Digitization is one of the most important business trends of recent years, but how exactly can digital transformation improve your business?

If you’ve been running a business anywhere in the world over the last few years, you’ll have undoubtedly heard multiple references to digital transformation. You may already have begun to digitize aspects of your enterprise.

We are living in the dawn of a new era. Whether you call it Industry 4.0, Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), or Smart Manufacturing, there’s no denying that manufacturing is evolving at a pace never seen before.

With the dawn comes illumination, but not necessarily clarity. The breakneck speed with which companies are figuring out how to collect (and find value in) massive amounts of data, and integrate digital technologies such as industrial robotics, 3D printing, machine learning, OCR, cloud computing, augmented reality, and sensors, can make the Industry 4.0 revolution seem intimidating and enigmatic.

The thing that makes innovation so compelling, and exciting is the possibilities that come with it. Sure, it can be scary to take a leap of faith and try something new, but the simple possibility, even the smallest outside chance that it might work, is what drives many of us to ask, “What if?”

The idea of inanimate objects as intelligent beings has been around for centuries. The ancient Greeks had myths about robots, and Chinese and Egyptian engineers built automatons.  In modern times, the term was first coined in 1956 by American computer scientist and inventor, John McCarthy, at a conference in New Hampshire.

Customer Service Bot a Big Hit at ERP Conference

At our Africa customer conference this year I showed off a new member of the SYSPRO stack, a Bot christened Ken. I highlighted how intuitive the Bot is, using the power of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to have an intelligent, and even anticipatory conversation with the customer.

Recent advances in robotics and machine learning (AI) have happened so quickly that industry observers could be said to be suffering from whiplash as the implications of AI start to be fully realized, even as the technology itself is still maturing.

Today’s IT world has become truly hybrid. Businesses are now needing to manage a blend of on- premise and cloud-based assets, being delivered and supported by a multitude of providers.

Steve Jobs’ original vision was not for static apps, but rather services that could be accessed as needed. This vision is now starting to take shape with PWAs (for all you non-techies...Progressive Web Apps). 

Historically, enterprise software has had a captive audience. Over the past two decades little has been required to engage users. The very existence of a solution was generally enough for businesses to make use of it. This is no longer the case, with users becoming implicitly more savvy to what is and isn’t user friendly. This has mostly been spurred by easy access to things like consumer applications, increasing the level of end user expectation.