By Ismat Abou Reslan*

SAUDI Arabia is going through an unprecedented period of change. With the Saudi Vision 2030 transformation program in place, we are witnessing the digital transformation of the industries across the Kingdom and the move towards process automation and optimization. Organizations are looking for ways to carefully adopt these new technologies and trends, all in an effort to reduce costs, increase productivity, drive process efficiency and mainly impact their bottom line.

Ever-evolving technology trends such as Big Data analytics, the Internet of Everything (IoE), Mobility and Cloud are driving organizations to look for means to evolve and adapt to these new digital market dynamics, while at the same time fighting to gain a competitive advantage within their industry sector and stand out against their competition.

That being said, the digital transformation journey is still extremely complex. There are a number of key elements that any organization must look at and get right before they can translate that journey into a more functional reality.

Let’s examine and analyze these elements in reverse order of importance, with what I believe is the least relevant first, and the most significant towards the end.

Process Identification: Whether this be internal or external, organizations have to identify and define those processes that need to be digitalized and transformed as they embark on this digital transformation journey ahead. Of course, this can be a dynamic process in itself that will change as companies reach different stages of their journey. However, this view and perspective will help define clear digital initiatives; goals and objectives that dictate what needs to be transformed at an immediate stage and what needs to be looked at in the near and distant future ahead.

Infrastructure Readiness: Once these processes are defined, companies have to consider how well-equipped the organization is to implement these processes from an infrastructure perspective, identify what parts of the infrastructure are ready, and what parts must be transformed – both from a hardware and software perspective. Many organizations will consider a cloud-based strategy and approach to help speed up this process, as this stage can be costly and time consuming. Whatever method is used, this is all done in order to help solidify and pave the road for a successful transformation journey moving forward.

People: At the heart and core of any organization today are its people, so any successful change must start with them. The success of a business is directly defined by the people that constitute that business and the drive and willingness they have to make a significant contribution. Whether this be employees (internally) or customers (externally), companies today must ask themselves if the people within their organization are ready to adopt to these new trends, behaviors and changes, because the more willing they are to do so, the more effective and speedy is this transformation, and the greater the impact the corporate sees towards the bottom line.

By considering all the above factors in detail, we can begin to identify and scale what the organizations “digital attitude" is. In my opinion, this is what helps distinguish the successful digital transformation of one business from another. The greater and more refined the company's digital attitude, the more likely it is to prosper in its digital journey and the more it will help enable and transform the way both its employees, and its customers, interact and do business in this new digital world.

*The writer is Sales Engineering Manager – Saudi Arabia at Avaya