We are in the 21st century and the world has changed much more than what it used to be in the early twenties. By moving ahead by just one year from 2019 to 2020, everything changed a lot when we face a global severe disease that none has any idea about.
The coronavirus (covid-19) has impacted our lives in all possible ways whether it may be socially, culturally, or economically. The whole world went for a sudden lockdown for several months. The schools, businesses, social places, religional places, tourism, all shut down as a step of prevention against the pandemic. Everything stopped for one single reason.
During this time of sheer uncertainty, adapting to technology can be our only savior. Technology will not be able to avoid the onset of a pandemic nevertheless it can assist in managing the crisis more effectively.
You might be wondering what is this digital technology and what’s the importance of digital transformation?
Well, I got you covered here.
Digital technologies- An introduction
According to the study by the Department of Education and Training, Victoria–
“Digital technologies are electronic tools, systems devices, resources that generate, store or process data.”
It includes social media, online games, multimedia, mobile phones, laptops, personal computers, and the list is never-ending in this generation. With the help of these technologies, users can store immense amounts of information on small storage devices in compressed form.
Now the question arises, how do these digital technologies help in digital transformation?
So, Digital transformation is being put in the spotlight during this pandemic. In the space of a few months, we have seen small restaurants, cafes, and businesses shifting to online platforms to generate revenue during the lockdown. There is a huge amount of new digital initiatives being started that has become the need of the hour. It is the critical need of the organizations to go online with digital technologies during this hard time of pandemics. The value of digital transformation has gained popularity as more people started working from home. People started understanding the need for digital communication and considered it as the key to coming forward with better solutions for sustaining their lives. Organizations started allowing long-term goals to drive the process and focus on resilience and sustainability.
How Digital technologies are transforming lives.
Digital technologies are transforming lives in numerous ways. But the core idea behind the successful digital transformation lies in understanding the clear and common goals. So, Digital transformation is about developing better ways to improve the country’s four value propositions.
Let’s take an example of one of the most advanced digital societies in the world- Estonia.
This small country is home to 1.3 million people. It has gone digital from E-residency to voting online to digital ID cards for the citizens. We can see how Estonia can be a blueprint for other countries looking to go digital. Estonians have realized the importance of the internet and technology. They started moving digitally before any other countries of the world. Instead of just having an offline ID card, you also need a digital ID card in Estonia. In this country, 99% of its public services are available online 24/7.
For this small country, the impact of digital signatures has been big, saving the government an estimated 2% of GDP per year in salaries and expenses. From paying taxes in 5 minutes to voting online to issuing prescriptions electronically it has digitally transformed way more than other countries.
Now, to understand the impact of digital technologies on our personal and professional life, we will dig deep into every possible reason and find how it’s affecting us.
Digital technologies- transforming the culture.
Digital transformation is in the air with all types of digital technologies. It can be in uncountable forms like blockchain, artificial intelligence, mobile, social big data, and more. It can be said that “Digital transformation starts and ends with culture.”
Putting culture first creates a virtuous cycle. More businesses are seeking tools that bring efficiency and connectivity. However, the failure of the organization’s transformation project has arrested between 60 to 70%. Companies that have boosted success, typically have a strong culture. It is to understand that an important contributor to the success of digital transformation initiatives is culture. So let’s understand what culture is in this context. Earlier we used to understand that culture is the various responsibilities and the roles of the executives. But in this generation of digital transformation, culture is captured in behavior and value that are rewarded and appreciated within the country.
According to Mckinsey survey of global executives, they pointed out three digital culture deficiencies-
- Functional and departmental silos
- A fear of taking risks
- Acting on a single view of the customer forming difficulty
The right technology can help in empowering team members to better help customers while also increasing agent’s engagement. However, the tool of enhancing customer experience is not just a cost-saving device for a replacement for human interaction. People have this misconception that if a company upgrades its technology digital transformation is done. But the fact is that it doesn’t work like that. In this modern developing era, organizations must be adaptable to keep pace with the change driven by digital technologies. Let us see how. Now, we will discuss the aspects of cultural digital transformation discussing their importance and effects.
- Working in silos to end-to-end value stream
We can understand this by taking the example of onboarding an employee in an organization. In this process, the HR needs to give the employee orientation and then the IT needs to get the credential and equipment he or she needs. Finances need to open charge accounts. In this way, all of them are collaborating for onboarding an employee. This is called working in silos. We need to digitize and automate the value stream. They need to have an empowered owner of the value stream.
- Balance speed of innovation vs governance
The organization going to balance this challenge through creating competition centers and centers of excellence that are multi-disciplined and precisely empowered and responsible to have this balance between the speed of innovation right with the evidence for security, reliability, performance, and quality.
- The spectrum of work automation
Work automation is very important in digital transformation. You can have robots replacing workers and also you can have a system to augment and advise them. Cultural impact following the organization needs to have people who are responsible for the efficiency of automation of the spectrum of work very dynamically as well as the spectrum of the worker category to leverage the best in automation.
So, digital transformation is in the air but the very important cultural aspects are critical digitizing value streams and having owners of very extreme.
Digital technologies transforming the society
Digital technologies hold huge potential for achieving sustainable development goals and tackling global environmental challenges. We are moving forward to a digitalizing society where digital technology plays a vital role. There is not even a single field left where you can not find digital technologies empowering humans. The covid-19 crisis has brought a sudden rise in the span of just a few months.
During the pandemic, the greater part of the consumers has moved grammatical e towards online digital platforms. Industries also started interacting with the help of online channels and platforms. It has been reported that 80% of customer interactions are digital in nature. To discuss the digital technology transforming society, we have to look at how it is affecting issues such as jobs, wages, health, resource efficiency, and security. We have conducted a detailed quantitative analysis of these industries and it has been found that this approach may be broadened and refined. Let’s see how digital transformation makes a positive contribution to society?
Firstly, ’employment’ is one of the most challenging factors for countries like India. According to a current global analysis, the estimated global job losses due to digital transformation range from 2 million to 2 billion by 2030. It is a matter of great concern about its impact on wages and working conditions of the workers.
On the contrary, digitalization could create up to 6 million jobs worldwide in the field of logistics and digital industries between 2021 and 2027. It is also a fact that automation will displace many human beings. We can say that digital transformation is preparing the next generation of talent for the machine age.
‘Education’ has also been digitally transformed through digital technologies. Digital technologies have changed the traditional method of class learning. Everything is shifting online including courses. During this dynamic, around 191 countries had implemented the closure of schools and universities which means studies of 1.57 billion students were impacted due to this covid crisis. In this situation, most of the educational institutions started teaching students online through digital technology which proved to be the only solution for the continuation of children’s studies during these tough times. The Internet served as the savior making sure education is not disrupted during the pandemic.
Digital technologies transforming the economy
The world is developing under digital technologies. The expansion of digital technologies creates many new economic opportunities. Internet, mobile, technology, social media, and big data have unleashed a wave of innovation that is creating thousands of new startups and is reinventing traditional industries. It is considered that technological change is a part of economical change. Digital technologies are bringing more efficient ways to produce goods and provide services. It has both of its advantages and disadvantages as technological innovation comes with a price destroying some jobs while creating some others.
According to classical economic theory, human productivity can be increased by the accumulation of physical capital. In simple words, more technological improvement means more economical improvement. The efficient production of goods and services contributes to higher growth in the economy of a country.
Technology can be transferred to countries around the world. Diffusion of technology can increase the trade economy due to the international competition technology can split by multinational corporations. We can say that the digital technological revolution is opening up better opportunities for jobs in various technical fields. This revolution is changing the way workers are hired. It is the fact that workers are re-trained and re-educated for working under digitally managed companies. Digital technologies have gained the focus on creative thinking. Nowadays more people prefer freelancing rather than a full-time job because people are focusing on learning and innovation.
Digital technologies have transformed the economical conditions of the countries by allowing them the privilege of working from home. Work from home is like a pure blessing to this generation where a person can work remotely right from the comfort of his home. In the Covid with crisis, when the whole world economic condition was deteriorating, digital technologies helped us to maintain the economic conditions following the social distancing protocols. So, the vital role of digital technologies in transforming the economy is an undenying fact.
Conclusion
Digital technologies were prominent before also but the impact of covid-19 has proved that digital technologies are the most important need of these times. We are living in a generation, where digital technologies are becoming stronger with every passing day. As we can see that advancement in digital technologies is rapidly increasing, there is no doubt that digital technologies will continue to grow exponentially. It is high time to realize the importance of digital technologies and the transformation it has brought to our daily lives. The only thing we can do to make it a greater success is to adapt to changes in technology as fast as we can and continue to invest in digital technologies.
