Digital transformation is too big and important for our future success to not understand the rules that apply to it. The first three rules for winning in this age of hyper-digital transformation are:
- Advantages in speed, analytics and operational tempos must be captured by implementing an optimized information logistics system (OILS)
- Real-time operational tempos (IT, people and business processes) must be achieved
- Businesses that can “analyze data and act and with speed” will dominate those that are slower.
The first two rules prepare for the third, which focuses on action. The first rule is about implementing an IT infrastructure capable of competing and winning. The second rule expands beyond IT to encompass business and people processes that must be optimized to support a real-time and mobile business world. The third rule says the first two rules are meaningless unless they result in right actions that are implemented faster than competitors can respond.
The role and importance of being faster is critical to understand. Faster means you must implement an OILS (optimized information logistics systems) to move beyond human-time, which is dominated by the sun, and our biology, to the digital-time measured by computer processing and data transmission speeds, and then fast-forward into the future through predictive analytics. Faster means you can pack more punch, in the form of features and capabilities, into digital time that happens faster than humans can comprehend.
Our research shows there will be a dramatic increase in the application of artificial intelligence (AI) in the next 40-months. It will be the codified brains of all kinds of applications, bots and processes. It will cross reference data, validate answers, execute decision-trees and take actions. We humans, however, are not willing to wait for these extra steps, layers and processes to happen in human-time, so the multitude of new AI applications must be pushed to operate in digital-time.
How big is AI going to be? We surveyed 2,000 executives across 18 countries for our Work Ahead report series and they predict AI will bethe digital technology having the largest impact on their work by 2020. Even though only 15% of the respondents think artificial intelligence is having a large impact on their business today. Forty-six percent believe AI will be critical to them within the next 40 months – that’s a 207% predicted increase in business impact.
AI is also a critical component of bots. Bots are software robots that apply AI to automatically execute their designed tasks. Only 18% of digital leaders in our survey report bots are having a “large to very large” impact on their businesses today, but by year 2020, it jumps to 41%. That represents a huge increase of 128% in predicted business impact in just 40 months
Without the implementation of an OILS, your IT infrastructure will be too slow to operate today in an increasingly mobile world, and too slow to add the additional layers of AI, bot and predictive functionality for tomorrow. It’s time to get faster!
Follow Kevin Benedict on Twitter @krbenedict, or read more of his articles on digital transformation strategies here:
- Digital Transformation and the Law of Thermodynamics
- Jettison the Heavy Baggage and Digitally Tranform
- Digital Transformation - The Dark Side
- Business is Not as Usual in Digital Transformation
- 15 Rules for Winning in Digital Transformation
- The End Goal of Digital Transformation
- Digital Transformation and the Ignorance Penalty
- Surviving the Three Ages of Digital Transformation
- From Digital to Hyper-Transformation
- Believers, Non-Believers and Digital Transformation
- Forces Driving the Digital Transformation Era
- Digital Transformation Requires Agility and Energy Measurement
- A Doctrine for Digital Transformation is Required
- The Advantages of Advantage in Digital Transformation
- Digital Transformation and Its Role in Mobility and Competition
- Digital Transformation - A Revolution in Precision Through IoT, Analytics and Mobility
- Competing in Digital Transformation and Mobility
- Ambiguity and Digital Transformation
- Digital Transformation and Mobility - Macro-Forces and Timing
- Mobile and IoT Technologies are Inside the Curve of Human Time
Kevin Benedict
Senior Analyst, Center for the Future of Work, Cognizant
Writer, Speaker and World Traveler
View my profile on LinkedIn
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
Subscribe to Kevin'sYouTube Channel
Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Mobility
Join the Google+ Community Mobile Enterprise Strategies
***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I am a mobility and digital transformation analyst, consultant and writer. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.
