CIO Roundtable – “Push to Digital Transformation”
Umbrella Infocare in association with Citrix organized a CIO roundtable discussion to understand enterprise challenges and drivers of digital transformation within enterprises. Participants included Rajesh Uppal – CIO Maruti Suzuki, Vishal Kapil – CIO Addidas India, Saurabh Pratap – CIO Penguin India, Parveen Kumar Sharma – National Director – Information Technology Shardul Amarchand Mangaldas.
Below we summarize key insights from the discussion:
Enterprise Adaptability
In a fast changing business environment, enterprises have to adapt to both external and internal forces—customer preferences, regulatory compliance, employee work habits, technology changes. Enterprises have to be responsive and adapt to changes, or risk being left behind and even completely eliminated. The case of Kodak as a company is a grim reminder of how even iconic companies can fall—a powerhouse riding on its camera sales during the 20th century failed to adapt to changing market needs, and is no longer in the camera business.
Increased connectivity and mobility, proliferation of devices and catering to the millennia generation is a different ball game. Enterprises have to change the way it facilitates the workplace and take advantage of enabling technologies such as virtualization and mobility to remain competitive—engage with customers and enable workers achieve higher levels of productivity.
Security
Securing enterprise information is a key driver in adopting digital transformation initiatives within enterprises. Enterprises particularly though engaged in the knowledge industry including consulting companies, law firms and healthcare organizations deal with a lot of sensitive information. While the challenge for companies is to provide secure access to data, it has to be balanced with the other critical objective of securing that information at a central repository—since information is a critical asset to knowledge-based companies.
Agility and responsiveness
Digital transformation is imperative to achieve business agility and responsiveness to market conditions. Savvy enterprises understand that the real competition is not from traditional players but from disruptive solutions that completely changes the rules of the game. Digital transformation provides inherent flexibility and agility, and enables enterprises to anticipate change and take responsive action to stay ahead of competition. Enterprises can roll out expansion quickly with virtualized data center and boost employee productivity with mobility to stay ahead of the curve.
Yet challenges to digital transformation are many, chief among which is the emergence of shadow IT. In an age of cloud-based applications business users proliferate organizations with applications, creating chaos and potentially exposing organization to security threats. Organizations have countered this challenge with organized approach to educate employees about integration and security challenges of shadow IT.
