The real secret to a successful digital transformation? Human empathy

According to Debbie Vavangas, IBM Consulting VP, one of the main reasons digital transformation efforts fail is that organizations don’t fully account for the humans involved. They don’t fully consider the various people working throughout the organization, and how changes affect their daily lives. When it comes to things like automation, AI, and intelligent workflows, it may seem like taking people out of the process is the whole point. In certain circumstances, it’s tempting to remove the human element in a digital transformation. 

But no matter how technical a transformation project might be, Vavangas says, “Digital transformation works at the people level. It’s how you design experiences that are adopted; it’s how people learn to love things. ​​If you’re not thinking about your people, your innovation is doomed.” 

“If you’re not thinking about your people, your innovation is doomed.”Debbie Vavangas

It’s not that organizations don’t recognize that people matter; they often get caught up in the more tangible elements of a digital transformation—app modernization, AI, automation or operational efficiency. If investments in digital technology are not grounded in stakeholder needs and preferences, they will not drive organizational value. If these investments in digital transformation and new ways of working are a challenge for employees to embrace, a company’s transformation ambitions will unravel. 

​​Vavangas is no stranger to digital transformation as the global lead for IBM Garage, a unique end-to-end model for accelerating digital business transformation that puts innovation at the heart of enterprise strategy. She’s one of IBM’s thought leaders on innovative ways of working and change management. In her observation, the importance of how people experience transformation is “almost always woefully underestimated.” 

​Human-centered transformation can be achieved through a combination of user research, breaking down organizational barriers, and ensuring that your organization’s culture is eager to adapt to change. 

​​“Transformation is pointless when we do it without purpose.”Debbie Vavangas

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​​“Transformation is pointless when we do it without purpose,” Vavangas says. If you transform an organization into something that doesn’t serve those responsible for its success, you will only waste time and money. 

Human-centered digital transformations begin with understanding what’s inside the hearts and minds of the people your organization depends on, then using those insights to inform how you embark on new initiatives and include everyone in the journey. To plan for the real-world human factors that can make or break a digital transformation, consider these three underused best practices for analyzing human experience, overcoming challenges and driving successful digital transformation: 

​​​​​1. User research: “I believe in my bones in the power of user research to make sure that you get to the crucial secret sauce, which is adoption,” Vavangas says. ​​Conducting comprehensive user research—from specific qualitative interviews to extensive data analysis—is key to determining the right success factors for a digital transformation, as well as to ensure employees are prepared to deliver. By incorporating metrics and user feedback early and often, companies can manage risk and ask, “Is this working?” and “What can we do better?” If you don’t have the data you need for user research, synthetic data can help. 

​​​​​2. Breaking down human barriers: Vavangas is adamant about clearly defining the human pain points that can derail your digital transformation and calculating the cost of those roadblocks down to the dollar. Reluctant leadership, the culture shock of organizational change, bringing siloed teams together, rigid rules, and new technology systems—all of these can be obstacles unless managed effectively. Think about the actual costs of your sticking points so you can push for workarounds. “When you know how much an impediment is costing you each day,” Vanvagas says, “it creates a very different lens to problem-solving.” 

​​​​​3. Cultural transformation: “If you don’t change the culture, transformation doesn’t get adopted,” Vavangas says. Yet lasting cultural change is one of the most difficult things for an organization to achieve. It requires buy-in across your organization, and that won’t happen unless leadership teams understand employees’ experiences and respond to their needs. “Measure how people are feeling as you’re rolling out programs,” Vavangas says. “What does it feel like to work in this different way? Are they feeling supported? Do they feel like they’re growing? Have we made things easier?” 

If your organization is looking for a way to accelerate digital transformation while keeping the human in mind, learn more about ​​IBM Garage and how it helps enterprises boost innovation and achieve lasting cultural transformation. 

Source: ibm.com

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How AI and automation are helping America’s Internal Revenue Service better serve we the people

The delivery of public services by the government continues to evolve as citizens increasingly look for more personalized and seamless experiences. The last three years have acted as a tailwind, further pushing the demand and forcing government to rethink their service delivery models. The Internal Revenue Service’s (IRS) tax return processing function, the quintessential citizen service that touches every American household, is a powerful example of the innovation that can come from viewing public services through the lens of citizens.

Read More: C1000-112: IBM Fundamentals of Quantum Computation Using Qiskit v0.2X Developer

In 2020 the IRS faced significant paper tax return processing backlogs. Tractor trailers full of paper were sitting at processing centers to be opened, scanned, sorted, properly inventoried and manually processed onsite. Tax return processing delays can impact the timing of refunds for taxpayers by as much as six months or longer. And although the increase in electronic filing of tax returns has greatly reduced the number of paper returns the IRS receives in an ordinary filing season, paper tax return volume is still significant. In alignment with the agency’s strategic goals to make the IRS more accessible, efficient and effective by continually innovating operations, adopting industry leading technology and increasing the efficiency and currency of technology investments, the IRS engaged IBM to digitize its tax year 2020 and 2021 paper tax return intake process to enable remote scanning, validation and processing.

The project went well beyond paper scanning and the automated extraction of data from paper tax returns. Enabled by artificial intelligence and a digital extraction tool, with IBM’s automated data validation process, the IRS’s Modernized e-File (MeF) system ultimately accepted 76% of paper tax returns processed without human intervention. In the end, working with the IRS, the team processed nearly 140,000 paper tax returns at a significantly higher rate of quality relative to human transcription — providing the IRS with the simplicity and efficiency needed to tackle its backlog challenge. Technologies used for the project also laid the foundation for the possibility of future anomaly and fraud detection during the tax return intake process — even for paper tax returns.

The IRS is at a self-defined inflection point. IBM’s IT modernization work with the IRS is a demonstration of the agency’s commitment to the delivery of more seamless citizen services. However, as with all digital transformations, there’s still work to be done. Backlogs of tax returns may unfortunately continue into the 2023 filing season, and IBM is prepared to continue assisting the IRS in this critical work for the American people.

In today’s rapidly changing, technology enabled world where citizens have become used to services only a click away, government agencies are under increasing pressure to keep pace. As we learned during this work with the IRS, digital transformation is a marathon, not a sprint. It’s steered by continuous technology innovation that presents new, more effective ways to conduct business and deliver services. Complex challenges and growing citizen expectations make it imperative that agencies maintain the accelerated pace of digital innovation to deliver value today and tomorrow.

Source: ibm.com

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Trends driving managed file transfer and B2B data exchange modernization

The most important business conversations your organization has are the daily digital exchanges of data with your customers and suppliers. Significant negative trends have emerged in the past few years, raising pressure on the critical software that most companies use to exchange business data within and outside their company, especially with their customers and suppliers. Your organization is likely feeling some challenges created by these trends.

Among the current key trends impacting file transfer and B2B systems, undoubtedly the main disruption comes from the overall increase in transaction volume. With the accelerated digitization of many business processes, organizations have seen unprecedented growth in their file transfer and B2B transactions in recent years.

Other trends include:

◉ A growing number of customers and suppliers. As more organizations look to increase the agility of their supply chain, they are adding suppliers.

◉ Expectations for faster response times. Many organizations are receiving response time objectives from their customers. Not replying to an inventory request or shipping date query fast enough means the customer may move on to the next supplier.

◉ IT and cloud efficiencies. By moving to the cloud, IT efficiencies are being explored in every IT department. Your company’s journey to the cloud can impact which solution best suits the digital conversation you have with your organization’s business partners.

◉ Increasing transaction complexity. As some customers and suppliers request semi-custom APIs and Hybrid EDI-API options, complexity soars.

◉ Increasing costs of data breaches. As found in the IBM Security report Cost of a data breach 2022, the cost of a breach has risen 12.5% as ransomware and destructive attacks surge.

Trends, challenges, disruptions

Ignoring these trends can be extremely costly. If not appropriately analyzed, trends can become challenges. And unaddressed IT challenges can become business disruptions. Businesses that ignore this landscape are more likely to experience order delays and interferences resulting in revenue loss, unexpected costs or customer dissatisfaction.

As these challenges remain unaddressed, IT teams are beset by tasks of increasing complexity driven by weak or inconsistent security and lack of visibility.

Siloed solutions and IT skills shortages are also common pain points. These challenges cause companies to struggle with their journey to the cloud and modernization efforts, leading to difficulty in scaling and slow onboarding of new customers or suppliers.

Is your business experiencing any of these IT trends in your file transfer or B2B transactions? Then you need modern solutions to meet and overcome IT challenges before they impact your business. And if your organization is not yet seeing these trends surface, then it’s important to start building the foundation for growth your business needs before the storm hits.

Businesses need a modern and reliable B2B data exchange solution built for demanding workloads. An effective solution must provide:

◉ Connectivity across a wide range of standards and protocols, data translation and validation

◉ End-to-end insight at the document, transaction and business level

◉ Rapid onboarding and efficient management of customers and partners

◉ Hybrid cloud, on-premises, and SaaS capabilities to support self-managed, vendor-managed or custom deployment

◉ Secure, scalable and reliable solutions for a diverse range of demanding workloads

IBM Sterling® Data Exchange is one such effective solution: a group of offerings built to improve the exchange of data with customers and suppliers, revolving around managed file transfer (MFT) and B2B integration. Take advantage of IBM’s long-standing experience in EDI, APIs and MFT business data exchange.

Source: ibm.com

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Experiential Shopping: Why retailers need to double down on hybrid retail

Shopping can no longer be divided into online or offline experiences. Most consumers now engage in a hybrid approach, where a single shopping experience involves both in-store and digital touchpoints. In fact, this hybrid retail journey is the primary buying method for 27% of all consumers, and the specific retail category and shopper age can significantly increase this number. According to Consumers want it all, a 2022 study from the IBM Institute for Business Value (IBV), “today’s consumers no longer see online and offline shopping as distinct experiences. They expect everything to be connected all the time.”

Experiential hybrid retail is a robust omnichannel approach to strategically blending physical, digital, and virtual channels. It empowers customers with the freedom to engage with brands on whichever shopping channel is most convenient, valued or preferred at any given time. For example, consumers may engage in product discovery on social platforms, purchase online and pick up items at a store. They may also be in a store using digital tools to locate or research products. The possibilities are endless.

While hybrid retail is now an imperative for brands, it has created new complexities for retailers. “Channel explosion is a reality and retailers are challenged to scale their operations across what is essentially a moving target,” says Richard Berkman, VP & Sr. Partner, Digital Commerce, IBM iX. The result is often disconnected shopping journeys that fail consumers. Imagine selecting the “in-store pickup” option for an online purchase, only to discover that fulfillment of the order was impossible since the store was out of stock.

According to Shantha Farris, Global Digital Commerce Strategy and Offerings Leader at IBM iX, the real cost of an unsuccessful approach to hybrid retail is losing customers—potentially forever. There are still a lot of pandemic-weary consumers for whom patience and tolerance for shopping-related friction is at an all-time low. Additionally, people remain desperate to feel connected. Retailers must be totally on point, pleasing customers with friction-free and highly experiential omnichannel commerce journeys. When this doesn’t happen, customers can react harshly. Farris refers to this phenomenon as “rage shopping” and observes that consumers will choose to shop elsewhere based on one disappointing experience. “End customers demand frictionless experiences,” she says. “They’re empowered. They have choices. They want to trust that their brand experience will be trusted, relevant, and convenient—and that this will remain true every time they shop with you.” Retailers must modernize their technology ecosystem for omnichannel and cross-channel consistency.

“Whether the transaction itself occurs digitally or physically is beside the point. It’s got to be experiential.”

Websites. Mobile apps. Social, live streaming and metaverse platforms. Determining which channels to strategically activate is tricky, but it’s not impossible. Commerce begins with brand engagement and product discovery, so it is critical to leverage data-driven insights to understand customers: everything from who they are to how they prefer to progress through the end-to-end shopping journey and how compelling they rate the experience. Then, Berkman says, “retailers need an experience-led vision of the future of their commerce initiatives across channels, with an ability to activate data and dynamically manage those channels.”

Which channels offer the best chance for positive consumer engagement? It depends on the brand. Additionally, measuring the success of each individual channel cannot be assessed using only conversion metrics. Farris comments, “You might discover a product on TikTok, but conversion will probably take place elsewhere.”

A primary benefit of augmented reality is increased consumer engagement and confidence at the earliest stage of a purchase.

The reality of rage shopping is a useful premise for retailers re-examining the current efficacy of every interaction along the purchase journey. Each step, from product discovery to last-mile fulfillment and delivery, needs to “meet customers where they are and evolve into one connected experience,” Berkman says.

Here are three ways to approach hybrid retail using technology along the customer journey. “Whether the transaction itself occurs digitally or physically is beside the point. It’s got to be experiential,” Farris says. “And to provide that experience, you need technology.”

Enhance product discovery with AR

A primary benefit of augmented reality (AR) is increased consumer engagement and confidence at the earliest stage of a purchase. Farris points to work done for a paint company in which IBM designed and deployed a color selection tool, which allows consumers to virtually test different paints on their walls. “There’s a huge fear factor in committing to a paint color for a room,” she says, but with virtual testing, “all of a sudden, your confidence in this purchase goes through the roof.”

AR has a measurable impact on reducing returns, which can cost retailers up to 66% of a product’s sale price.

Similar AR tools have been a hit for retailers like Ikea and Wayfair, allowing consumers to see how furniture will look in their actual homes. Smart mirrors provide another example: This interactive AR tool enables a quicker try-it-on experience, creating an expanded range of omnichannel buying opportunities for in-store shoppers. Effective AR use is also shown to have a measurable impact on reducing returns, which can cost retailers up to 66% of a product’s sale price, according to 2021 data from Optoro, a reverse logistics company. And a 2022 report from IDC noted: “AR/VR—over 70% view this technology as important, but less than 30% are using it.” That said, a study shared by Snap Inc found that by 2025, nearly 75% of the global population—and almost all smartphone users—will be frequent AR users.

Empower decision-making with 3D modeling

“Digital asset management is a fundamental part of commerce; 3D assets are just the next generation of it,” Farris says. 3D coupled with AR allows consumers to manipulate products in space. “It’s about making product information really convenient and relevant for consumers,” she says. In 2021, Shopify reported on average a 94% increase in the conversion rate for merchants who featured 3D content. One example is being able to virtually “try on” a shoe and see every angle of it by rotating your foot. The technology is useful for B2B too. “Instead of reading 50 pages of requirements and specs for some widget, buyers can actually turn the part in space and see if it’ll fit on an assembly line,” Farris says.

3D assets coupled with AR go beyond providing retailers with today’s tools. It’s a measure of futureproofing. “Some of these technologies will give you immediate returns today,” Farris says, “but they will also help retailers build capabilities that will be applicable to deploying a full metaverse commerce experience.”

Digitize how consumers interact with physical stores

In-store customer experiences can be significantly enriched with the use of digital tools and seamless omnichannel integration. Farris points to a major home improvement retailer that does this well. “If you go into one of these stores and can’t find an associate to help you, you can whip out your phone, go to the store’s website, and it’ll tell you what bin a product is in, down to the height of the shelf it’s on. Your phone becomes your in-store guide.”

The employee experience is also dramatically improved with the right digital technologies and omnichannel access. “Store associates need to have real-time data and insights relative to anyone who might walk in the door,” Berkman says, noting that associates, service agents and salespeople should act more like “a community of hosts.” Armed with the right information and access to technology like predictive analytics and automation, Berkman says, “those employees would have the insights to effectively engage customers and create more immersive and personalized experiences to drive brand growth.”

Source: ibm.com

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Four steps to app modernization success

App modernization can save costs and increase revenue, but you need a strategic approach. Success requires a deep understanding of your organization’s needs and a plan of action that won’t disrupt your business as you integrate new methods into your company culture.

The recent IBM Consulting publication Strategic app modernization drives digital transformation spells out the enormous potential benefits of a successful app modernization project:

◉ 15–35% savings on infrastructure year-over-year

◉ 30–50% lower application maintenance and running costs

◉ 74% lower costs on hardware, software and staff

◉ 10% improvement in application operational efficiency

◉ 14% boost in annual revenue

Yet the vast majority of app modernization attempts struggle to succeed or are underwhelming. How can you avoid the pitfalls that can cause efforts to stall out or underperform?

App modernization is a series of journeys that add up to a more thorough digital transformation. You can respond to each new opportunity over time and address new challenges as they arise. In this way, every modernization effort — for apps, infrastructure, processes or something else — mirrors the goals of the IT industry as a whole. They’re fundamentally about adapting to change driven by business demands.

The following four steps provide a sound framework for app modernization. Think of them as best practices for starting your journey and as guardrails to protect you from common mistakes.

1. Assess

Understand the current state of your company, the goals you want to achieve and how to transform without disruption. Then go through an org rationalization exercise to analyze your existing systems and workforce. Build a solid basis of understanding of both your business needs and your existing application landscape. This step incorporates the three types of understanding outlined in a previous piece, “What keeps a CIO up at night?”

2. Select

Transform your understanding of challenges and starting points into a concrete plan of action. You need to move from a general desire for improvement to the specific technical goals that you can achieve through app modernization. This step also involves choosing the correct hyperscalers or other public and private cloud providers to deliver the services you need.

3. Outline

Design a roadmap and timeline with strategically staggered app modernization journeys, each of which adds value without disrupting existing operations. In this step, you draw on your understanding of your current situation to plan how processes and dependencies will change as you modernize each app. Third-party help is particularly useful in this step, because internal perspectives on processes and dependencies often lack clarity.

4. Adapt

Connect your new app environment to the people and processes in your organization. As you modernize your application mix, it will support and challenge your workforce in new ways. Integrated processes might be more efficient, but they’re also unfamiliar. As you empower people with new capabilities, they’ll also take on new responsibilities. The process can be disorienting without proper support and training. And in the worst case, a disengaged workforce can completely undermine the value of any modernization effort. Planning cultural change as part of your technical modernization is essential, not an afterthought.

The right help can make all the difference. An experienced modernization partner can work alongside you to assess, plan and modernize your apps. By working with IBM Consulting, you can leverage years of institutional knowledge, experience across industries and our expertise in delivering cutting-edge innovation.

Source: ibm.com

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What do you need from an app modernization partner?

Strategic app modernization means assessing and optimizing your application mix to overcome challenges and build toward future goals. But an almost endless number of variables can arise while modernizing your applications. Even if two different enterprises are modernizing similar apps using the same products and public and private cloud hyperscalers, various other factors will send them down different paths. For example, they may have different business priorities, distinct budget considerations and differing levels of talent within their organizations.

As I wrote in my previous blog posts, “What keeps a CIO up at night?” and “Four steps to app modernization success,” the failure rates for enterprise app modernization efforts show that this knowledge may not be enough. You often need a trusted partner to help support the process.

Even though the goals of app modernization might be similar across different cases, the actual work will be highly customized. With custom work, an experienced modernization partner can make the difference between failure and success. If you can leverage the expertise of a partner with proven experience, you don’t need to rediscover solutions for every challenge you face.

For example, you could apply a predesigned set of best practices for integrating popular technologies like S4/HANA, AWS or Azure. Or you could leverage existing blueprints from previous implementations as inspiration that shows the necessary steps and interconnections. These prebuilt tools and procedures can accelerate the implementation and delivery of modernization projects, making success more likely and more rapid.

At IBM Consulting we think about the app modernization journey as well-defined steps: moving from the desired outcome to specific patterns of activity, choosing a hyperscaler and then deploying resources to cloud as necessary. Multiple overlapping app modernization journeys can add value in phases without disrupting existing workflows.

An experienced partner can help you make these choices and develop a plan. IBM Consulting brings together solutions and strategies in a comprehensive service and platform that orchestrates our extensive expertise, including rules, tools, technical assets and starter kits. This service can help you achieve your desired cloud outcomes quickly and reliably.

Here are some of the things that you should look for in an app modernization partner:

◉ Sound engineering principles delivered through a collaborative methodology to deliver technical excellence regardless of technology or provider

◉ A core technology foundation that applies regardless of landing zones and geography to drive standardization, scale and consistency

◉ Red Hat® OpenShift®, Nordcloud and Taos® accelerators to deliver portability and end-to-end hybrid cloud management

◉ Embedded security and compliance to leverage solutions such as IBM Cloud Pak® for Security and X-Force® to automate and improve security and compliance performance across environments

◉ Proprietary assets to incorporate hybrid cloud journeys, playbooks and tools developed over years of experience and implementations

◉ Collaboration with experts to access the latest technical solutions from a world-leading R&D arm such as IBM Research®

While every client’s app modernization journey is different, there is an underlying method to how we conduct it. The answers we provide aren’t necessarily different than what you might arrive at on your own — we believe they’re answers that make sense for you — but partnership can help accelerate reaching goals with less disruption and error.

Source: ibm.com

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In times of stagflation, calculated growth is key to success

As inflation dominates public discussion, many senior executives are preparing for an economic downturn with margin compression rates that have not been seen in over 40 years. Barron’s reports a falling profit margin in industrials, with CAT expected to fall to 13.4% from 15.3% and Deere & Co to decline to 20.9% from 22.2%. Year-on-year inflation in the OECD climbed to 10.3% in June 2022, the sharpest price increase since August 1988.    

Source: OECD

Cost-cutting is not enough

Inflation supply chain disruptions, geopolitical uncertainty and unprecedented government spending all drive this projected downturn. Margin compressions will likely happen faster than any downturn in history as inflation merges with demand decline. Many executives are cutting costs to help preserve their margins in preparation for this scenario.

But in the 2008 recession, the most successful enterprises were those able to sustain (and even accelerate) growth during the recession. Businesses that emerged successfully from past recessions invested in growth and cost restructuring, while businesses that failed or merely survived lost sight of growth and only focused on cutting costs. When enterprises act intelligently and strategically, they can stimulate growth in tough economic times.

Technology accelerates growth under stagflation

In today’s digital environment, advanced technology, data and AI will play a much bigger role in driving growth. From 2008 to present, the share of ecommerce retail sales increased from 3% to 14% and the worldwide IT spend increased from $3.4T to $4.5T. Enterprises across all industries, including manufacturing, retail and financial services, increasingly identify more as tech companies than as companies in their own sector.

Even during a period of stagflation, enterprises can apply technology to drive rapid and sustainable business growth. This can be achieved by striking a careful balance between cost optimization and growth through methods like:

Pricing/bundling optimization:

By developing a more granular view of customer preferences, buying behaviors and segmentation, enterprises can tailor bundles and pricing to capture a greater share of wallet.

Cognitive care:

By leveraging AI and customer 360 analytics, enterprises can develop a real-time view of customer sentiment and adjust customer service to quickly meet the needs of the customer. This can lead to improved customer sentiment, lower churn rates and opportunities for upselling.

Digital channel expansion:

By expanding the channels where they sell their goods and services, enterprises can reach a broader audience. Enterprises should expand their social media presence and tailor it to specific population segments. They should also develop their presence in the growing metaverse.

Intelligent customer experience:

By leveraging technologies like IOT, sensors and real-time analytics, enterprises can optimize customer experiences and upsell services.

Ecosystem plays:

There is power in numbers. By developing or participating in an ecosystem of customer products and services (such as rewards programs), enterprises can expand their sources of revenue. This becomes particularly powerful when combined with other tech-enabled growth initiatives, such as intelligent customer experience.

Data monetization:

This largely untapped opportunity allows enterprises to package data and use it in ancillary services. This data may be gathered through the course of doing business, or it may be manufactured through the enterprise’s own products and services. For example, auto manufacturers can use telemetry data to create “lock-in” with intelligent fleet management solutions, services, diagnostics, prognostics and analytics, expanding the surface area of their sales force and driving greater market share.

IBM can guide your technological innovation

Executing these tech-enabled solutions can be challenging. It is often difficult for enterprises to understand where their opportunities lie, and technology implementation often requires time and a complex set of integrations to scale impact. Finding the talent needed to execute on these initiatives can be time-consuming, and legacy stakeholders often view these programs as temporary and don’t take ownership of initiatives. Additionally, the cost of technology programs can be high, particularly in the current environment with compressed margins.

IBM has technology and strategy expertise in 170+ countries, with successful implementation experience across many sectors. Our 12 research labs, 52 innovation centers and 57 studios worldwide, combined with our partnership with more than 100 ecosystem firms, provide the tools to help enterprises emerge stronger after a recession. Technology, data and analytics will enable sustainable growth in the coming years.

Source: ibm.com

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What keeps a CIO up at night?

What keeps a chief information officer (CIO) up at night? Fear of the unknown. Today’s CIOs and other digital professionals run complex businesses that connect to other businesses in new ways. This makes the CIO a key partner in the company’s overall strategy. For a CIO, it’s not enough to keep your own digital house in order; you need to meet certification and interconnectivity standards that can change at any moment. Taken together, these responsibilities add layers of complexity, uncertainty and stress.

Think of a bank: In the past, it simply needed to keep its own money safe. Challenging, but comprehensible. With the advent of computerized banking systems, a bank needed to also keep information safe, but still only on its own systems. But now, virtually every bank participates in a global digital consortium. If it falls out of compliance with the global financial messaging standard, business stops. The bank must maintain this stability on top of local physical and digital security. The overlapping responsibilities are enough to give anyone sleepless nights.

What’s more, this complexity drives widespread uncertainty, from local to global, such as:

◉ What systems and infrastructure do we need now and in the future?

◉ How do we respond to changes in IT demands or scale?

◉ How do we keep our business and collaborations running seamlessly?

Modernization leads to transformation — but only with the right strategy

The common advice for CIOs looking to address all these uncertainties is to “modernize and adapt.” As I wrote in my recent thought leadership paper, “Strategic app modernization drives digital transformation,” modernization isn’t just a vague synonym for improvement. App modernization means assessing and optimizing your application mix to drive measurable impact within your business. Each app modernization requires more than just updating technology — it can include changes to infrastructure, design, operations, people, process and governance. Taken together, all these app modernization journeys contribute to a comprehensive digital transformation where your organization is constantly developing new skills, processes, tools and capabilities.

Modernization journeys are the steps that get you to digital transformation. Modernizing your application suite aligns your capabilities to today’s demands, optimizing services and costs at the same time.

With all its benefits, app modernization is essential to remain competitive. But successful modernization needs a strategy behind it. The stakes are high, and the history of modernization and transformation is littered with cautionary tales. According to a 2019 survey by Couchbase, 86% of companies failed in at least one transformation project they desired, and 73% felt that the results they did achieve fell short of being truly transformational.

What to understand as you plan your app modernization journeys

So, what is the best course of action for the CIOs and other pros who are worried about app modernization efforts? To cope with uncertainty and alleviate fears, and with the help of an experienced modernization partner, you need to bolster understanding of the following three areas:

1. The state of your organization

You can’t modernize successfully unless you know where you’re starting from. This means running an exercise to rationalize your application portfolio and generate a panoramic view of your entire ecosystem, including all of its interconnections. This is how the CIO can know which systems and infrastructure you need now and plan for the future.

Understanding your workforce is also essential because of the human and cultural element of any modernization. If you modernize your apps, it will both require and support new ways of working. As a result, improvements to applications may require you to address skills gaps by changing processes, restructuring teams, retraining workers or hiring new ones.

2. What’s pushing you to modernize

You can’t modernize successfully without knowing what your motivations and goals are. Frequently, stakeholders will each emphasize the pain points that they feel most acutely. For example, it’s common for line-of-business personnel to feel pressured by the need to connect systems and function smoothly in a digital world. Legal and regulatory departments are pressured by the increased level of certification needed to function. CFOs, IT staff and executives generally feel the growing cost of systems maintenance and the exponential cost increase that comes from scaling on-premises systems.

The answers change for different departments and different industries. But it’s important to reach a consensus so that your efforts can be focused correctly. Answer these questions: What are the most important factors driving your organization to modernize apps? And how can those factors be translated into actionable technical goals that are achievable in a reasonable timeframe?

With that knowledge, the CIO can plan responses to changes in IT demands or scale.

3. How to add value without damaging security or interrupting operations

Finally, you can’t modernize successfully if you interrupt operations to deploy new capabilities. You’ll need to plan a clear target architecture that includes considerations such as:

◉ Which hyperscaler services will be used

◉ What apps reside within the revised architecture

◉ The business and personnel changes needed to support new workflows

Then, as the CIO requires, you’ll need to plan the app modernization effort in overlapping phases to add value while keeping business and collaborations running seamlessly. A well-planned modernization improves efficiency and maintains functionality, but that’s not all. Planning is essential if you want to avoid security breaches by designing the app and environment together.

There’s no shortcut to these three types of understanding – but in our experience at IBM, working toward them soothes the CIO’s fears and sets the organization up for success. IBM Consulting can evaluate your application needs and plan modernization journeys that equip you for the future.

Source: ibm.com

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Women on the verge of transformational leadership

When IBM launched its first women in leadership study in 2019, the research revealed a persistently glaring gender gap in the global workplace. At that time, only 18% of senior leadership positions worldwide were held by women. And only 12% of organizations surveyed were going above and beyond their peers to address it head on by formalizing the advancement of women as a top ten business priority.

In the past two years, many organizations have seen an exodus of women during the Great Resignation and have felt the velocity of digital transformation. These shifts have been juxtaposed with an entrance of social and cultural awareness to the forefront of the corporate world. But for those who stay, the pipeline for women’s leaders has expanded. That’s the mixed news delivered by IBM’s Institute for Business Value (IBV) in new follow-up data from U.S.-based organizations.

This geography-specific update to the 2021 women in leadership study sought to understand if women’s leadership opportunities had advanced in the United States in the wake of the great digital shift.

A pipeline of plenty in the U.S.

Though the percentage of U.S. women in the C-suite and on executive boards have essentially remained flat, women have stepped into the talent pipeline over the past 12 months, an overall increase of 40%, according to the IBV. Those women’s chances of advancement are higher if their employer is led by a woman.

Enabled by more flexible work policies, and a bring-your-whole-self to work ethos, some 5 million executive women in the United States now stand ready to lead corporate America. They’re finding they can be evaluated on their own merits. unencumbered by the pre-pandemic norms that favored in-person networking and longer hours at the office or with clients.

When given prime opportunities to lead, women get results. In fact, companies where women lead perform better financially, finds a McKinsey survey, generating up to 50% higher profits. The 12% identified in IBM’s 2019 survey as the most committed to driving change agree. They all view gender inclusivity as a driver of financial performance, compared to only 36% of other organizations surveyed.

Women remain underrepresented at the top. Let’s do something to change that.

Though the leadership pipeline of women has grown in a variety of professional, managerial and SVP roles, the newest IBM research warns that many are still not breaking into the C-suite or executive board. Startlingly, fewer women hold top C-suite and executive board positions in 2022 than they did in 2021, dropping by roughly a point.

But those few who do end up in a senior seat are driven to change the status quo. In fact, 72% of women CEOs vs. 16% of male counterparts assert that “advancing more women into leadership roles in our organization is among our top formal business priorities.”

But the job of lifting women up can’t be given to this small population of women CEOs alone. A failure for organizations to take concerted actions could lead gender parity to move at a “snail’s pace” worldwide. At the current rate of change, the global gender gap will not close for 135 years, as estimated by the World Economic Forum. A persistent trend of gender pay disparity, which alarmingly gets worse as women age, could have drastic economic impacts as well — especially as the number of single mothers continues to increase.

With so much distance to cover, organizations need to apply the same attention to equal advancement that they reserve for other organizational goals. It’s time to close the gap between awareness and action on equality in position and pay.

How the demand for AI skills shifts the gender equation

The digital transformation of the wider workplace is expanding demand in the technical sector. The changing nature of work has resulted in a surge in demand for AI and machine learning skills across all industries. The number of data scientist and engineering roles in particular has grown an average of 35% annually, according to LinkedIn’s 2021 U.S. Emerging Jobs Report.

This proliferation of technology jobs has opened a wider job market. That has meant more opportunities for women, even for those who possess little technology backgrounds, to jump-start lucrative careers. But while these technical fields have become easier for women to enter, advancement hasn’t been as fast as in other sectors, with only 52 women promoted for every 100 men, according to a 2021 McKinsey report coauthored with LeanIn.Org.

The report points out that mentors and sponsors can help women in technical roles connect with experienced colleagues, develop their leadership acumen, and hone their communication skills. Direct managers can play important role too.

One such example is Gabriela de Queiroz, an open-source advocate and IBM chief data scientist who manages a team of data scientists and AI experts at IBM, six out of seven whom are women. She’s committed to upholding IBM’s tradition of maintaining diversity in an industry where women have traditionally been underrepresented.

To help her data-savvy reports become valuable contributors to the business, de Queiroz looks to help the six women on her team better convey the business value of data through storytelling.

When de Queiroz speaks in public, she brings a junior team member to deliver a presentation alongside her to make sure they build the necessary confidence they’ll need to advance their careers. “My whole pitch is, give back. This is a cycle.”

What your organization can do differently right now

From hiring managers and HR to public policymakers, it’s time to take action and confront facets of gender inequality that impact both the home and the workplace.

Working mothers in the U.S. face potential burnout as they face a lack of flexible work arrangements. Demanding careers and an inability to take significant paid leave are two reasons why U.S. mothers are more likely than fathers to quit their careers while still in their prime. Another is a lack of available childcare, according to a survey published by the Pew Research Center.

As companies look to bring staff back into the office, they can consider the present obstacles that could prevent women from stepping into leadership roles. Some companies have gone the extra mile with fully-paid gender-neutral parent leave, phase-back after parental leave and backup childcare. Work hour and location flexibility is also important. Such efforts have landed IBM (ranked No.1) on Comparably’s list of the best large companies for women in 2021.

Digital transformation itself can play a role in elevating HR to be more strategic, agile and responsive. A recent McKinsey report calls out self-service platforms that give line managers more responsibility for recruiting and more flexibility on skills evaluation. The automation of traditional administrative tasks can allow HR to more thoroughly collect and analyze employee data, including the experience of women or women’s networking groups, to make more informed decisions.

There’s a lot of work ahead to ensure equal advancement in the workplace. Women have made up 51.1% of the population since 2013 and outnumber men in most U.S. states. It’s well past time that organizations look more like the world we live in.

Businesses everywhere have entered a new era of digital reinvention, fueled by innovations in hybrid cloud and artificial intelligence. IBM is uniquely positioned to help our clients succeed in this radically changed business landscape by partnering with them to deliver on five levers of digital advantage: shape and predict data-driven outcomes, automate at scale for productivity and efficiency, secure all touchpoints all the time, modernize infrastructures for agility and speed and transform with new business strategies, open technologies, and co-creation.

Source: ibm.com

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5 trends contributing to embracing a high-performance, eyes-on-the-prize business in 2022

We’re all on a long road together, trying to follow a map to growth and success, right?

It’s hard to imagine any business that isn’t oriented that way. Problem is, we all experience a lot of the same disruptions—all the ups and downs we go through each year, whatever those may be. And some years are a lot better or worse than others, wouldn’t you agree?

Right now, most businesses are dealing with things like global inflation, supply chain disruption and a lack of access to people with the right skills necessary to get the job done the right way. Given these challenges, what are the things that make people shiver in their boots when in actuality, there are opportunities to tie those boots tighter and keep marching ahead on the path to success.

These five big trends may just be the game-changers you’ve been looking for to become a more high-performing, eyes-on-the-prize type of business:

1. Digital transformation is the new normal – Change and innovation is the name of the game. Get used to it or get left behind. Digital initiatives and innovation must be a top priority and paired with agility and flexibility to give your business the resilience it needs to survive in any scenario.

2. Your people deserve more appreciation – You hear about this “Great Resignation” going on? Millions of people in the United States alone are quitting their jobs for different reasons and this is becoming a global workforce issue. So those people you’ve got, value them, provide them with ways to grow and appreciate their loyalty and effort.

3. Sustainability and transparency are big deals – Being good for the environment and demonstrating integrity about those efforts are increasingly important for customers. Companies must practice what they preach, make an effort to convince their audience that they sincere, and not just aspirational.

4. Your tech stack is critical for your operations – You can’t just patch together a bunch of different tech solutions and expect it to get the job done. You’ve got to think big and holistically about how tech is going to affect your workflows and operational efficiencies.

5. Security must be everywhere – The more companies go to the cloud, the more their data can be exposed. Nobody wants yet another data breach. Security practices need to be built-in and constantly evolving if you want to keep any sort of trust from your customer base.

You’ve got these trends in context. Now what are you going to do about it all? Here are a few recommendations:

◉ Know where you’re going. If there’s no target to aim at, you’re not going to hit anything. Figure out what your business really values, put your people first and figure out the strategy that will get you there.

◉ Upgrade your efforts. Don’t think your old infrastructure and software solutions are going to cut it. Provide training for your people, get security baked into everything you do and figure out how to unify your cloud management solutions.

◉ Don’t give up! There is a 100% guarantee that you’ll never get your business where you dream it being if you stop building, stop taking that next step and stop investing. Prepare through innovation and embrace transformation.

How do these 2022 trends make you feel? Excited? Nervous? More ready than ever to tackle the next big challenge? Let’s talk about your cloud strategy and how these factors might impact where you go next.

Source: ibm.com

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Creating a flexible workplace through digital instrumentation

As we continue to live in a world with both COVID and vaccines, many organizations are focused on safely returning employees back to the office, while also meeting employees’ needs for greater flexibility and increased work life balance. A recent IBV study reported that while employees have enjoyed the benefits of working from home, 60% indicated that they would like to work in the office for a portion of their work week. Let’s take a closer look at the role of digital instrumentation in delivering this new workplace. There is a recent webinar on the topic, too.

The changing workplace: from traditional to flexible

There is no “one-size fits all” approach that organisations take. Instead, they are looking at how to create flexible workplaces that can support the dynamic, changing needs of the business and workforce. Most organisations anticipate that employees will be in the office 2-3 days per week and work remotely the remainder of the time. When employees do come to the office, it will be with purpose, to collaborate with team members, attend meetings, and meet with clients and partners.

It is a shift from the traditional space planning practice of assigned workspaces and dedicated desks for individual employees. It’s also a shift in how individual business units are charged for the space they are using, how is it measured and whether or not space utilization is meeting business targets.

To help facility leaders make smarter, safer decisions, many are focused on digital instrumentation to understand utilization trends and monitor occupancy in near real time.

Accelerating digital adoption and instrumentation

Occupancy data from IoT sensors, or existing infrastructure including WIFI allows facility leaders to monitor in near real time the occupancy levels across their portfolio. Coupling this data with capacity data helps them monitor spaces and be alerted when there is a capacity breach. Indoor positioning, delivered with WIFI and BLE beacons, allows facility leaders to identify areas of congregation and over-crowding and redirect employees to quieter areas. This data can also be used as an input to enhance cleaning protocols based on actual occupancy or allow catering services to plan based on expected number of people.

Utilization trends enable facility leaders to understand how spaces are being used, when they are being used, which business units are using them and for how long. This arms teams with the information they need to make critical business decisions. For example, are there sufficient meeting rooms to meet demand or available desks for employees in the office? This data also helps improve space utilization, identify areas for space reduction and improve the bottom line.

Navigating a better experience

The same enabling occupancy and utilization technology also lends its hand to improving operational efficiency and enhanced workplace experiences. With the introduction of flexible workplaces, many employees will return to new offices or occupy unfamiliar spaces. Facility leaders can extend the use of IoT and WIFI data to provide employees with indoor maps and wayfinding. Employees can seamlessly navigate their new environment, find places of interest, their reserved desks or ad-hoc spaces when they quickly want to find somewhere to work. They can do it all without having to walk the corridors — which boosts productivity.

How to get started on your digital instrumentation journey

It’s time to start the journey and show your workforce that you have their well-being at the forefront of your organisation’s strategy. IBM TRIRIGA and Kontakt.io are collaborating to enable and instrument the flexible workplace. Hear from Rom Eizenberg, CRO at Kontakt.io, and Samantha O’Neill, Product Manager for IBM TRIRIGA, on how our collaboration addresses space planning challenges, helps you prepare for the shift and drive to more positive business outcomes.

Source: ibm.com

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Flexible, agile, and secure: modernizing applications with IBM Z

Priorities have changed over the last two years for IT executives. From business as usual to a rapid shift toward digital transformation, the impact of the pandemic cannot be overstated. With this shift to digital in mind, the IBM Institute for Business Value (IBV) surveyed 200 IT executives and discussed changing marketplaces and the role of IT in transformation in “Application Modernization on the Mainframe.”

Read More: C2090-312: IBM DB2 11 DBA for z/OS

Much of this change is attributed to the rise of cloud-based applications. But where does this leave mission-critical mainframe applications? A knee-jerk reaction may be to say the only way forward is to rearchitect IT environments exclusively on the cloud. However, 71 percent of IT executives surveyed say that mainframe-based applications are central to their business strategy. These workloads power essential business processes; with 93 percent of companies using the mainframe for financial management and 73 percent for customer transaction systems.

Digital transformation will require workloads to run where they make the most sense, necessitating a hybrid cloud approach. In three years, close to 70 percent of leading organizations expect their operations will include unique configurations of data and computing environments, including on-premise data center, mainframe, private cloud, public cloud, and edge computing.

By embracing a hybrid cloud approach, IT leaders benefit from the stability and security of the mainframe and extract maximum value from cloud investments. To ensure that applications are connected across platforms, it’s important to modernize mainframe applications. Modernizing mission-critical mainframe applications can help transform development culture, enabling adoption of DevOps and other agile practices that promote flexibility and innovation.

Enterprises in the financial services industry, like BNP Paribas, are re-thinking the way that they approach product development by modernizing their mainframe development environment. BNP Paribas deployed an integrated development environment backed by open-source tools. Driving both cost savings and quality development, the modern environment enables more efficient development and testing, which also helps attract new developers. It boosts developer engagement and code quality by offering greater autonomy and tool standardization.

BNP Paribas is just one of many enterprises taking advantage of modern mainframe tools and technology that deliver lower total cost of ownership and increased agility. The IBM Z ecosystem offers innovative solutions that drive enterprise transformation across the globe. The release of IBM z/OS V2.5, the next generation operating system on IBM Z, introduces high performance AI capabilities and new capabilities that support rapid product development on the platform.

Recognizing the need for continual innovation, 86 percent of IT executives say that their organizations need to accelerate digital transformation to stay ahead of changing customer expectations. By modernizing mainframe applications and integrating them with new applications in a hybrid cloud environment, enterprises can develop or maintain a competitive advantage and avoid costly re-architecture plans.

The first step of any modernization journey is to build an iterative plan. To learn more about application modernization on IBM Z, click here

Source: ibm.com

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How data transformation technology is helping drive customer centricity

In today’s highly connected global economy, data and digital connections are critically important to achieving business objectives. As the sources of data continue to grow in volume, this data can be leveraged to accelerate decision making and drive customer centricity. So, how can a company reduce the complexity arising from data growth while growing its customer base? The answer lies in integrating data across data types and formats. This integration includes transforming data formats, validating data, and creating value from data, while complying with rapidly changing industry and regulatory standards.

Read More: C2070-981: IBM FileNet Content Manager V5.2

Today, most IT departments solve this problem by building customized integration platforms for each new customer to help ensure frictionless data flow. Unfortunately, this process is not scalable when working with hundreds of customers. It’s also a huge drain on IT time, resources and budget. But the right technology can automate complex data transformation processes and validate data across a range of different formats and standards, scaling these processes across large volumes of enterprise data. Leaders like DHL are already using these solutions to drive value.

The DHL story 

DHL Supply Chain (DHL), a division of DHL International GmbH, offers warehousing and distribution services to more than 2,000 customers spanning industries, countries and sizes. Two-way communication between those customers and DHL is core to the company’s warehouse management business. Facilitating that data flow is not a one-size-fits-all task. Each customer’s data comes in different formats and follows different standards, depending upon such factors as a customer’s internal IT infrastructure, industry and location. 

For many years, DHL built customized integration platforms each time it onboarded a new customer. It was a time-consuming, laborious and expensive process. DHL needed a uniform way to integrate the ERP systems and data sets of its warehouse management customers with DHL’s internal systems.  

DHL deployed IBM Sterling Transformation Extender, that is used to map data from customers’ platforms to a custom internal integration management platform, aligned with the customers’ industry regulations and standards. This has allowed DHL to successfully transform over 2.2 Billion messages from more than 2,000 customers into their standard format every year.

Source: ibm.com

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Building a secure hybrid cloud

In a day and age when the words digital transformation and cloud have become household names, businesses of all shapes and sizes are jumping on the bandwagon to cloud-enable their business applications. That sounds great as part of a dinner conversation; however, when the CIO needs to request funding for such a project, there must be a valid business case to get it approved.

One major driver of cloud technology is cost reduction. Cloud applications require little to no upfront investment, versus legacy on-premises solutions that require dedicated servers, operating system licenses, and possible back end database licenses. For legacy applications, you pay the entire cost upfront as a capital investment, plus a possible monthly support cost. As time goes on, the software as well as the platform becomes outdated and you need to pay for costly upgrades to keep up with the latest security updates and product feature sets.  With cloud applications, however, you pay a low monthly service charge that is reported on the balance sheet as an operating expense, and usually includes support and upgrades.

For on-premises solutions, your own IT staff is responsible for its operation. This means that you need to hire new staff and/or train existing staff to take on this new responsibility. This presents an added cost to your organization. With cloud, however, the provider manages everything. You just click a few buttons on a web page and the job gets done.

Realize the power of a hybrid multicloud strategy

As so eloquently said by Bola Rotibi, Research Director for CCS Insight, on a recent IBM IT Infrastructure webinar titled Secrets From the C-Suite: Building a Secure Hybrid Cloud: “As we think of the digital technologies transforming the way we live, work, rest and play, cloud presents a multitude of opportunities to operate and innovate more cost effectively and efficiently.”

Another major driver of cloud-based technology is business continuity. If all your computing assets are stored in a single location which then experiences an extended power outage, phone service or internet outage, natural disaster, or terrorist attack, your business essentially grinds to a halt. Many larger organizations invest in constructing and maintaining multiple data centers for just that reason. For most small businesses, this added cost is beyond their capabilities. Cloud technology removes this challenge by placing the business continuity requirement entirely on the provider.

Along the same lines of business continuity, is that because of its ubiquity, cloud provides businesses with a competitive advantage over companies that still rely on legacy on-premises hardware-based solutions. Case in point: I recently worked with a company who had one of their location’s phone lines go down. It took 3 days for 2 different phone companies to figure out whose fault it was and then finally fix the problem. During those 3 days, a busy office was completely down with no phone service whatsoever. This kind of service level might have been acceptable in 1992. However, in the 2020s that’s beyond unacceptable. A cloud communications provider with a guaranteed service-level agreement would have ensured that such a serious outage would never happen.

Explore the IBM IT Infrastructure portfolio

Now, one might argue that this sounds good in theory. However, a small business that manufactures designer bathroom tiles doesn’t have the same needs or security requirements as a large healthcare provider or global investment banker. You can’t just put your customers’ financial portfolio onto public cloud providers! If your public cloud provider gets hacked, the damage to your business can be fatal! This is what hybrid cloud computing is all about. With hybrid cloud your sensitive data and critical workloads remain under your control inside your on-premises private cloud, whereas your less sensitive or critical workloads can be redistributed to the public cloud provider of your choice.

One important consideration when migrating applications to the cloud is security. On the previously mentioned IBM IT Infrastructure webinar, Elisabeth Stahl, IBM Garage Distinguished Engineer, talks about encryption and how organizations think about it. Elisabeth Stahl stated that surprisingly, “a very small percentage of enterprise systems are actually encrypted.” She explains that while many organizations encrypt their data, they don’t do so from a holistic point of view. This means that important data gets encrypted and non-sensitive data doesn’t.

Now, if you were a hacker who just discovered a cache of encrypted data among a whole bunch of non-encrypted data, what would be your first thought? You guessed it! That’s the data you’re going to go after and try to break into. By selectively encrypting your data, you’re actually doing yourself a disservice. Elisabeth goes on to discuss a framework called pervasive encryption, “Where you’re really saying you need to easily be able to encrypt all, everything that you have. End-to-end holistically.”

IBM IT Infrastructure has a great resource on their website for businesses that are exploring for ways to educate themselves on security. The eBook is “Seven steps to make secure IT infrastructure a business priority”, and can be accessed here.

In conclusion, there are many different drivers for cloud-based technology. There are also many different options and configurations from which to choose from. Regardless of your choice, cloud security should be a central part of your overall digital transformation strategy, and not tacked on later as an afterthought.

Source: ibm.com

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