Technology Adoption Proposal - Digital Transformation (smaic)

“We are currently undergoing a once-in-a-lifetime technology shift that will transform every industry in every business in the world this megatrend is called digital transformation. It is evolving at a pace that none of us have ever experienced and this is just the beginning. The first step in the digital transformation process is fundamentally changing the way you think about your business. Today it involves shifting your investments from older technologies and business strategies to investing in new innovative business models based on the latest and emerging technologies digital transformation is a necessity to stay competitive and you need to address these changes before your competitors do or you'll be in hot water digital transformation will have a big impact on your business. You'll make more money recruit the best people to improve team productivity beat your competition create happier customers and partners”.

“The drop in oil prices that started in 2008 in the Middle East took place against the backdrop of the Global Financial Crisis, aka The Great Recession. Economies all around the world sputtered to a halt, and demand for oil dropped. Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy protection on September 15, 2008. It was the all-time largest bankruptcy filing”. During this period our organization faced a lot of challenges in Saudi Arabia. So that I proposed digital transformation for my organization to enhance the efficiency and performance of employees.

If we go back to look how business was done decades ago. There was no email, Internet, mobile marketing, telecommuting or smartphones. Now communications are instantaneous, huge amounts of information move through email and the Internet and powerful tools are in the hands of owners and employees. Innovations in technology have improved operations at companies of all sizes and helped turn small local businesses into global businesses.

Social Media

Websites and applications that enable users to create and share content or to participate in social networking. “Social media is the collective of online communications channels dedicated to community-based input, interaction, content-sharing and collaboration.

Websites and applications dedicated to forums, microblogging, social networking, social bookmarking, social curation, and wikis are among the different types of social media.

Here are some prominent examples of social media:

Facebook

It is a popular free social networking website that allows registered users to create profiles, upload photos and video, send messages and keep in touch with friends, family, and colleagues. According to statistics from the Nielsen Group, Internet users within the United States spend more time on Facebook than any other website.

Twitter

It is a free micro-blogging service that allows registered members to broadcast short posts called tweets. Twitter members can broadcast tweets and follow other users' tweets by using multiple platforms and devices.

Google+ (pronounced Google plus)

It is Google’s social networking project, designed to replicate the way people interact offline more closely than is the case in other social networking services. The project’s slogan is “Real-life sharing rethought for the web.”

Wikipedia

It is a free, open content online encyclopedia created through the collaborative effort of a community of users known as Wikipedians. Anyone registered on the site can create an article for publication; registration is not required to edit articles. Wikipedia was founded in January of 2001.

LinkedIn

It is a social networking site designed specifically for the business community. The goal of the site is to allow registered members to establish and document networks of people they know and trust professionally.

Reddit

It is a social news website and forum where stories are socially curated and promoted by site members. The site is composed of hundreds of sub-communities, known as ""subreddits."" Each subreddit has a specific topic such as technology, politics or music. Reddit site members, also known as, ""Redditors,"" submit content which is then voted upon by other members. The goal is to send well-regarded stories to the top of the site's main thread page.

Pinterest

It is a social curation website for sharing and categorizing images found online. Pinterest requires brief descriptions but the main focus of the site is visual. Clicking on an image will take you to the original source, so, for example, if you click on a picture of a pair of shoes, you might be taken to a site where you can purchase them. An image of blueberry pancakes might take you to the recipe; a picture of a whimsical birdhouse might take you to the instructions.

Social media is becoming an integral part of life online as social websites and applications proliferate. Most traditional online media include social components, such as comment fields for users. In business, social media is used to market products, promote brands, and connect to current customers and foster new business.

Social media analytics is the practice of gathering data from blogs and social media websites and analyzing that data to make business decisions. The most common use of social media analytics is to mine customer sentiments to support marketing and customer service activities.

From the customer’s perspective, social media makes it easy to tell a company and everyone else about their experiences with that company -- whether those experiences are good or bad. The business can also respond very quickly to both positive and negative feedback, attend to customer problems and maintain, regain or rebuild customer confidence.

Enterprise social networking allows a company to connect with individuals who share similar business interests or activities. Social media is also often used for crowdsourcing. Customers can use social networking sites to offer ideas for future products or tweaks to current ones. In IT projects, crowdsourcing usually involves engaging and blending business and IT services from a mix of internal and external providers, sometimes with input from customers and/or the general public.

On the other hand, the integration of social media in the business world can also pose challenges. Social media policies are designed to set expectations for appropriate behavior and ensure that an employee's posts will not expose the company to legal problems or public embarrassment. Such policies include directives for when an employee should identify himself as a representative of the company on a social networking website, as well as rules for what types of information can be shared”.

Mobile apps advantage

“Nowadays, it’s just common to hold the smartphone by individuals. Public utilize of mobile apps for multipurpose and now that became a major part of the E-business industry. A simple mobile app can make you comfortable more, to grow your business. Now you are far away from progressive in your business through a mobile app to establish and take your business graph up.

The youngsters have more capability to accommodate themselves with the e-business. Not only them but any of the age people can be part of this transformation of normal business to e-business. Just skills required and your work efficiency.

Your day to day struggle for running your business successful and make your customer happy is now ended with simple in the form of a mobile application which makes you much and much happy and your customer too.

Today, world grow faster with digitization in internet market through websites in internet business and now uplifting with the mobile apps. You can move ahead with your business in the regional market to a worldwide market.

Those who are in a business of e-market can easily connect with you for a good deal. If your work speaks with social media then, you must be assured of your progress through mobile apps. In the future, to reach with your product to the consumer wants you must be fast and smoothly available through the Mobile app.

Your online task and work experience will pick towards your business. Use such strategies towards your product by giving discounts and the product discounts offer may attract your client towards you.

It’s important that you understand how to get your app found in the rare app marketplaces. You must optimize your app through the app store which placed your application on the higher appearance of the app store.

In this competitive world of business, you can’t reach to the targeting clients at the same time and different places. You have a simple and widespread choice to fit your business into a mobile app is a reason to make you happier and get more earnings through it.

In the world, many people deal with the seasonal business which is in the various forms of natural resources, food products, textile, software & hardware development and much more.

Your mobile application makes people happy cause you are closer to he/she through a media which was far from them to you and vice versa. Your product application makes them more curious towards their needs and you regularly updating your product and the new launches”.

“Analytics is the discovery, interpretation, and communication of meaningful patterns in data. Especially valuable in areas rich with recorded information, analytics relies on the simultaneous application of statistics, computer programming and operation research to quantify performance.

The Organizations may apply analytics to business data to describe, predict, and improve business performance. Specifically, areas within analytics include predictive,analytics,prescriptive analytics, enterprise decision management, descriptive analytics, cognitive analytics, retail analytics, store assortment and stock keeping unit optimization, marketing optimization and marketing mix modeling, web analytics, call analytics, speech analytics, sales force sizing and optimization, price and promotion modeling, predictive science, credit risk analysis and fraud analytics. Since analytics can require extensive computation, the algorithms, and software used for analytics harness the most current methods in computer science, statistics, and mathematics.

Marketing has evolved from a creative process into a highly data-driven process. Web analytics allows marketers to collect session-level information about interactions on a website using an operation called sessionization. Google analytics is an example of a popular free analytics tool that marketers use for this purpose. Those interactions provide web analytics information systems with the information necessary to track the referrer, search keywords, identify IP address, and track activities of the visitor. Analysis techniques frequently used in marketing include marketing mix modeling, pricing and promotion analyses, sales force optimization and customer analytics e.g.: segmentation. Web analytics and optimization of websites and online campaigns now frequently work hand in hand with the more traditional marketing analysis techniques. A focus on digital media has slightly changed the vocabulary so that marketing mix modeling is commonly referred to as attribution modeling in the digital or marketing mix modeling context”.

“The Internet of things (IoT) is the network of physical devices, vehicles, home appliances, and other items embedded with electronics, software, sensors, actuators and connectivity which enables these objects to connect and exchange data. The IoT allows objects to be sensed or controlled remotely across existing network infrastructure, creating opportunities for more direct integration of the physical world into computer-based systems and resulting in improved efficiency, accuracy and economic benefit in addition to reduced human intervention. When IoT is augmented with sensors and actuators, the technology becomes an instance of the more general class of cyber-physical systems, which also encompasses technologies such as smart grids, virtual power plant, smart homes, and intelligent transportation. And smart cities.

A growing portion of IoT devices is created for consumer use. Examples of consumer applications include connected car, entertainment, home automation (also known as smart home devices), wearable technology, quantified self-connected health, and appliances such as washer/dryers, robotic vacuums, air purifiers, ovens, or refrigerators/freezers that use Wi-Fi for remote monitoring. Consumer IoT provides new opportunities for user experience and interfaces.

IoT devices are a part of the larger concept of home automation, also known as domotics. Large smart home systems utilize a main hub or controller to provide users with a central control for all of their devices. These devices can include lighting, heating and air conditioning, media and security systems. Ease of usability is the most immediate benefit to connecting these functionalities.

Media use of the Internet of things is primarily concerned with marketing and studying consumer habits. Through behavioral targeting, these devices collect many actionable points of information about millions of individuals. Using the profiles built during the targeting process, media producers present display advertising in line with the consumer's known habits at a time and location to maximize its effect

Monitoring and controlling operations of urban and rural infrastructures like bridges, railway tracks, on- and offshore- wind-farms is a key application of the IoT. The IoT infrastructure can be used for monitoring any events or changes in structural conditions that can compromise safety and increase risk. It can also be used for scheduling repair and maintenance activities in an efficient manner, by coordinating tasks between different service providers and users of these facilities. IoT devices can also be used to control critical infrastructure like bridges to provide access to ships.

Network control and management of manufacturing equipment, asset and situation management, or manufacturing process control bring the IoT within the realm of industrial applications and smart manufacturing as well.

Digital control systems to automate process controls, operator tools, and service information systems to optimize plant safety and security are within the purview of the IoT. But it also extends itself to asset management via predictive maintenance, statistical evaluation, and measurements to maximize reliability.

The IoT contributes significantly towards innovating farming methods. Farming challenges caused by population growth and climate change have made it one of the first industries to utilize the IoT. The integration of wireless sensors with agricultural mobile apps and cloud platforms helps in collecting vital information pertaining to the environmental conditions, temperature, rainfall, humidity, wind speed, pest infestation, soil humus content or nutrients, besides others linked with a farmland, can be used to improve and automate farming techniques, make informed decisions to improve quality and quantity, and minimize risks and wastes.

Integration of sensing and actuation systems, connected to the Internet, is likely to optimize energy consumption as a whole. It is expected that IoT devices will be integrated into all forms of energy consuming devices (switches, power outlets, bulbs, televisions, etc.) and be able to communicate with the utility supply company in order to effectively balance power generation and energy usage.

Environmental monitoring applications of the IoT typically use sensors to assist in environmental protection by monitoring air or water quality, atmospheric or soil conditions and can even include areas like monitoring the movements of wildlife and their habits.

IoT devices can be used to monitor and control the mechanical, electrical and electronic systems used in various types of buildings (e.g., public and private, industrial, institutions, or residential) in home automation and building automation systems. In this context, three main areas are being covered in literature:

The integration of the internet with building energy management systems in order to create energy efficient and IOT drove “smart buildings”.

The possible means of real-time monitoring for reducing energy consumption and monitoring occupant behaviors. The integration of smart devices in the built environment and how they might be used in future applications.

There are several planned or ongoing large-scale deployments of the IoT, to enable better management of cities and systems. For example, Songdo, South Korea, the first of its kind fully equipped and wired a smart city, is on near completion. Nearly everything in this city is planned to be wired, connected and turned into a constant stream of data that would be monitored and analyzed by an array of computers with little, or no human intervention”.

“Cloud computing is an information technology (IT) paradigm that enables ubiquitous access to shared pools of configurable system resources and higher-level services that can be rapidly provisioned with minimal management effort, often over the internet. Cloud computing relies on sharing of resources to achieve coherence and economies of scale, similar to a public utility.

While the term ""cloud computing"" was popularized with Amazon.com releasing its Elastic Compute Cloud product in 2006, references to the phrase ""cloud computing"" appeared as early as 1996, with the first known mention in a Compaq internal document. The goal of cloud computing is to allow users to take benefit from all of these technologies, without the need for deep knowledge about or expertise with each one of them. The cloud aims to cut costs and helps the users focus on their core business instead of being impeded by IT obstacles. Cloud computing also leverages concepts from utility computing to provide metrics for the services used. Such metrics are at the core of the public cloud pay-per-use models. In addition, measured services are essential parts of the feedback loop in autonomic computing, allowing services to scale on-demand and to perform automatic failure recovery. Cloud computing is a kind of grid computing it has evolved by addressing the QoS (quality of service) and reliability problems. Cloud computing provides the tools and technologies to build data/compute intensive parallel applications with much more affordable prices compared to traditional parallel computing techniques.

Cloud computing is beneficial to many enterprises; it lowers costs and allows them to focus on competence instead of on matters of IT and infrastructure. Nevertheless, cloud computing has proven to have some limitations and disadvantages, especially for smaller business operations, particularly regarding security and downtime. Technical outages are inevitable and occur sometimes when cloud service providers become overwhelmed in the process of serving their clients. This may result in temporary business suspension. Since this technology's systems rely on the internet, an individual cannot be able to access their applications, server or data from the cloud during an outage”.

As the old saying has it, “time and tide wait for nobody”, and nowhere is that truer than in the way that new technologies emerge. Of course, it can’t be ignored, especially in business: You need to adopt new technology in your organization or risk falling behind your competitors.

However, when you adopt it, then you also have to ensure that your workforce has no problems adapting to technological change. Some people, such as millennials, are quick with picking up new things, but some of your employees might not be as confident.

The key to helping employees deal with change in the workplace is clarity – that is, being able to explain what the changes are, why they are necessary, how they will be implemented, and how they are positive and will benefit everyone. That’s why it’s crucial that when you are in the process of introducing upgrades to the business, you have appropriate information and training systems in place.

The other great thing about having a Learning and Talent Development Platform is that each employee will be able to engage at their own pace. This is really important, as some workers will be able to adapt to the changes faster than others, while others who may be more hesitant or uncertain about technology in the workplace will have space and time to become more confident.

Innovation and change using digital transformation can make anyone apprehensive, especially for employees who have become accustomed to doing their work in a particular way and may resist new technology. Let your employees work out how the technology works best for them and their teams you may discover that they use it in a way that benefits your organization overall.

However, if you plan carefully and deliver your training in a fun and engaging way and find that adoption and adaptation are a much smoother process. Hand the ownership of the technology to your employees and let them put it through its paces, give feedback to you and work out how to maximize its usefulness.