In my experience, there are two serious mistakes that many business leaders make when they start thinking about digital transformation. Firstly, believing that it's a process that an organization begins, then goes through, and then comes out of the other side in a "digitally transformed" state. The second is that it's all about technology. In reality, digital transformation is an ongoing process that never truly ends. Businesses were just getting acclimatized to computers being an essential everyday tool since the 80s when the internet emerged in the nineties and forced them to rethink technology from the ground up.

We are excited to bring Transform 2022 back in-person July 19 and virtually July 20 - 28. Join AI and data leaders for insightful talks and exciting networking opportunities. As organizations continue to migrate their workloads and shift to hybrid or remote work, cloud computing is growing at a rapid rate. Last week at the AWS Summit, according to Swami Sivasubramanian, the vice president of data, analytics and machine learning (ML) services at AWS, analysts project that between 5-15% of IT spend has moved to the cloud -- suggesting that organizations will continue to migrate even more of their workloads to the cloud in the future. The enterprise ecosystem is experiencing a disruption that's largely a result of more cloud-native applications coming to the scene. More companies are embracing a mix of both corporate devices and bring-your-own-device strategies.

Pat Calhoun, a visionary leader focused on UX and adoption, is the CEO and Founder of Espressive, transforming enterprise self-help with AI. One of the most dramatic workplace shifts caused by the pandemic is the escalation of digital transformation initiatives. The numbers say it all. According to research by Twilio, 79% of digital transformation budgets grew in response to the pandemic -- and 26% grew "dramatically." Gartner, Inc. also found that over 80% of CEOs have a digital transformation program underway, and 69% are using Covid-19 as a catalyst to focus on resigning their businesses.

Digital transformation is a global business phenomenon, capturing the attention of enterprises in every industry and spurring major investment. In survey after survey, heads of companies cite digital transformation as their No. 1 concern. By 2023, the digital transformation market is expected to reach $6.8 trillion, according to research firm IDC, and 75% of organizations will have a comprehensive digital transformation roadmap in place -- up from 27% of companies today. The term digital transformation is broadly defined as the use of computer-based technologies to improve an organization's performance. Dismissed as just a buzzword for many years, digital transformation has become palpable and urgent: Of the companies surveyed in the most recent Digital Vortex study, 88% said digital disruption will have a major impact on their industries; 41% of those respondents said disruption was imminent. The question might be asked, what took so long?

In the case of many advancing capabilities – such as machine learning or IoT – edge computing can be the link that supercharges potential business outcomes. For example, an organization might want to collect IoT data from sensors or devices in the field and process them using artificial intelligence (AI) in the cloud. "While this works in small deployments used for proof of concept and pilot projects, it lacks the ability to scale," says Dave McCarthy, research director within IDC's worldwide infrastructure practice focusing on edge strategies. "At some point, the amount of generated data overwhelms networks, resulting in unacceptable response times." Digital transformation is typically focused on the enablement of better products, services, experience, or business models.

Businesses are always looking to optimize and streamline services to cut costs. The coronavirus pandemic and the resulting economic calamity caused by it have put even more pressure on enterprises to innovate and do more with less. Andy Watson, senior vice president for Asia, Pacific, Japan, and Greater China at SAP Concur, says many organizations will turn to automation and AI in 2021 as a way to address key business pain points and simplify cumbersome processes. "Automation will become essential, not extra. As businesses maintain hybrid remote-working models and anticipate other potential disruptions in 2021 and beyond, the role of automation and AI use cases in the workplace will grow," Watson said in an email interview. "These may include enabling efficient day-to-day communications between knowledge workers doing their jobs from home and automating invoicing and expenses to keep valued partners paid and to preserve budgets."

There are three reasons you've likely ended up on this blog post: You and your organization are looking to embark on a digital transformation journey. Your digital transformation efforts have failed and you're looking for a reset. Whatever your reason for being here – or stage of digital transformation (DX) your company is in – defining a digital transformation strategy is a crucial step in the process. Companies of all sizes are seeing enviable business outcomes from digital transformation efforts, such as product and service improvement and innovation, operational efficiency, and increased agility across the value chain. But the path to value starts with defining a strategy for your specific business needs and desired outcomes. Let's start with a definition: A digital transformation strategy is a detailed plan for how your business will address key challenges created by the convergence of the physical, digital, and human worlds.

Rockwell Automation, Inc. and Microsoft Corp. announced a five-year partnership expansion to develop integrated, market-ready solutions that help industrial customers improve digital agility through cloud technology. By combining each company's expertise in the industrial and IT markets, respectively, teams can work together more seamlessly, enabling industrial organizations to save on infrastructure costs, speed time-to-value, and increase productivity. Microsoft and Rockwell are working to deliver innovative edge-to-cloud-based solutions that connect information between development, operations and maintenance teams through a singular, trusted data environment. This will allow development teams to digitally prototype, configure and collaborate without investing in costly physical equipment. This unified information environment also enables IT and OT teams to not only securely access and share data models across the organization, but with their ecosystem of partners as well.

Global businesses are in the midst of an enormous digital transformation wave. As we step into the realm of industry 4.0, exponential technologies are becoming a fundamental segment of traditional business settings. Despite having access to transformative technologies, however, many organizations fail to embrace disruption and harness their potential to stay ahead of the curve. Much of this stems from their inability to foster a collaborative environment wherein myriad teams and operating IT systems work in unison to achieve their goals. Without a strong foundation of infrastructure automation and well-chosen team collaborations, embarking on the digital transformation journey is difficult.

Bottom Line: Customers' preferences, purchasing power, and loyalty need to be the catalyst that drives any digital transformation strategy with AI providing meaningful insights that motivate companies to change. Digitally transforming or improving customers' experiences needs to be the cornerstone of any investment in new technologies or business processes. It's important to get beyond digital transformation as purely a technical, abstract construct and see it as a must-have strategy to retain customers and attract new ones. The most successful digital transformation projects are known for the hundreds, if not thousands, of successful customer stories they generate. Why are customer stories and the data supporting them so essential for digital transformation strategies to succeed?