Constant releases of technology solutions that have half lives are plunging businesses into digital chaos.
During his opening keynote in front of an audience of 5,000 at Pegaworld 2018, Alan Trefler – founder and CEO of Pegasystems – explained how businesses can overcome this struggle, deliver real business outcomes and successfully implement digital transformation efforts as a result.
‘Industry needs to get real’
One of the main problems holding businesses back is differentiating between hype and reality, explained Trefler. “Industry needs to get real,” he said. Businesses “need to find real use cases for emerging technologies, like blockchain.”
Once there is this understanding, enterprises can go about successfully implementing digital transformation efforts and deliver real, tangible outcomes.
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What is digital transformation all about? It’s the “convergence of customer engagement with digital process automation,” said Kerim Akgonul, SVP, Products, Pegasystems during his speech at Pegaworld.
Effectively, the process of digital transformation is about developing fundamental digital capabilities to help satisfy clients, improve solutions and build a culture of change within a company’s DNA. In history, change is the only constant.
“At it’s core, digital transformation is about adjusting to being in a constant state of change and flux, and how do you acclimate to that,” confirmed Don Schuerman, CTO and vice president of Product Marketing at Pegasystems.
Plunged into digital chaos
Many companies are grabbing at lots of things, coming up with lots of solutions, because the world is chaotic and there are many business problems that need solving.
“The technology industry has brought collections of solutions and immediate hits that are increasing by the week with a half life of two years,” said Trefler. “And these quickly become the next legacy.”
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“This approach leads to well intentioned people going forward with pursuits that become well intentioned mistakes.”
What are these mistakes? Trefler identified three:
1. Channels – How to treat customers
Too many businesses are organised around silos. If the way you engage with a client is siloed then you are creating isolated segments of business logic, which will lead to a loss of customers. Too often, businesses are focused on channels and not end-to-end customer journeys.
2. Tasks
Backend systems are typically based around business tasks, and to infrequently focused on clients. Too often businesses are focused on tasks not outcomes. This leads to a disconnection not related to outcomes for customers.
3. Silos
The dreaded siloed organisation doesn’t support end-to-end journeys, which is needed to make clients successful.
Digital transformation efforts struggle and often fail around delivering better customer experience (CX), because these efforts are departmental and siloed.
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All of these mistakes lend to the growing problem of the digital gap for enterprise – “a gap bigger than the local Grand Canyon,” said Trefler.
“Businesses are thinking about the problem the wrong way, in an unrealistic fashion, which is not getting customers connected to real outcomes.”
The right way
For businesses to overcome this digital gap, improve the customer experience and succeed in digital transformation efforts, they must start to embrace intelligent technologies from an operational point of view in order to gain quick wins.
“Real-time omni-channel AI and end-to-end robotic process automation (RPA) is needed for rapid delivery and allows clients to succeed in their journeys,” said Trefler.
Robotics is an increasingly used technology tool that helps give businesses what they need; the ability to deliver real business value for customers. “Businesses can leverage this to drive digital transformation and change,” said Trefler.
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Consumers are engaged through the use of technology, and they know exactly what they want: experiences that are easy and convenient.
This is, ultimately, the challenge that organisations are trying to address with digital transformation: the convergence of customer engagement with digital process automation.
You need AI capabilities to do this customer engagement in real-time, and automation for the easy and convenient experience.
Businesses can achieve this with a “platform built for change,” explained Akgonul. A platform with the next generation of enterprise software, which brings together AI and RPA to link customer engagement and digital process automation to empower digital transformation and drive breakthrough customer experience.
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Pegasystems has claimed today that it has such a platform: “Pega Infinity provides the industry’s only unified digital foundation that connects front-end digital customer experiences with back-end process automation.”
The main goal of this solution is to improve the ROI of digital transformation efforts and helps customer-facing enterprises deliver better customer experience.
Software driving digital transformation
Integral to this new offering is the premise of a self-driving software that perfects the software of clients and optimises business – future-proof technology. “We believe this use of AI to optimise how clients engage with their customers and to optimise internal workflows of staff and the systems is game-changing,” said Trefler.
“This clears the field for business and people to go where they haven’t gone before and go where they need to go to be successful.”
Information Age will be at Pegaworld all week, covering the latest announcements from Pegasystems and its customers, all surrounding the topic of driving change through digital transformation
