Elly Yates-Roberts |
Many businesses are rethinking their strategies as they continue to operate in an environment that is repeatedly disrupted by new technologies and business models. Most business and IT leaders are likely finding themselves in the middle of digital transformation efforts, seeking to use the cloud for workloads like development, testing or application deployments.
The Covid-19 pandemic has placed additional pressure on those leaders to deal with their arsenal of – or lack of – digital tools. The rise of remote working has also put a strain on enterprise security while highlighting the need for flexible and agile processes that drive business continuity during unpredictable times – an area where many companies were caught off guard.
It has become evident that enterprises that adopt an operating model that continually pivots to changing market demands, by improving business processes on the inside and enabling newer end-to-end customer journeys on the outside, are most likely to grow.
Core enterprise business applications can either power resilience and success of an organisation or hinder innovation to slow down its growth. That’s where Infosys comes in, ushering in five critical areas of transforming enterprise applications.
Exceptional experiences
Increasing customer expectations and rapidly shifting demand continue to place importance on designing engagement models that deliver almost immediately. The ability of an organisation to quickly iterate and optimise customer experiences and proactively manage engagement are key to building – and retaining – a competitive edge in a market that punishes those who don’t address the dramatically evolving landscape. To satisfy their customers and protect market share, businesses need flexibility that allows them to quickly pivot.
Cloud-based applications can transform the way businesses engage with customers – making them adaptable and helping them deliver intelligent and unique customer experiences.
Rapid acceleration
Businesses vary in how they approach their applications transformation. The objective, however, is the same: a fundamental shift in core IT capabilities to better prepare for what’s next. Hosting applications in the cloud will accelerate a firm’s digital transformation as it takes advantage of scaling effects and cost efficiencies.
When run in the cloud, your core business applications will enable your enterprise to move from a legacy technology stack to being able to respond to specific customer needs, including offering frictionless experiences.
Smarter insights
Nowadays, with data being the lifeblood of any high-performing organisation, access to insights is paramount to understanding the shifting customer demand, building sophisticated experiences and making strategic business decisions with confidence.
Running core enterprise applications in the cloud brings data closer to those who need it in their daily decision-making, so they can proactively manage business strategy, design business models geared for success and build customer offerings that meet current, and anticipated, needs. By integrating core apps with technologies such as the internet of things, machine learning and artificial intelligence, your business data goes even further – helping leaders prepare the organisation for the future.
Purposeful innovation
Innovating for today’s customer means not only meeting their expectations, but also anticipating their future needs. Delivering cutting-edge products and services is only possible when innovation is anchored in reliable, accessible and accurate data, but speed to market is also paramount. For many enterprises, business applications transformations are driven by the need to become more agile and innovate at speed, as legacy architectures often hinder growth and result in missed opportunities.
Cloud-based core applications foster fast deployment cycles, quick iterations, rapid shipment of products and services and provide access to the latest, most advanced technology that places the customer at the centre.
Assured outcomes
Your core business applications are now more important than ever. From process planning to customer relationship management, when this data becomes connected, you can build a smarter and more resilient business. But while the case for transforming core applications and leveraging cloud is often clear, envisaging the exact business outcomes – and realising them – creates hurdles.
To ensure successful transformation with a long-lasting impact, you need to access solutions that allow you to transition with minimal risk and maximum security. Equally important is to understand that the move to digital is a continuous process involving people, processes and technology. Transformation projects require you to look both inwards into how you can create a more agile enterprise at the core, and outwards, determining how the transformed applications can better serve your customers and protect your business in the rapidly evolving landscape.
With the latest innovation-led technology offered by Microsoft, enterprises worldwide are making great strides in building agility, growth potential and resiliency. To contextualise these technological revolutions to distinct industries, Infosys has built Platform of Possibilities 3.0, a strategic realisation framework based on Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Power Platform, that offers both strategic consultancy and cutting-edge services that every business needs to thrive in a disruptive market.
Lax Gopisetty is vice president of Microsoft business applications practice at Infosys
This article was originally published in the Autumn 2021 issue of Technology Record. To get future issues delivered directly to your inbox, sign up for a free subscription.