Saturday 28 / September / 2024
Muscat: As organisations look to the future, emerging technologies and their potential impact cannot be ignored. In Oman, transformation is occurring at many different layers across the information technology stack.
According to research by IDC, investments in digital transformation and innovation will account for 30 per cent of all IT spending in the Middle East, Turkey, and Africa by 2024. Organisations need to be able to navigate these new technology inflexions to create a technology infrastructure that optimises their business for a digital future, supports better customer outcomes, and minimizes the risk of digital disruption by competitors, while also contributing to the goals outlined in Oman’s Vision 2040.
By 2030, human-machine partnerships will become deeper and more immersive than ever before. In research by Dell Technologies and the Institute for the Future, respondents were unanimous in their organisation’s necessity to transform. However, the research showed that only 27 per cent have ingrained digital in all they do, 57 per cent of businesses are struggling to keep up with the pace of change, and 93 per cent are battling some form of barrier to becoming a successful digital business in 2030 and beyond.
The COVID-19 pandemic has also transformed the pace of adoption of technology and forced organisations to think differently about their digital strategies. With emerging technologies reshaping our lives and entire industries as we move toward 2030, here are suggestions to consider when vetting their business value:
Know your current environment. It’s critical that you have a clear understanding of your existing technology environment, including its capabilities and limitations. Is pursuing a new technology implementation more valuable than the backlog of other technical priorities or needs?
Understand your organisation’s strategy. Technology choices need to be made in the broader context – both in terms of what they enable but also considering the investment against other financial choices. If the technology is related to IT operations like infrastructure or software-defined networking, you should validate that the technology works and that there is a business return. If a business application is being evaluated, then the same applies, with the assessment also considering if the technology and associated business process change(s) will move the organization further along in its transformation.
Evaluate first. New technologies should be evaluated for their potential business value for your organisation. Ideally, this means running a real pilot in your environment, with your data at the scale of your business’ velocity. While you may not be able to do a proof of concept across all use cases, your pilot should be of the most valuable use case to ensure readiness and ROI for your fuller implementation.
Use data to inform your decisions. There are many metrics that can be used to support a final decision – assessing alignment with your organisation’s longer-range strategy, time and cost to implement, time to integrate and achieve business value, ongoing costs and skills to support, etc. Then, you also need to factor in the comparative cost and fiscal health of the provider’s company.
Look elsewhere for insight. Consider the experience of a third party that has evaluated the same technology. This is a way to fast-track your learning and leverage the expertise the partner has from previous work. What’s key is ensuring the external support has verifiably done similar work or is on a similar journey. Otherwise, you run the risk of spending time educating an external team on both your environment and opportunity as well as the technology you are evaluating.
Build and execute a three-part plan. Once you decide that a new technology meets your operating and functional requirements, it is important to establish the path to value. Any big technology investment requires an implementation plan, a change management plan and a business value realisation plan. These three elements are essential to achieving the fullest outcomes.
Don’t be afraid to revisit previous decisions. With the pace of change, a technology once deemed too risky financially or too immature from a technical standpoint may have evolved. If previous issues have been addressed and the timing and resource investment are aligned, use the new information to revisit your previous decision.
Transformation is never easy, but there are very real opportunities in front of us today. Oman has witnessed rapid technological developments in many sectors since it launched its Vision 2040. It has broadened its use of e-platforms to ease public services and is promoting digitalisation and innovation towards economic development and diversification. Powerful technologies – including artificial intelligence, machine learning, 5G, storage and cloud – are ushering in new and competitive risks and opportunities and have highlighted technology as an important player in its economy. By thoroughly evaluating the technology choices, IT and business leaders can remove barriers while keeping up with and embracing Oman’s digital future.
