The events of 2020 showed the criticality of digital transformation. Organizations that had fully embraced digital transformation benefits in preceding years were in position to make rapid adjustments, relying on their cloud architecture, modern security protocols, an agile company culture and their full range of business-enabling technologies to support vast new work-from-home environments, as well as newly virtualized business transactions and interactions. But companies, nonprofits and governmental entities lagging in their digital initiatives struggled to adjust to the year's rapidly changing economic and social environment. "It woke up a lot of C-suite officers, alerting them to stop dragging their feet on their digital transformation efforts, because they saw that the companies that were more mature in their digital transformation suffered much less disruption and much less costly disruption in that environment," said Rick Pastore, senior research director and IT advisor at the consultancy The Hackett Group. According to a mid-2020 Gartner survey, more than two-thirds of boards of directors accelerated their digital business initiatives in the wake of the COVID-19 disruption and about half foresee changing their organizations' business model as a result of the pandemic. Digital transformation requires the infusion of internet-based tools and technologies into a company's processes, so that the organization can meet and actually anticipate the wants and needs of its stakeholders.

Founder and CEO of PurchaseControl, with decades of international experience in Procurement, Spend Management, and Technology. Often, discussions concerning digital transformation in modern enterprise focus primarily on virtual tools driven by artificial intelligence -- e.g., robotic process automation, data digitization and analytics, machine learning, etc. However, in considering the ways in which procurement professionals can build value and create savings for their organizations through digital transformation, we must also consider the technologies connecting that transformation to the physical world via Industry 4.0. The idea of Industry 4.0 comes from the broader notion of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR). Building upon its predecessors, 4IR introduced new technologies -- automation, digitalization, artificial intelligence, cloud computing -- that fundamentally transformed work, life and play for billions of people.

The technology is mainly used to set up touch-free processes for repetitive functions such as accounts payable and receivable. Machine learning is far more integrated into accounting, planning and forecasting operations than many professionals realize, finance technology consultants said in a CFO.com webinar. A lot of the cloud-based enterprise resource planning (ERP) and other platforms finance teams use already have machine learning built in, and that will only increase, said Kris Murphy, principal of The Hackett Group. "It's going to get to the point where ... when you enter a forecast number, the machine learning algorithm will say, 'Last time you missed by 10%, you average a miss of 8%, maybe you should think about that number,'" said Murphy. "I believe that is where we're going to be going with machine learning."

In the digital economy, change is rapid and often unexpected. Technological and business-model innovations are disrupting market dynamics, while economic and geopolitical uncertainty injects a whole new level of volatility into the business environment. Companies that fail to address both challenges risk the erosion of their competitive advantage. The Hackett Group's research indicates that finance executives are looking to smart automation to tighten controls while at the same time enhancing their agility. With tools like robotic process automation (RPA) and AI-enabled analytics, they are beginning to automate compliance monitoring and remediation activities.

A "smart-automation" approach can give a typical HR organization a measurable lift when it comes to improving customer experience and efficiency, according to new research from the Hackett Group. The Hackett Group's new Digital World Class analysis found that those typical HR organizations can reduce costs by 17% and operate with 26% fewer staff hours--while also improving effectiveness and internal customer experience. The Hackett Group research advises that, by following a smart-automation strategy, typical HR functions can boost efficiency levels close to those seen by world-class HR organizations (defined as those that achieve top-quartile performance in both efficiency and effectiveness across an array of weighted metrics in the Hackett Group's comprehensive HR benchmark). For instance, world-class HR organizations currently operate at 20% lower cost and with 31% fewer employees than typical HR organizations, the research found. Smart automation--defined as approaches including robotic-process automation, cognitive automation, intelligent data capture and other leading-edge technologies--can enable world-class HR organizations to cut costs and reduce the number of staff hours needed to perform existing administrative/transactional work.

Looking back at the last decade of digital transformation – the use of technology to radically improve performance or change the enterprise – the one constant has been an ongoing shift in focus and priorities. Looking forward to 2019, a number of trends are emerging that IT leaders will want to consider as they make their plans for the new year. Are you on the same page as your peers? This year, many digital projects suddenly matured from experimentation to enterprise implementation. In the year ahead, business leaders are likely to scrutinize their digital investments more closely.

IT departments that fail to automate internal processes effectively will lose credibility as the rest of the business adopts digital transformation initiatives. Digital transformation - the buzzword that we can't get away from. Enterprises need to accelerate their digital transformation journeys to avoid being left behind in an increasingly digital world. It's not an easy feat, but one that can be costly to get wrong. Join us as Computer Weekly takes a look at how businesses can stay on track through collaboration, innovation, and listening to user needs.

Contract management has gotten on the radar in recent years. The world's contract managers finally gained attention in 2016 when Oliver Hart and Bengt Holmström were awarded the Nobel Prize for Economic Science. Their work on contract theory not only proves how contracts help us deal with conflicting interests, but also shows the importance of contract management. While contract automation is not new, 63% of procurement organizations from The Hackett Group's 2017 Digital Transformation Study are either exploring or piloting technology to advance the digitalization of contract management. As organizations look to become more digital, contract management is becoming more pervasive and sought after.

Welcome to the Hackett Group First Quarter Earnings Conference Call. Your lines have been placed on listed only mode. Hosting tonight's call are Mr. Ted Fernandez, Chairman and CEO; and Mr. Rob Ramirez, Chief Financial Officer. Mr. Ramirez, you may begin. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us to discuss The Hackett Group's First Quarter Results. Speaking on the call today and here to answer your questions are Ted Fernandez, Chairman and CEO of The Hackett Group; and myself, Rob Ramirez, Chief Financial Officer. Our press announcement was released over the wires at 4:14 p.m. Eastern Time. For a copy of the release, please visit our website at www.thehackettgroup.com. We will also place any additional financial or statistical data discussed on this call that is not contained in the release on the Investor Relations page of our website. Before we begin, I would like to remind you that in the following comments and in the Q&A session, we will be making statements about expected future results, which may be forward-looking statements for the purposes of the federal securities laws. These statements relate to our current expectations, estimates and projections and are not a guarantee of future performance.