Accelerating Digital Transformation by Democratizing IT

Wael also suggested a three-step process for achieving cost efficiency:

• Reverse auctioning to get the best rates and reduce costs
• Automate maintenance of infrastructure
• Leverage technology to reduce energy consumption and save costs

The Journey

The digital transformation journey of every organization must be based on their current and future needs. An organization can take inspiration from other successful companies and even competitors to plan a unique strategy for their business, according to Javeria Aijaz.

The important steps of a digital transformation journey for any organization are:

• Find the context of digital transformation for your business
• Assess the current technological capabilities of your infrastructure, workforce, and stakeholders
• Devise a roadmap based on your internal and external transformation needs
• Pick the solution that suits your budget and ensure it can efficiently add value to your business
• Communicate your vision across the organization to ease the adoption process
• Garner stakeholder participation to ensure buy-in

Javeria shared her experience with the increase in volume of data as her company scaled up. At this stage, it becomes imperative to avoid data silos.

Opting in an operations based digitalization approach offers multiple advantages. For instance, at Farnek, the e-procurement portal helps improve procurement efficiency and also offers insights for project budgeting. Similarly, automating facility management also helps them audit and address HSEQ (health, safety, environment, and quality) concerns.

Overcoming the Hurdle

Planning for automation of select processes or departments is the biggest barrier to digital transformation. IT leaders must realize that digital transformation should be holistic and not limited to IT operations. Another hurdle is not having a cost-based strategy for digital transformation. One that can help calculate ROI easily.

According to Madhukar, objective-oriented transformation is a better way of adopting digitalization along with defining cost-related milestones. He shares his experience of not limiting the transformation to a specific department to reduce overall costs through automation. Rather, having a cost-reduction-based goal helps control costs that are tied up in non-value added operational processes.

Key Takeaways

• Organizations need to accelerate digital transformation to streamline their digital adoption
• Deploy solutions enabled with predictive analytics helps meet customer needs proactively
• Taking certain transformative approaches helped them build resilience for the times ahead
• Pre-plan problem resolution, forecast demand, and predict maintenance needs to result in reduced downtimes and avoid service interruptions
• Investments in digital transformation must be strategic and focused on adopting technology in newer and more meaningful ways

Key Speakers:

• Rahul Bhageeradhan, Global Director – Digital Architecture, Kissflow Inc
• Wael El-Khatib, Director - IT and Digital at Enova by Veolia
• Javeria Aijaz, Senior Director - Technology & Innovations at Farnek Services LLC
• Madhukar Chaturvedi, Director - IT at Oasis Investment Company LLC
• Mubarik Hussain, Bloom Holding, CIO
• Jayakumar Mohanachandran, Easa Saleh Al Gurg, CIO
• Mohamme Rafi, Jotun, Sr IT Consultant
• Ronald Dsousza, OSN, IT director
• Sebastian Samuel, AW Rostamani, CIO
• Venkatesh Mahadevan, Dubai Investments, CIO
• Fayaz Ahmed Badubhai, Al Yousuf Group, Group IT director
• Shumon Zaman, Ali and Sons, CIO
• Aditya Kaushik, Adyard Abu Dhabi, Head of IT