10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Keywords
3D printing; artificial intelligence; augmented and virtual reality; block-
chain; digital transformation; drones; emerging technologies; Internet of
Things; robotics; technology planning
Contents
Preface��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ix
Acknowledgments�����������������������������������������������������������������������������������xi
When I started writing this book, many different ideas crossed my mind.
On one hand, it’s obvious that technology makes our life a lot easier and
therefore has a positive impact on society and business. On the other
hand, certain technologies outsmart humanity and threaten our survival
as the leaders on the planet, scary, but also a feasible scenario. No one can
say right now with total certainty what’s going to happen within the next
30 or 40 years.
But let’s look at technology in a positive way though. You may have
heard this phrase about fast pacing technology “There have been more
changes in technology in the past two years than the previous fifty years.”
While it’s clear that changes in our business models don’t have the same
speed. For this reason, it’s necessary to select new technology very care-
fully to stay in line with your slower changing business models.
Many managers are wondering how to deal with the overload of tech-
nologies and are afraid to select the wrong technology to improve their
business. Since they own the technology budgets, they need to be sure
that the money will be spent wisely. But unfortunately sometimes they
overlook difficulties in selecting new technology.
In general, large enterprises are well positioned to adopt innovative,
new technologies, and jump into this brave new world. The e cosystems
around them such as vendors and partners are more than willing to
support. And even with tight budgets, large companies have sufficient
funding and resources for projects. Whereas small and medium businesses
normally don’t have sufficient resources to hire external experts to advise
on the right technologies. So they are going to try it themselves. And
that can lead to disappointment, because they may lack the required
knowledge.
x Preface
Digital Transformation
Over the past several years, the term “digital transformation” has entered
the realm of enterprise IT. Digital transformation is frequently misin-
terpreted and misunderstood. What does “digital transformation” really
mean? What essential components does it include, and how does it impact
the enterprise? Figure 1.1 illustrates that digital transformation should be
regarded as business transformation.
The Global Center for Digital Business Transformation says that
“organizational change is the foundation of digital business transfor-
mation.” That’s because changing the nature of an organization means
changing the way people work, challenging their mindsets and the daily
work processes and strategies that they rely upon. While these present
the most difficult problems, they also yield the most worthwhile rewards,
allowing a business to become more efficient, data-driven, and nimble,
taking advantage of more business opportunities.
Engagement
Through content marketing, you can educate your customers about top-
ics important to them and eventually your business offerings. It gives
your brand a voice to engage with your target audience and establish a
strong, trustworthy relationship with them. Setting up real good engage-
ment with your audience is not as simple as it may look like. Sure, one
of the main reasons for brilliant content creation is ultimately to create
leads and increase revenue. But it shouldn’t come across that way. No
one likes being pressurized into buying something without having the
time to research or think about it first. Instead of trying to sell to your
audience, try to help them. Your customer will be coming to you because
they are looking for a product that you provide. So, producing content
that answers their questions surrounding that product will build trust and
leave a lasting impression.
Exposure
Going viral on social media is what every business wants to do. All the
attention and all the respect can take your business to the next level. The
problem is doing it. I’m a regular follower of social media and I’ve exper-
imented with different strategies to garner more interactions. This is how
you can improve exposure and reach:
• More content is better than less, but too much content is not
the name of the game
• Client engagement is your goal, drive traffic to the best-
converting pages
• Connect with your customers—let them speak to their
needs and drive trust and reach for your brand by
leveraging their experiences as part of your Social Media
and Content strategy
Digital Transformation 3
Technology
Looking too far forward toward advanced digital innovations can make
other technologies seem mundane. However, business leaders leave easy
money on the table if they ignore incremental steps and pursue risky
opportunities that may not be ready to pay off yet.
Beginners
Beginners Conservatives
• Management skeptical about • Digital vision exists however
business value of advanced underdeveloped
technology/IT • Dominated by traditional digital
• May be carrying out some capabilities, few advanced
experiments • Strong governance across silos
• Immature digital culture • Taking active steps to build a digital
culture
Leadership capability
most firms are just beginning their digital journeys, leaving many oppor-
tunities untapped.
Conservatives
Insurance: High expectations for digital and strong vision and governance
suggest that the insurers should be leading the digital revolution. Yet, this
is not the case for most firms. Generally, scores for engaging customers
through social media and mobile are lower than average, suggesting that
the combination of strong digital governance capabilities, regulatory wor-
ries, and a risk-averse culture would not be an innovation enabler.
Fashionistas
Travel and hospitality: Since the advent of the Web, digital has turned
the industry upside down. The industry has responded, with 81 percent
of firms in the Digital Masters or Fashionista quadrants and no Beginners.
Opportunities exist to improve worker enablement in many companies.
To make the jump into Digital Masters territory, Fashionistas will need to
build levels of excellence in transformation management to match their
high digital intensity, including a transformational vision for the future.
Digital Masters
Content Marketing
up text with visuals because we’re all such visual learners. Our attention
spans keep decreasing, so visuals keep a reader’s attention. It breaks up
the monotony and leads the consumer through the content pieces. Con-
sumers are more likely to read and stay engaged with your content if it
is visual.
Exposure
Having a strong social media presence can help your business in several
ways. Social media platforms of the business act as multiple gateways
to a business’s website, creating an external linking structure and more
opportunities to appear in search results. Social media creates a way to
increase brand awareness and customer base. Any company has the ability
to connect with customers in diverse ways while also driving traffic to
their website to generate conversions. So let’s see how you can maximize
your social media presence.
Social Media
Social media marketing remains the lynchpin of all other inbound mar-
keting strategies, including e-mail marketing and content marketing.
Creating a social media presence for your business can open up new
growth opportunities by expanding your brand’s exposure and affinity.
Every business should have established objectives before tinkering with
their social media presence. Set goals early and monitor them constantly.
Simply having a Facebook account is meaningless if you don’t create value
for your customers.
Brand advocacy means your customers market and promote your prod-
ucts for you, which is not only cost efficient, but also more believable
than what your employees say about your own company. Growing your
audience and building relationships with industry thought leaders will
position your brand to become a leading voice and an influencer. Before
acquiring this status, it’s key to partner with influencers early on who
Digital Transformation 13
will endorse and market your brand for you. This can be accomplished
through sponsorship, engaging with them directly, and sharing their
content.
Social media is also the ultimate user-review resource, so it’s import-
ant to immediately respond to any feedback or criticism to mitigate any
negative exposure. Through strong social engagement you can be pro-
active, rather than reactive, in curating a positive social media presence.
Once you’ve established your brand’s identity and built trust with your
customers, drop a highly relevant promotion or offer directly in front of
them to drive sales.
Provide Value
Analytics
Finally, assess how well your social media strategy is aligning with your
bottom line. Actively track KPIs, such as the amount of referral traffic
generated from social media channels and the social signals each piece of
content is acquiring. There are many analytics tools your business could
use, such as Hootsuite and Buffer.
If you have Google Analytics activated on your website, you can insert
a tracking code that will track the amount of times somebody shares a blog
post from your website. The important thing to remember is patience.
Final Thoughts
Technology
Marketing Automation
Media and marketing are inevitably linked. With the extensive number of
media platforms available to consumers and marketers and the wide reach
Digital Transformation 15
of those digital platforms, marketers are now looking at the scale and
volume of marketing operations that offer personalized customer experi-
ences. Marketing automation can power campaigns, help identify leads,
influence a buyer’s decision, and so much more.
The global marketing automation software market is anticipated to
grow up to a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of 9.26 percent
by 2022. The market has generated a revenue of $3.86 billion in 2016
and is anticipated to reach up to $7.63 billion by 2025. Marketing auto-
mation categories make up a significant subset of marketing technology.
All of these areas of marketing have been impacted by predictive analytics,
machine learning and AI, and higher personalization of content.
Big Data
The power of predictive analytics and advanced data science is the reason
behind the implementation of future strategies and immediate changes
in the global businesses today. Big data and analytics are entangled with
each other today to deliver best end-results unlikely following the tradi-
tional approach. Earlier, analytics and data management used to be two
different sections under one enterprise. With the emergence of advanced
data science, such organizational barriers are broken. The integration of
business operations with information technology has brought about suc-
cessful enterprise transformation.
The need for better business analytics has also arisen for business
transformation. BI (business intelligence), with its skills and technolog-
ical efficiency, continues to explore and investigate on past business per-
formances to gain insights and deploy business planning. The integration
of big data with traditional business analytics helps in creating a data
ecosystem that enables businesses to generate new insights.
However, there are some types of content that engage large business
audiences. I have reviewed the most engaging business content published
this year and identified 10 key content types that work well to drive B2B
engagement.
Here’s a summary of the top 10 most engaging forms of B2B content:
and improve your conversion rate, you need to create a solid digital mar-
keting campaign.
However, boosting your brand awareness via social networks is not
just about creating accounts on all platforms available, inviting random
people to like your page, and sharing a few posts every once in a while. It’s
about marketing and creating engagement to the right people, through
the right channels. Good engagement with your audience is made possi-
ble by the use of social media, as shown in Figure 1.4.
Here are several social media marketing tips that will take your brand-
ing efforts to a whole new level.
To engage people with your brand, you need to deliver recognizable con-
tent people will instantly relate to your brand. Such an approach will help
you build trust among your target audience and put an emphasis on your
brand’s mission statement, goals, and core values.
Here are a few strategies that will set your brand apart from its
competitors.
To make the most of the content you create, you need to define your
tone of voice. Gather a representative sample of the posts you’ve shared
so far and cast a critical eye on it. Are your posts trustworthy, quirky, or
action-oriented? See what tone suits your brand the best and stick to it in
your future content creation efforts.
To let your target audience know what to expect from you, you should
stick to your content distribution calendar and share your posts regu-
larly. Instead of managing your posts manually, you should make this
process simpler by using social media management tools. They will help
20 New World Technologies
you sync your social networking profiles, find fresh content, and schedule
hundreds of social media posts at once.
incentivize your followers for being loyal to your brand, as well as for
sending feedback, making referrals, or sharing your posts. And, social
networks are a perfect place for you to do so.
Speed is a key factor for productive action. For successful execution from
insights, you need to act quickly. If you spend a long time discussing
and analyzing big data in the hope of acquiring near perfect insights, all
your efforts will end up fruitless. When it comes to big data analytics,
it is crucial to focus on quick decisions and execution. Today, successful
companies like Amazon and Microsoft have one thing in common—they
make their decisions from 70 percent of relevant data available. If they,
too, would wait for perfect information for perfect insights, their outputs
and revenue streams would face the threat of paralysis.
Before you start extracting insights from big data, you need to have a clear
understanding of the things you want to achieve from it. Differentiate
between the strong areas of your business and those that need reconsider-
ation. Before diving in for answers, it is important to have the right set of
questions for big data analytics. Address those questions first that you know
are bound to lead to economic opportunities and are practically actionable.
It is easy to get distracted by the vast availability of big data. Thus, narrow
your approach to core business problems. Set achievable parameters; other-
wise, you will risk the loss of manpower and valuable resources.
How will you extract insights from big data if you don’t have an idea
of your customer needs and your business requirements? Before going
Digital Transformation 23
Type of Users
Leads
Sales calls
Follow–up
Conversion
Sales
Key Function
Goal
Although the respective goals are different as you can see where one ends
and the other begins in the sales funnel, marketing automation and CRM
have complimentary roles in the effort to transform leads into customers.
Features of CRM
CRM software is the main platform of your sales team and sales agents
to improve their productivity and enhance customer interaction with the
end goal of closing sales. For this purpose, CRM software brings with it
features and capabilities such as the following:
The great thing is that CRM integration features allow it to work with
most marketing automation platforms, giving your sales team access to cus-
tomer information collated by your marketing them. Likewise, marketing
26 New World Technologies
automation integration means the software can connect with CRM tools
and make available relevant information from the marketing end.
To Conclude
CRM and marketing automation differs in purpose, users, and uses. It is,
however, not a choice between two systems since each plays an important
role in your business—driving productivity and efficiency of your sales
team and marketing team, and ensuring the effectiveness of your market-
ing campaigns and sales efforts.
Drones Virtual
reality
3D printing Blockchain
Artificial
intelligence
Figure 1.7 The essential eight technologies by Pricewaterhouse
Coopers (PwC)
Source: PwC, “How can boards tackle the essential eight and other emerging technologies?,” June
2017 © 2018 PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, a Delaware limited liability partnership
competitive landscape for years to come. And one thing’s clear: emerging
technology is no longer the realm of IT alone. Business leaders need to
begin learning and thinking about how to harness their potential.
Blockchain
Internet of Things
Augmented Reality
Virtual Reality
3D Printing
Artificial Intelligence
Drones
Drones vary greatly in their capacity based on their design. Some drones
need wide spaces to take off while quadcopters can squeeze into a column
Digital Transformation 29
of space. Some drones are water-based; some can operate and navigate
autonomously (via remote control) or fully autonomously (via onboard
computers). In June 2016, the US Federal Aviation Administration cleared
a path for commercial drone use, establishing safe-use rules that include
airspace, speed, pilot certification, and other guidelines for operators.
Robotics
Summary
Over the past several years, the term “digital transformation” has entered
the realm of enterprise IT. Digital transformation is frequently misinter-
preted and misunderstood.
What does “digital transformation” really mean? What essential com-
ponents does it include, and how does it impact the enterprise?
In the business world, everyone is talking about digital transforma-
tion—from AI to robots to the IoT. But according to many top experts
in the field, most people are missing the point. Technology alone doesn’t
provide value to a business. Instead, technology’s value comes from doing
business differently because technology makes it possible.
Since technology is changing fast, it would be wise to develop a
twelve-month roadmap. The reasons for developing such a roadmap are
not self-evident. Certainly technology is important, but why must the
business meticulously plan out their strategy for a year into the future,
especially if the environment is working just fine as it is? The truth is
that there are many reasons to draft your roadmap, and some of these
reasons will be more or less relevant to different businesses depending on
their industry.
30 New World Technologies
Homework Assignment
For students: consider a brick and mortar banking company that delivers
products and services to the business-to-business (B2B) market.
For professionals: consider the company you’re working for or have
been working for.
Your VP of business development wants to transform the company to a
digital leader. As a C-level business manager with more than average inter-
est in everything digital, you are asked by the VP of business development
to conduct a research study, which will lead to a digital transformation
strategy. Include exposure, engagement, and technology. Add opportuni-
ties to unlock new business values and increase competitive advantages.
You can do this exercise alone. However, for best results, consider
forming a team with two colleagues with a business background and
two with a technology background. You or someone else can take up the
role of facilitator. The other team members will do their questions and
answers. At the end of the session, the facilitator will wrap up the results.
The initial tasks are involving:
analytics?
• Find a list of top digital transformation platform vendors and
their solutions (find at least 10 vendors).
• Align your strategy with the company’s business strategy.
• Inspire your VP of business development to take the next
step, which would be a digital transformation session.
Index
ABB Robotics, 51–52 augmented reality, 66–67
Agile manufacturing (AM), 91–92 3D printing, 100, 101
Agricultural research, drones, 124 Autonomous (“driverless”) motor
Agriculture vehicles, IoT network, 48
health care sector, 142–143
robotics, 142–143 Banking, 7
ALPHA, 128–129 Big data
Analytics, 14 actionable insights, 22
Artificial intelligence (AI), 28 and analytics, 15
automotive, 114–115 artificial intelligence, 105–108
big data, 105–108 and augmented reality, 62
competitive economy, 109–110 and blockchain technology, 36–37
drones, 128–129 customer needs, 22–23
E-commerce and customer service, decision makers, 21
115–116 internet of things network, 50
education, 113–114 Pricewaterhouse Coopers, 26–29
health care, 113 right sourcing, 23
health care sector, 108–109 robotics, 134–136
human resources, 114 smart team assembly, 22
limited memory, 104 speed and delivery enhancement,
reactive machines, 104 22
retail, 110–112 Bipedal walking “partner robot,” 132
robotics, 144–147 Bitcoin balance, 34
security, 113 Blockchain technology
self-awareness, 105 benefits, 34–35
theory of mind, 104–105 and Big Data, 36–37
tools, 102 Bitcoin balance, 34
Audi system, 77–79 distributed ledger technology, 33
Augmented reality (AR), 28 drawbacks, 35
Apple and Microsoft, 62–64 electronic cash, 33–34
automotive, 66–67 energy industry, 42–43
big data, 62 financial services, 41–42
BMW experiments, 64 IBM and Maersk, 37–39
cons, 69 and IoT network, 57–59
education, 67–69 market size and growth, 36
government, 65–66 music industry, 40–41
IKEA promotional techniques, order of ledger entries, 34
64–65 R3 Blockchain consortium, 39–40
market size and growth, 61–62 retail sector, 43
techniques, 61 SWIFT Global Payments
Automotive Innovation, 39
artificial intelligence, 114–115 telecom sector, 44
186 Index