Digital Transformation Needs for Your Business

You can’t focus on self-actualization before meeting basic needs such as hunger and shelter. And, you shouldn’t pursue transformative IT modernization until your current workload environments are stable and secure.

Just as renowned psychologist Abraham Maslow noticed an order humans follow in terms of motivation and development, so too do organizations have a hierarchy connected to IT needs.

OneNeck Vice President of Advisory Consulting Jeff Budge explained the different phases and outcomes of digital transformation in an eye-opening webinar with 451 Research on data integration, management and governance.

Maslow’s hierarchy of human needs follows this order:

• Physiological Needs
• Safety Needs
• Social Belonging
• Esteem/Status
• Self-actualization

OneNeck’s hierarchy of digital transformation needs follows these steps:

• Stability and Security
• Optimization
• Automation
• Leverage
• Evolve
• Transform

Here’s how these IT needs would appear visualized as a digital transformation pyramid.

Level 1 | Stabilize and Protect

Budge says OneNeck has many customers starting at this point in a digital transformation journey.

“They’re working to mature their application and technology environments,” he explains. “They’re focused on workload stability, disaster recovery and multi-location resilient architecture to make sure applications are available for their users. They’re also working on security, compliance and uptime.”

Level 2 | Optimize

More and more of our customers have moved into this category as they mature and identify ways to get the most out of workloads while ensuring they are optimized for growth and an increase in volume.

“These organizations are looking to optimize application environments,” Budge says. “That could involve examining existing applications and underlying data to understand the best ways for them to operate from a performance perspective.”

We also see organizations pursuing modernization projects that optimize the cost of operations, especially with all the execution venue choices available.

“With so much cloud competition and pricing variation, cost optimization has become a hot topic for the companies we serve,” Budge adds.

Level 3 | Automate

Automation is yet another hot topic that’s driving digital transformation across industries. From an IT perspective, this phase involves taking a combination of applications and their data flows and automating how that information moves and is validated.

“Automation is beneficial for both standard business processes as well as specific IT automation needs such as ensuring backups, recoveries, clones and patches are as automated as possible,” says Budge.

Level 4 | Leverage

Budge says this is the phase that many organizations should be striving to reach. That’s because it means IT is shifting its focus to providing additional business value through application modernization. Budge reminds us that there’s been a resurgence of leverage as companies look to use advanced analytics and data visualization tools in the same way they leveraged business intelligence and decision support tools.

“The application has gathered the data, and you have multiple integrated apps that help create a complete picture of a customer, product or some other portion of the business,” he explains. “Now, you want to get better leverage out of that data using analytics to make better business decisions.”

Level 5 | Evolve

While evolving workloads, IT experts are finding ways to enhance, improve or upgrade the way things work without changing an application’s core functionality. This could include adapting or modifying applications so they can move to the cloud.

Level 6 | Transform

When an organization arrives at the top level of the hierarchy, it is often taking on the role of an innovative leader in the industry and implementing true digital transformations. It involves significant changes to or repurposing of a workload to drive business results with the potential to revolutionize the industry.

Noteworthy examples of this level of digital transformation could include disruptive innovations such as streaming media, ride-sharing and drone delivery, all of which require IT modernization solutions to completely transform.

Time to Level Up? Trust OneNeck

No matter where you may fall in this outline of digital transformation needs, OneNeck has IT solutions to support your strategy and the implementation of IT projects large and small. Whether you need Managed IT Services so your in-house talent can focus on more impactful work, or you want the expert guidance of our Advisory Consulting services, OneNeck is prepared to be a reliable partner in digital transformation. Let us help you embrace change and move your company forward. Contact OneNeck today!

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