As the world heads towards a digital imperative orientated environment, digital transformation is still a vital cog in the wheel of remaining competitive in a digital led world.
You will understand that digital transformation is often used to express the fact that digital technology is being used by businesses looking to make their day-to-day jobs easier. By doing this, customers are receiving better customer service and better value on their investment. Integrating technology such as AI & data analytics into businesses can help to improve business processes by helping them to increase efficiency to beat the competition in the market.
It goes without saying that end-to-end digital transformation not only improves processes but also leads to better overall experiences for customers. This point of view was backed up at Microsoft Inspire (we wrote a blog on the highlights) whereby the head of Microsoft, Satya Nadella outlined 5 digital imperatives for every business to ‘do more with less’.
1 – Get into the Cloud
If you didn’t already know, cloud computing is often defined as global connectivity through the internet, regardless of where you are or which device you are using. Making the move to the Cloud will improve accessibility and usability between all departments in your business as well as helping to reduce overheads as well as increase efficiency.
You will find that Azure’s packages are typically 80% cheaper than the other competitors in the market, with the ability to make virtualisation management and SQL server much easier enabling your business to have a much smoother transition to the Cloud. You will often hear that Azure is referred to as ‘the world’s computer’ largely due to fantastic localisation capabilities to help ensure that businesses are compliant and have both data residency and service availability. Better still, Azure has many more datacentre regions than other competitors in the market meaning that you can access data much quicker.
2 – Give power to Fusion teams
One of the main features of digital transformation is taking advantage of Fusion teams who can be defined as a team of developers, users and decision makers with varying degrees of knowledge who combine to produce a product for a specific goal or objective.
The great thing about Microsoft is the fact that it is able to build digital products, equipping both pros and amateur developers with applications to match technical skill sets such as low code options like Microsoft Power Pages web builder.
3 – Collate data in one place and apply AI modelling
You will notice that Microsoft has already understood the need for businesses to collate data and apply large scale AI models as platforms. In order to do this, Microsoft through the Intelligent Data Platform allows users to reduce the time spent on both managing and integrating data and focus on other areas where they can add value. As well as this, the platform also provides businesses with digital agility to respond to dynamic environments and enhanced security to build on a trusted platform.
4 – Game changing business processes based on collaboration
It is safe to say that hybrid working is here to stay which means that businesses need to give employees a digital-first experience for connectivity and adaptability. This is where Microsoft Viva built on Dynamics 365 comes to the fold as it enables this through collating communications, learning resources, goal setting and insights into a single employee engagement platform.
As well as this, with the metaverse likely to become a reality in the future, Microsoft has anticipated this by bringing out Mesh for Microsoft Teams which is a mixed reality application allowing people to have presence and shared experiences from any location and from any device.
5 – Get the security in your business right
With more and more businesses digitalising their processes to expand their digital remits, enhanced security and privacy measures are vital. If you didn’t already know, cybersecurity attacks are becoming more complex and are targeting small and medium sized businesses in particular. This is why, Microsoft integrates over 50 security product categories to reduce costs and complexity within security programs.
Next Steps?
By making the move to the Microsoft Cloud, customers will be able to take advantage of the full Microsoft stack of products – allowing you to do it trouble free but to also help you reduce the costs involved of using multiple vendors in their digital transformation journey.
If you are a business that is looking to take your first steps towards a full digital transformation or looking to explore all the cyber security options that we have available at Advantage then please give our IT experts a call today to discuss all the options that are available to you.
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