With companies operating in a time of unprecedented change, digital leaders are presented with a substantial opportunity. Moreover, this competitive advantage grows exponentially once created. Successful players achieve early digital leadership and continue to strengthen as they attract digital talent. To achieve impact as substantial as a doubling of EBITDA, companies must act across multiple dimensions (Exhibit 1). The impact realized is twofold, boosting both performance and sustainability, which is critical for resource-heavy industries.

At the US Patent & Trademark Office in Alexandria, Virginia, artificial intelligence (AI) projects are expediting the patent classification process, helping detect fraud, and expanding examiners' searches for similar patents, enabling them to search through more documents in the same amount of time. And every project started with a pilot project. "Proofs of concept (PoCs) are a key approach we use to learn about new technologies, test business value assumptions, de-risk scale project delivery, and inform full production implementation decisions," says USPTO CIO Jamie Holcombe. Once the pilot proves out, he says, the next step is to determine if it can scale. Indian e-commerce vendor Flipkart has followed a similar process before deploying projects that allow for text and visual search through millions of items for customers who speak 11 different languages.

LONDON, June 02, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- A major share of the ICT spending of Tesla is earmarked for acquiring software, ICT services, and hardware from vendors. Tesla collects a variety of data from its vehicles and analyses them on its servers for different purposes such as detecting and resolving issues in its vehicles and developing new products and services. The company has also developed the requisite artificial intelligence (AI) hardware and software for assisting drivers and launching fully autonomous electric vehicles in the future. The Tesla Inc Enterprise Tech Ecosystem Report offered by GlobalData Plc will act as a reference point to understand the company/competitor's digital strategy. It will also help in understanding the digital preparedness of the company against its peers.

Today, AI is pretty much an essential component of any digital transformation strategy with its ability to help solve business problems at scale and speed. According to a recent Research And Markets report, the global enterprise AI market was valued at $4.68 billion in 2018 and is projected to reach $53.06 billion by 2026, registering a compound annual growth rate of 35.4% from 2019 to 2026, making AI one of the fastest-growing technologies in recent years. The strength of the AI market also shone through during the pandemic as many organizations continued to invest in AI to help them adapt, and even thrive, during one of the most challenging business environments imaginable. That said, while businesses have started to realize tangible benefits from AI, there are still a number of yet-to-be-proven AI technologies in the early stages of the Gartner Hype Cycle. Even though AI emerged as a competitive differentiator well before the first quarter of last year, it has arguably become even more important for businesses as they navigate the world we live in today and look ahead to a post-pandemic world.

Today's organizations need to pursue digital transformation to survive in the future, consulting firm Baker Tilley noted in a blog post. "Digital transformation is critical to preparing yourself for what's next." Technology leaders had approximately five times the revenue growth of the laggards, displaying the rising importance of adopting technology in the post-pandemic economic climate, Baker Tilley added. "But digital transformation goes beyond just implementing new tools and technology," the blog post stated. "By conducting a financial assessment, creating a business case and building a road map, your organization can make the financial case for your digital transformation."

The past two years of the pandemic have been marked by a period of rapid technological change. Amidst supply chain disruptions and changes in consumer behaviours, organisations have turned to digital transformation strategies to stay agile and resilient. The COVID-19 crisis has made it clear that technology is the lynchpin of organisational resilience and agility. As the pandemic disrupted global supply chains, forced employees to work from home and triggered a massive shift of consumer behaviour to online channels, digital technologies have played a pivotal role in keeping organisations afloat. According to Google's State of the API Economy 2021, digital transformation was the leading business imperative of 2020, based on a survey of 700 IT decision-makers from around the world.

AI is seeping into enterprises from all directions. It's being embedded in applications, software tools, devices and equipment. Yet, some organizations still don't have an AI strategy. "The journey to AI having an impact at a firm is challenging and sometimes long," said Nigel Duffy, global artificial intelligence leader at professional services firm EY. "To have an impact with AI you must solve a lot of problems, many of which have nothing to do directly with AI, [such as] how do you deploy solutions? How do you get them into your infrastructure? How do you get people to use them? What are the workforce and change management considerations? What kind of training is required? AI is too disruptive to ignore. If your company lacks an AI strategy by design, then it has one by default. A default strategy is a Wild, Wild West scenario in which AI is popping up in various places within an organization, without orchestration and alignment. The lack of cohesion and direction can result in several issues including governance and security. "[S]ome of those risks may not be well characterized, so they have not been addressed by the appropriate level of governance and review," said Duffy. "Most AI is going to come through procurement or it's going to come through the backdoor or technology you've deployed." Should an AI strategy be part of a digital transformation strategy? One reason some people think an AI strategy should be part of a digital transformation strategy is because the digital transformation strategy is viewed as the overarching business initiative that's facilitated by modern technologies. "If an organization's digital transformation strategy does not already include AI, then there is a real need to revisit the overall approach to transformation, said David Homa, director of the Digital Initiative at Harvard Business School.

That retail has experienced extreme disruption in recent years is beyond questioning. Even before Covid turned the world on its head, headlines about the so-called "retail apocalypse" were near-ubiquitous in the media. Since then, we've seen lockdowns, fluctuating openings and closings, some firms going out of business altogether, celebrations of essential retail workers and a surge in online shopping that brought record profits while yielding more ambiguous results for others. And now, with ongoing supply chain disruption, inflation and a tight labor market, it's clear that the retail sector still faces substantial challenges. But these challenges also represent opportunity, and harnessing the power of digital transformation will remain central to every business leader serious about thriving in the post-Covid world.

Digital transformation has become a critical need for businesses due to reasons' like improving customers loyalty, driving sales, and gaining meaningful insights. All of these aspects motivate companies to embrace digital transformation strategies and invest in modern technologies. In the current world, the importance of digital transformation can't be understated. It's time to take it from a concept and make it real in your company by investing in new technologies or processes that will better serve customers' needs, which are what will help attract them even more so than before because you're providing an experience they need instead just giving away something for free as many companies do nowadays! Are you wondering why I should embrace digital transformation?

The benefits of digital transformation derive from the combination of its two key building blocks, technology and people, though there's debate about which plays a more important role. Clearly, it's technological advances that make digital transformation possible – big leaps in cloud computing, data analytics, edge computing, and artificial intelligence. On the other hand, you'll often hear that "digital transformation is about people, not technology." However, at its most advanced, digital transformation is not precisely about people or technology, but about the relationship between people and technology. When these two powerful entities are merged with a digital transformation strategy, a business reaps major productivity benefits that neither element can deliver by itself.