A PICT Alumni, Tushar has over 20 years of IT experience in various industries with deep understanding and experience in the complete life cycle of software development, prime focus on Data Science, scalable IT Solutions in various projects and IT teams in Asia, North America, Europe and Australia. After working for various Multinationals in the IT industry for about 15 years, Tushar started his entrepreneurship journey. His first venture was in the Media and Entertainment domain under the name of Emmersive Infotech Pvt Ltd. After a successful exit from Emmersive, Tushar founded his EdTech startup Skillcues Technologies Pvt Ltd. Currently, Skillcues through its innovative Micro Learning Mobile Platform Chocoed serves some of the biggest multinationals in India. Tushar is also associated with IT Engineering company Unichronic Systems Pvt Ltd which caters to business process automation and cloud solutions for domestic as well as international clients.
Do you wonder why most of new-age startups introduce themselves by appending the word “TECH” to their core business? For instance, a few years ago we used to hear only FinTech but now we have startups introducing themselves as Food-tech, Ed-tech, Prop-tech and the list goes on. This word “tech” really defines or at-least the listener perceives that you are “Digital” in your approach. Well, if you are not, no need to worry, digital Transformation is your ideal bet as it will help your company to embrace new tactics and help to bring in the change in your corporate culture to practice agility and flexibility that these new-age startups benefit from. If you are an aspiring entrepreneur looking to bring the agility of new-age startups, then here are a few things that you must learn from digital transformation.
Let’s us start by first understanding the term “Digital Transformation”. You will find dozens of definitions of this term on the internet. All of them are right in their “own” context. But here I am trying to bring it down to its simplest form. Step 1 – Understand the term “Digitisation”. Digitisation is Incorporating digital technologies into our everyday lives. The Wearables like smartwatches that we started using, they track your physical activities throughout the day.
The moment you started measuring or tracking it using these digital technologies, you started improving. Similarly, in a business context, Digitalisation refers to “Digital Transformation”. It is using the modern age digital technologies to redefine and recalibrate the business model. This helps to provide new revenue and value-producing opportunities for your business. I love explaining with examples and NETFLIX is the best example here. NETFLIX when started their business, they started leaning on the digital part. They used IT-enabled Inventory management system which would track the requests from the subscribers and physically deliver them the DVDs to their home. They were definitely one step ahead of traditional Movie Rental Stores where people had to physically visit, go through what options are available to rent and then bring them home. Once NETFLIX decided to take the next step in digitisation, they completely transformed the way movies are rented. This Digital Transformation by NETFLIX gave their subscribers an option to stream video on demand and the new era in Media and Entertainment begun. Viewers can watch movies, TV shows anytime anywhere on any device of their choice. When you increase the ease for your clients, your business grows automatically.
Here are Top 3 Tips for Successful Digital Transformation
It’s a Journey and can be a long one
Digital transformation is not an overnight thing. For many people, Digital transformation mean just investing in heavy software licenses! “Digital should be seen less as a thing and more a way of doing things.” McKinsey.
Digitisation Strategy is the first step towards successful transformation. Work with your team and spend quality time finalising the strategy that works best for your organisation. This way your employees are not overwhelmed with the changes you are trying to bring in. Digitalization is not only IT departments agenda, but business departments and management must also support the strategy.
Get Buy-In from each and every individual – from CEO to support staff.
The biggest resistance for implementing digitisation will be from your staff at different levels. A successful digital transformation will only come when all employees are entirely on-board with the change. Digitisation affects every department at some point of time. It’s a chain. And if one component of chain weakens, the whole process will break. Communication is the key.
Measure – Readjust – Measure
For the digital transformation implementation to be successful consistent evaluations has to be an essential part of the process. Decide KPIs (Key Performance Indicators), Key Criteria, Measure them on regular basis, Note them and share it with the team. If the team finds it necessary, Readjust the processes, targets and realign.
Some of the interesting use cases of digital transformation
During my career of 2 decades in IT, I have come across some very interesting use cases of Startups who took a digital approach to their business. Livestock loan process has been fairly manual all these years. Startups are digitising this experience and trying to organise this highly scattered sector. Use of AIML technologies have made it possible to identify cattle uniquely, decide the health of the cattle, keep track of progress and enable sale of cattle in the Breeders network. Another example is of PropTech start-up where the complete Realty Sales process is getting digitised. From Discovery, Purchase to home financing to registration of the property. From cars to homes everything is getting commoditized and made available of digital platforms. Remember, its People not technology which will make or break your digitisation dream.