"Digitization must not be approached as an ‘off-the-shelf’ strategy"

Digital is fast engulfing the business landscape, yet a growing number of enterprises are worried about taking the plunge. Finny Chellakumar, Digital Business Head, Aspire Systems, in an interaction with Dataquest, talks about its newly launched Digital Discovery Service that helps organizations map their digital journeys and take a realistic approach to their digital transformation initiatives.

 Can you elaborate more on Aspire’s three step approach to Digitization?

For Digitization to be successful, it must not be approached as an ‘off-the-shelf’ strategy. Rather, it requires organizations to identify core technological strengths, examine already existing systems and its capabilities, and their customers’ preferences. We strongly believe that a personalized digital strategy will bring organizations a higher success value. Aspire Systems has launched a Personalized Digitization Framework which allows organizations to align their existing digital ecosystems to their business goals.

The Digitization framework has been split to three strategical steps ;

Visualize – This is purely a phase where organizational goals, existing digital problem statements and market trends are captured and a big digital picture is envisioned.

Personalize –To increase digital intensity across the business and customer landscape, a personalized framework will be built while identifying the right digital assets for the existing landscape of systems within the organization.

Actualize – This phase includes the digital framework utilization and benefits that can be observed by stakeholders when the digital assets are implemented. The outcome of this exercise will be measured against a combination of goals and KPIs.

The three phases takes into consideration specific factors like the ‘Channels of reach’, ‘Social Strategy’, ‘Customer Experience’ and ‘Enablement of disruptive technologies’ giving organizations the 360 degree view on how the nexus of Forces can come together to build a strong digital foundation.

What are the essential elements required for an organization to start its digital journey?

Moving into the digital realm is not an option anymore for organizations. In fact organizations today need to think three to four years ahead in terms of a digital future to create better experiences and to improve efficiencies.

Digitization comprises of two digital outlooks that an organization should possess. The enterprise digitization, Digital IN is an inward focus initiative where digital assets are built on top of the existing internal system to increase productivity, build collaboration and enable efficient decision making. The other outlook is Digital OUT where Customer experience platforms are built where multiple channels of reach, collaborative functionalities and Analytics driven content are included.

 An organization will need to identify where their priorities whether it is to provide better customer experiences or more efficient operations. This would be an ideal requirement thereby for organizations to begin their digital journey.

Where do you think Indian organizations are placed in the digital maturity curve?

Indian organizations have phenomenal exposure to the Digital disruption happening in their respective industry space. This country has seen a wave of start-ups leveraging digital technologies which has been an eye opener for many organizations to observe various success models and usage of newer technologies. However the penetrations of digital technologies vary from industry to industry.

In general the B2C market is comparatively more mature than the B2B market. The pioneers of digital disruption happened to be Etailers with the emergence of companies like Flipkart, Jabong, etc. Having said this, there is a lot of scope when it comes to the Brick and mortar retail segment. Some of the best proven practices in the United States like the digital assisted instore experience and implementing Omni-channel experiences when implemented in India can be revolutionize the retail industry. While in the B2B spectrum, there has been reluctance for early adoption among manufacturing firms, being more prevalent among SMBs.

Because India is a country with rich portfolio of technologists emerging every day the digital maturity curve is soon expected for a raise.

How is Aspire helping organizations in digital transformation? Please give specific examples.

Aspire Systems has always been in the league of engineering products and services that have proven to be disruptive in the market. We have been assisting organizations in building digital assets to complement their existing business. In India enterprises have reached the need to be epitomes of digital transformation and doing it the right way in presence of a strong digital foundation can lead to faster release cycles and have high success rates. With Aspire’s Digital service, organizations can obtain and understand their digital maturity from existing systems. We help them to build a stronger digital foundation for smoother implementation of newer and cutting edge technologies while exploring new channels of reach.

One of our most recent engagements was with an Australian client where we helped accelerate their digital transformation initiatives. We built robust digital assets to monetize their existing practice in the tax servicing domain. Also, for a leading retail network in India we consulted and implemented mPOS solutions as part of their wider digital transformation initiatives.