Over the past two years, as they tried to survive the pandemic, enterprises were hyper-focused on cost reduction and finding new revenue streams. With a "lift and shift" approach, they cut costs by transitioning applications and technologies to the cloud, and to generate and sustain new revenue streams, they built APIs.
These were fast-paced projects, executed out of necessity. Now enterprises are taking the time to strategize a path forward that takes further advantage of their cloud platforms and other technologies. The migration of applications to the cloud is complete, and now other technologies are needed for a competitive edge, making 5G and IoT top priorities.
But technology evolution is a never-ending journey. A company needs an agile, scalable, sustainable, and continuous transformation mindset to ensure future progress and stay ahead of the competition.
One of our clients that has successfully navigated this is a large fast-food restaurant chain. After being forced to shift to an online ordering and delivery model to ensure contactless operations, it experienced 115% growth over two years. Today, 15% of all sales come through digital channels.
The company migrated applications to the cloud to scale digital capabilities and handle increased online demand and an influx of data. It didn't pivot just to survive—it innovated to be better positioned than ever by capturing new digital revenue.
For other organizations that shifted operations and applications to the cloud over the past two years, it's time to hit the ground running in 2022. The three key pillars to adopt new technology with agility are modernization, transformation, and expansion, and they should all happen in parallel.
Delivery modernization
Modernizing delivery methods requires implementing product-oriented delivery (POD) models that are agile at scale. These POD models keep teams with varied skills in place throughout the lifecycle of a project, resulting in greater knowledge of the tools, technologies, challenges, and opportunities.
Organizations looking to be more agile must concentrate on integrating their business and IT teams, adopting industry-leading practices such as PODs, and building clear road maps to outline a step-by-step plan.
Modernization is the meat and potatoes of driving continuous transformation. It's crucial to building a solid operations layer and positioning the organization for innovation and cost optimization in the future.
Application transformation
Post lift-and-shift, organizations must rearchitect applications to become more responsive to changing business needs and take advantage of market opportunities with differentiated products and services. They must identify opportunities to reduce technical debt, leverage automation, and upgrade their applications via composable architecture and API-fication; this means connecting downstream and upstream systems with API services to build end-to-end business transformative use cases.
Transformation is action; enterprises won't feel the true impacts and benefits of the groundwork they've laid unless they're willing to take bold steps to seize the opportunity.
Expanding through partnership
Along with application modernization and transformation, organizations in 2022 must expand their business and IT capabilities. Leveraging these larger ecosystems, companies can collaborate with their partners and create new opportunities, while funneling new insights back into the modernization and transformation pillars to further strengthen their technology and cloud maturity.
Partnership expansion can also help companies introduce features faster and enhance them with the latest technology. These partnership models also provide companies with access to niche talent and thought leadership across the ecosystem, fostering next-level innovation.
Building on the pillars
Companies spent a long two years migrating applications to the cloud, primarily out of necessity to keep up competitively with changing markets going digital-first. As 2022 progresses, organizations that positioned themselves well and withstood the pandemic's disruptions should be ready to strike.
Focusing on modernization, transformation, and expansion will help enterprises accomplish the outcomes they're striving for, getting to the next level along their cloud journeys—and achieving clearly measurable goals that will drive direct benefits for the business. Don't wait; it's time to get to the next level.
Keep learning
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Download this free IDC white paper, "Enabling End-to-End Digital Transformation".
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