How CEOs can take advantage of digital transformation?

MANILA, Philippines — Digital transformation continues to reach new heights. Today, it’s now one of the biggest buzzwords. As this happens, “Disrupt or be disrupted,” consequently became the stern warning given to all companies who choose to stay on their course without taking heed on the new advances in the digital shif.

As the digital disruption takes root with digital transformation on the agenda for many organizations, the big questions now are: How can CEOs fully take advantage of it? How can digital transformation translate to growth, especially for companies in the Philippines?

As digital technologies continue to flourish, there is an urgent need for CEOs to listen to their customers in order to thrive amid digitalization. With consumer demand fueling the economy, now is the time where the ‘customer is king.’ In fact, the Philippines remains to be the second highest in terms of consumer optimism, according to Nielsen.

With such consumer optimism driving the economy, companies need to start listening more on how customers access solutions or how they transact to avail services. As technology continues to change our way of life, organizations need to ensure that today’s Filipino customers are satisfied with their digital experience.

A report by SAP showed that consumers who are delighted with their digital experience were over eight times more likely to stay with a brand than those who were unsatisfied.

For Filipino organizations, there is an urgent need for them to think of going digital and to catch up with the demands of customers. To quote Bill McDermott, CEO of SAP, “the pace of adoption has gone from 10 years to as little as a week.”

How will organizations take on the digital transformation?

We have the ‘why’ and now comes the ‘how.’ How can CEOs address the urgency for digital transformation?

With the different legacy systems and all kinds of methodologies required by businesses to run, CEOs around the world, including those of the Philippines, must first address complexity.

In trying to create better business functions, complexity becomes a burden for organizations, especially with the business processes, systems, and procedures, that can affect their ability to be part of a globally-competitive landscape.

Now more than ever, companies are facing an overwhelming volume of data and pressure to boost productivity. Employees also demand for more purpose and new skill sets that help them go about their tasks.

To address these difficulties, companies need a suite of solutions that will allow them to draw meaningful insights from their data and effectively allocate resources to their customers to become intelligent enterprises – all while giving them the opportunity to thrive in the digital shift.

Consider these solutions as foundations that tie together all critical business processes and data-driven insights to better predict, stimulate, and anticipate business outcomes, with the goal of helping organizations run intelligently.

How to transform to an ‘intelligent enterprise’?

When we talk about intelligent enterprise, it refers to a concept that operates with visibility, focus, and agility to achieve better outcomes. It does more with less, and empower employees through process automation, deliver best-in-class customer experience, and invent new business models and revenue streams.

Before becoming an intelligent enterprise, companies must first consider the three key areas of technology: an Integrated Suite to bring intelligence into the applications used to manage customers, supply chains, networks, employees, and core business processes; a Digital Platform, to handle data from any source (1st party or 3rd party), in any format (structured or unstructured), and support the development, integration, and extension of business applications; and Intelligent Technologies, to apply intelligence to data and processes, through innovations such as Machine Learning, advanced analytics, and Internet of Things (IoT).

Panlilio is the managing director of SAP Philippines