Sameer Wadhwa is Director, Brillio

By Sameer Wadhwa

The pace of digital transformation has continued to accelerate over the last few years. Year 2016 saw several historical changes that will create a long-lasting impact on the digital transformation landscape, driving enterprises towards the option of ‘pivot or perish’. Smart corporations are increasingly putting digital transformation at the centre of their corporate strategies and changes in 2016 have further accelerated the need for the same.

Key changes in digital landscape in 2016

The mobile data super highway: Across the globe, the mobile broadband usage is skyrocketing. As per a recent report from Ericsson, the mobile broadband subscriber base will reach to 7.7 Billion by 2021, amounting to 85% of all the subscriptions according to Ericson Report from June 2016. This scenario is all the more relevant for India, where the mobile data usage is growing at the rate of 50% YoY according to Nokia MBiT Study from March 2016.

This growth is further set to accelerate in India in 2017, with the launch of new 4G services and entrance of new players who will fuel a price war for mobile data. By July 2016, many leading players had decreased their mobile data subscriptions prices by almost 67%.

The current breed of smartphones, which run on the latest versions of iOS and Android, pack enough processing power to be able to handle enterprise applications. For example, Apple’s A8 chip in the iPhone 6 is 50 times faster than the chip in the original iPhone, with GPU that is 84 times faster. Moreover, many smartphones now provide basic ruggedness – such as fall protection, water-proof operations etc. BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) as a trend has also mitigated the risk of shorter smartphone lifecycle on the enterprise. Hence, CIOs today can release enterprise mobile applications and be assured of significant adoption without having to invest in capex for rugged mobile phones.

Overall, this means that the CIOs now can do more with less. At the same time, employees today are behaviourally more tuned to using mobile applications than what one has seen before. And, this is only going to further increase. Therefore, making adoption of enterprise mobile applications much easier.

Many parts of enterprise were earlier not considered qualified for enterprise mobility. As a practitioner, we now see personnel across hierarchy in client organizations carrying smartphones, which can participate in enterprise mobility. This revolution of including bottom-of-pyramid personnel in the digital journey has far reaching implications.

The 3 D impact – digital disruption due to demonetization: We at Brillio call it the ‘3D’ impact. Demonetisation in India has initiated an irreversible push towards a ‘less cash’ society. This governmental push will force small and medium businesses (SMBs) to adopt digital in a big way. Traditionally, the SMB sector was a laggard in terms of adoption of digital technologies. Only 40% of SMBs had adopted digitization. We now see this segment of close to 51 million SMBs adopting digitization in a significant way, leapfrogging its way to as high as 90% by 2020. Demonetization will usher in change where we will see smartphone adoption reaching almost 100% rate. Incentives such as tax breaks by government for adoption of digitization and sops of nearly Rs 240 crore meant for migrating to digital payments will further encourage the SMB segment to adopt digitization in a big way.

As per Zinnov, digital enablement of Indian SMBs presents a multi-billion-dollar opportunity for technology vendors. It is projected that this number will upsurge from $11.6 billion to $25.8 billion by 2020.

GST: The GST implementation is widely accepted as a ‘fortune cookie’ for the Indian private IT players, as it will open entirely new avenues of IT implementation in enterprises. The Rs 1,400 crore initiative of government to create the GSTN platform for enabling customized information exchange gateways for businesses to pay their taxes and submit mandatory documents is a great move. These private players would be known as GST Suvidha Providers and they will be the forerunners in enabling enterprises to migrate their tax systems into the GST regime.

A far-reaching implication of this change will be that there will be automated reconciliation of the tax filing information across the enterprises and its suppliers. This will vastly increase interdependence between the enterprises and will create a huge opportunity for enterprises to ensure compliance and documentation.

The CIOs will need to plan for ‘compliance first’ IT initiatives in their organization, and digitization will be a key player here as well.

The digital transformation agenda for enterprises in 2017

Enterprises across the sectors look to digital transformation to adapt to the high uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity caused by the changes above – welcome to the ‘new normal’. We at Brillio foresee the following key digital transformation initiatives for enterprises in 2017.

Digital transformation across the value chain: Owing to the combined impact of Mobile Data Super Highway and Digital Disruption, the impact of digital transformation is now moving across the value chain in the enterprises.

We are seeing digital transformation expanding to multiple business levers such as customer acquisition, workforce/field force enablement, operational excellence and risk/compliance management. Customer acquisition and field force enablement have been traditional favourites for digital transformation of enterprises. In 2017, we also see compliance related spends specially after the GST implementations. Furthermore, we see the reach of ‘Enterprise-on-the-Go’ initiatives reaching the outer rung of enterprises, such as contract workers or moving beyond the management staff.

For example, in a leading agrochemical company, all the field workers start and end their day by ‘checking in’ and ‘checking out’ from their mobile application. Many of these workers are 3^rd party contractors who do not even belong to the organization, since agriculture is a seasonal business. Moreover, the agrochemical company has implemented BYOD for their contract workers as well. Similarly, for a leading mobile manufacturer, taking a selfie and uploading it on a mobile application is counted as attendance for the field workers. These are critical, mainstream organization processes, which are moving the ‘Mobile First’ way, rather than mere approval of expenses or attendances.

Digital surge in SMB segment: Small and Medium businesses will be particularly driven by changes such as demonetization and will adopt digital solutions in a big way. They will have increased need for ensuring compliance, customer acquisition and workplace enablement using digital levers.

At Brillio, we believe that this change will significantly boost the demand for digital among SMB consumers. There are many solutions which cater to the SMB markets today. The SMB markets look forward to Mobile First, lower price point of enterprise grade solutions due to cloud-based subscriptions, which are able to cater to their demands on as-per-requirement basis.

There are many solution providers, which are shaping up in this domain – such as Zipdial (for missed call marketing), Babajobs (recruitment in SMB segment) etc. These organizations leverage digital and cloud platforms to tackle scale while providing optimal price points needed by SMB organizations.

Significant shift in End Consumer Behaviour: Impacted by digital push created by demonetization and mobile data super highway, many enterprises are now anticipating full smartphone adoption in their target segments by 2020. This will create a significant change in customer acquisition processes of the organizations across the businesses. Omni-channel communications will become mainstream, with cross platform linkages to drive customer satisfaction.

One significant examples of this shift in consumer behaviour is passport services in India. The target segment of users for passports has full penetration of smartphones now. Hence, passport offices in India today follow a strategy of multi-channel outreach to target segments using SMS, Mobile App, portal, call centres along with physical Passport Seva Kendras. This has allowed the passport office to double its handling capacity.

Expanding IoT penetration: In 2017, the Internet of Things (IoT) will continue to move towards a wider implementation footprint that exceeds consumers’ new digital expectations. With the power of personalization, automation and real-time responsiveness, IoT will continue to expand its footprint and create new domains of digital interventions. Solutions such as Health Patch, which capture your vital stats and convey them to your doctor and relatives, will become mainstream.

In summary, Year 2016 saw foundation of key digital transformation change agents. The CIOs will see the impact of these change agents in 2017, and all these events will impact the Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) implementation. CIOs should start creating a roadmap for these changes in ERP in advance to cope up with forthcoming changes.

(The author of this article Sameer Wadhwa is Director, Brillio)