What Are the Emerging Tech Trends and Innovations That Companies Are Using to Achieve Digital Transformation

By Nish Kotecha, Chairman and co-founder, Finboot

Can you believe Christmas is just around the corner…? That’s right, I said the ‘C’ in September. On the subject of touchy subjects… one of the most sensitive debates after our Christmas lunch is when to start the game of Risk. For those who haven’t yet participated, Risk is a strategy board game (invested in 1957 by Albert Lamorisse) where one seeks to conquer the world through conflict and collaborations – I can’t help feeling that this year’s game will have a more ‘real world feel’ to it…

Not least as the world is still reeling from the shocks of the pandemic and Putin’s war on Ukraine – which has caused the energy crisis and raised the spectre of energy security globally through the weaponization of oil and gas. The effects of which have broken the global supply chain infrastructure.

So severe are these shocks that last week the EU sought emergency powers to prevent supply chain crisis. Thierry Breton, the EU’s internal markets commissioner, said the power would “provide a structural answer to preserve the free movement of goods, people and services in adverse times”.

“The best way to manage a crisis is to anticipate it, to reduce its impact or to prevent it from happening,” he said, adding that the new rules would allow Brussels to ask companies for information about their production capacity and inventory.

The US has regularly been using the Defense Production Act, most recently to accelerate the production of infant formula which included authorizing overseas flights to import supply.

Global supply chains need to be rethought and re-engineered, which provides a unique opportunity for digital transformation.

Companies typically operate two types of supply chain: physical and financial. The key to digital transformation is to link the two together creating transparency and trust through data provenance. To transform your data into a business asset, it needs to be believed, trusted and shareable. This requires a rethink of how you gather, store, use and share it. This journey starts internally.

Successful implementation of new technology solutions require the technology stack (a bit like a tiramisu, built with layers) to be rebuilt from level one up. Unfortunately, unless you are building a greenfield site, operational processes are typically not well defined. However, most supply chain technologies are bite-sized – which allows them to be incorporated into existing workflows without causing indigestion.

Cloud and edge computing, which involves moving computing power to data centres run by specialists, has reduced the cost of computing infrastructure to power the most advanced software. However, the severe shortage of software engineers is also driving the deployment of the next generation of development tools which include Low-Code and No-Code platforms and AI-supported frameworks. Low-code reduces programming efforts to a minimum, while no-code empowers anyone to create apps without any programming knowledge.

This is the new paradigm. The opportunity to turn each of your employees into a software coder. The most qualified staff creating their own software tools to improve their own operational practices.

Configuring such a complex supply chain is incredibly complex. Once you have modelled the workflows, a supplier changes – leaving the process broken. This requires software that can be used by a novice; applying drag and drop modules, add or remove steps in a process, and tone that can be operated using a smartphone.

Blockchain technology will undoubtably play a critical role in the digital transformation of supply chains. The simple fact is blockchain technology can effectively manage workflow across the entire supply chain and, through its distributed ledger approach, guarantee that data is accurate, transparent and immutable.

Many organisations are looking at Blockchain powered solutions to underpin their operational workflows but there remains a gap between business requirements and the technology. For enterprise blockchain to succeed, there’s a need to hide the complexity of the technology and package it in plug-and-play enterprise software solutions to work seamlessly with legacy systems while also being accessible through a smartphone.

Expanding this concept to your consumers, aka Web 3 (platforms and applications creating a decentralised internet with open standards) will provide the opportunity to create new business models that connect community with corporations by bypassing dominant big data gatekeepers… a more democratic version of today’s internet.

In 2011, Marc Andreessen, founder of Netscape and pioneering VC wrote a thought-provoking blog entitled “Why Software is eating the World.” His prediction was that software companies would disrupt traditional industries – consider Netflix which killed Blockbuster and Amazon which killed the humble bookstore. Today’s companies have to partner with technology disrupters to refresh their business models to survive. If you don’t have a software strategy, you will fail. Adding software to the core strategy, requires a new approach.

The days of your IT manager reporting to Finance when IT maintenance was a cost item rather than a strategic imperative. The responsibility should be with the Chief Information Officer (CIO) whose position needs to be secured on the Board. The CIO needs to reengineer the enterprise through a technology stack integrated into each business operation and drive forward innovation through a technology lens. New technologies, including cloud native applications adopting SaaS business models (pay-as-you-go) allows rapid deployment and testing at minimal costs.

In a dividing world, enterprises require their technology to be agile, flexible and resilient. Legacy systems are not up to the task – having not been designed for a collaborative world. New software formats are designed to connect, within organisations and externally amongst your suppliers and customers. So if your Risk strategy is of conflict and capture, then continue otherwise a collaborative approach to global success requires a different technology strategy.