As organizations seek to “pivot to the future” with new digital business capabilities and customer experiences, the pressure on IT—to do more, faster, with less—intensifies.
According to the recent Digital Transformation Index 2020 survey of 4,300 senior business leaders from 18 countries and 12 industries, 79% are reinventing their business model—with the following identified as the most pressing areas for transformation acceleration.
- Strengthening cybersecurity
- Rolling out broader working from home/remote working capabilities
- Reinventing how digital experiences are delivered to customers and employees
- Using data in completely new ways
- Transforming IT services and consumption models
That’s a big ask. Not least because many IT budgets are more constrained than ever. What’s more, some initiatives can seem to be working at cross-purposes. A remote workforce, for example, raises security concerns. Getting more out of data requires both greater access and greater protection. And transforming the way IT operates while rolling out new solutions sounds a bit like swapping in a new airplane engine in mid-flight.
Especially in organizations where transformation efforts were already lagging, it can feel like a never-ending game of whack-a-mole—with new priorities popping up before existing projects can be completed, and where, despite best efforts, results are sometimes incomplete or only temporary.
Hear From The Leaders
The good news is that there are proven, practical ways to gain control and make steady, tangible progress in even the most complex transformation initiatives. We share some of them in our Dell Technologies World session titled: “Empower Remote Workforce Productivity and Accelerate Non-Stop Digital Business.”
Based on insights and lessons learned working with leaders in digital business and IT transformation across many industries (including our own Dell Digital IT organization), we offer some best practices to accelerate transformation in priority areas such as:
- Achieving non-stop digital business resiliency and cybersecurity – Including how to rethink digital business workflow, resiliency, and operations with an application-centric focus, rebuilding applications with infrastructure-as-code (IAC) instead of recovering them.
- Empowering remote employees – Including how a persona-based approach and well-thought-out workforce adoption program are as important as access to the right data and apps, for optimizing employee experience and productivity from Day 1.
- Leveraging modern data and application platforms for cloud-based services – Including how deep stack integration accelerates hybrid cloud deployment—so IT can more quickly begin to leverage software-defined infrastructure and automated lifecycle management.
Begin With an Ask of Your Own?
Taking on challenges like these, especially in a time of constrained budgets—and when IT staff may also be working remotely—is not for the faint-hearted.
One of the most important lessons to take away from successful transformation leaders is that achieving measurable results and making the most of IT spend takes more than technology. Transformation is both a top-down and bottom-up change that requires direct collaboration with product and solution-development teams along with a new kind of cloud operating model to deliver the experience that application owners and developers need.
It’s important that IT organizations consider this question: Where can strategic partnering enable us to quickly tap into the expertise, skills, and capabilities we need to supplement our team and accelerate results?
No matter the end-goal or the starting point, Dell Technologies Services can help with creative and collaborative problem-solving capabilities—from initial consensus-building and roadmaps; to expert deployment and startup; to skilled technical residents and managed services; to training and certifications on emerging technologies. And our Dell Financial Services team is ready to make the most of funding with a broad and flexible range of financial solutions.
See How You Might Benefit From What Others Have Learned
Click below to view my Dell Technologies World session: “Empower Remote Workforce Productivity and Accelerate Non-Stop Digital Business.”
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