizations through the often-challenging process of discovery and analysis. And we guide you through the transformation process.

Are you ready for your digital transformation? Connect with us today.

Mainframes bring about a variety of challenges to our ever-evolving enterprises. After half a century, mainframes are still a necessary reality for a variety of large businesses who cannot afford to run the risk of losing time or operability. Given that mainframes continue to be an important part of the reality for developers, engineers, and technology stakeholders, we must take a look at all the ways in which we can reduce or avoid operational problems in applications running on mainframes to minimize business impact.

Today, we are taking a deeper dive into how important knowledge transfer is when working with a variety of applications on mainframe. And, just as importantly, we are looking at how Appulse can help with that knowledge transfer. And how it can improve processes, increase efficiencies, save money, and reduce stress.

The Appulse Origin Story

To do this, let’s take a look at how – and why – Appulse came to exist. Our team of experienced engineers at IBA Group is dedicated to SMART Solutions. That means, we work for sustainable, multi-faceted, automated, reliable, and trusted approaches to enterprise needs and challenges. We designed Appulse with these values at the center of our thinking.

Appulse is created specifically for business applications that run on mainframe. With over thirty years of experience working with mainframe, our engineers and developers understand the need for a well-functioning mainframe as much as we understand how difficult it can be to work with and maintain that mainframe. This is one of the many reasons why we designed Appulse to work with business applications running on mainframe.

We understand that, in practice, a number of challenges can come with legacy systems. Knowledge is inevitably lost when new hires replace developers that know your mainframe applications inside and out. We created Appulse expressly to resolve these issues. And to make your systems smarter and more efficient. Our primary goal with Appulse is to create a reliable process behind operational support for business applications. And we do so in a way that improves Team Member collaboration and operations across the enterprise.

Knowledge Transfer

Solving operational problems is an important piece of the puzzle. But it is only one piece. For true efficiency and return on investment, your systems need to suffer from fewer issues. You need to have access to a tool that identifies issues before they have a significant negative impact on operations. And you need to be able to resolve those issues consistently and quickly.

More to the point, you need to have a way of storing those solutions so that you are not forced to go through the process of designing and redesigning solutions to the same problems because there is no centralized knowledge storage. Or because your solutions are housed only in the mind of one employee who may retire – or take a vacation.

All of this speaks to the knowledge transfer issue, and it is a significant issue when it comes to mainframe applications that we rely on to keep business running. The first step is to recognize that knowledge transfer and share is, in fact, the weakest point of applications.

Old Code

In many cases, you are likely to be dealing with code that was written 30 – 50 years ago. Since then, a hodgepodge of individuals has been involved in the development and maintenance of that code. Every developer’s temporary fix exists in that legacy. But every path to a resolution is not stored. And you move farther and farther away from the efficiencies our systems – and our businesses – require. All the while, you are losing your two most precious assets: time and money.

Even if you have very little turnover in your engineering and development teams, fifty years is a long time. Every time one person leaves, their knowledge is lost to the new person who comes in. Their way of solving problems for you is gone. This is through no fault of the developers. There simply has never been a streamlined, reliable way of storing that person-specific knowledge and accessing it when you need it to solve problems. The majority of their wisdom is in their heads, and so, it goes where they go.

Wise Solutions Database

Enter Appulse. Our idea was to create an application that will assimilate problems and solutions for mainframe support of business applications. We created a “wise solutions database” that puts all the valuable knowledge in a centralized, searchable location. And that connects issue identification with the stored solutions.

Then it goes the next step and allows developers to load new solutions and initiate fixes for different types of operational problems that Appulse then stores to speed up and refine the solutions process next time.

Three Step Process

Appulse enables a simple three-step process that helps to resolve the legacy challenges that plague many organizations running on mainframes. Step one, it identifies an operational problem. Step two, it investigates that problem. Step three, with input from application support, it solves the problem. Then it stores information about the problem and its solution to improve efficiencies and outcomes next time, no matter who the developer that is supporting the application.

Real World Scenarios Show Why Knowledge Transfer Matters

Appulse is about more than storing all your team’s collective knowledge in one place. There is a real world need for the ability to recognize and resolve issues quickly. While developers are scrambling to figure out what went wrong, to remember the solution they applied a long time ago, or figure out who to ask for help, your business is losing money. Users are complaining, and time is wasted.

In the case of Appulse, the moment a problem occurs (no matter what time of the day or night), we get an alert to investigate. Take a bank, for example, we may get an alert that a transaction has stopped, or a critical job has been abandoned. In cases like this, even a small interruption or a malfunction at one step of a deep, rich process will prevent the process from proper completion. And everyone will suffer.

These kinds of problems are critical to businesses. In one case, we encountered a problem on one of the supported applications, like an Accounts Receivables Application. We then spent a few hours investigating the problem (the job had stopped opening online for users). After getting the alert to look at the issue, and spending quality research time investigating the problem, we were able to identify exactly what it was. Then, we were able to determine how long it would take to fix the problem, and to fix it.

Our developers received that alert at about 4:00AM. The issue was resolved by 11:00AM. So, the application itself was only down for about two-and-a-half hours of the business day. That is still longer than anyone wants. Now, with Appulse, when we fix this kind of problem, we also store the solution. So, if (and when) a similar problem occurs, our network will find the issue and identify the solution. Then, all we need to do is submit and deploy the solution. That means the application faces nearly no downtime. And our knowledge is stored, transferred, and deployed effectively and efficiently.

Operational Support

Especially in the case of high stakes businesses, like banking, transportation, and so many of the other industries with which we work, the ability to deliver solutions quickly, reliably, and repeatably is key. Appulse enables us to provide the kind of consistent operational support that reduces stress and minimizes the escalation of applications issues.

But operational support is about even more than improving functionality at the system-level. With Appulse, we are able to provide a greater level of support at the human level. When working with legacy systems, as so many developers and engineers do, it is difficult to overcome some of the challenges that they encounter.

Many developers we work with, who work on mainframe, note that it can be hard to have their head working in the right way all the time, and to encounter obstacles and one-off solutions that seem out of place and unclear. The challenge is even greater for newcomers, who often struggle to get on track with operational support.

All of this competes with a developer’s ability to provide efficient, effective solutions that keep your business running smoothly. It amounts to a waste of time, a reduction in motivation, and loss of hard-won knowledge. We are proud that Appulse helps to resolve these issues, just as much as it resolves the business applications issues we built it to fix.