Nasscom’s NILF 2015 is always a great place to meetup with the Industry crowd and share insights. This time around, it was a great opportunity to glean insights on the amazing world of Digital.

1. Digital Masters: Powered by mobility, analytics, social media, cloud computing and embedded devices, companies in every industry are mapping their way through the digital universe. However, some firms are far outpacing than the others considering their ability to drive newer value from digital technology. These companies, called Digital Masters, are leading the way in Digital transformation in their industry. They will form the majority of Global 2000 by 2020. They are far ahead in figuring out the building blocks of digital transformation to make it happen.

2. Building blocks of Digital Transformation: Digital masters are transforming 3 key areas of their organization: Customer Experience, Operational Processes & Business Models.

• Transforming Customer Experience comprises of getting in-depth understanding of what makes customers happy and what leads to customer dissatisfaction. Using these understandings, they spawn digital engagement programs, build loyalty programs, and enhance buying experience and customer service experience
• Transforming Operational Processes comprise of digitizing the core operational processes, digitally linking the supply chain processes, empowering employees to make decisions based on analytics.
• Business models: Digital Masters challenge their existing Business Models before someone else does. They use digital technologies to combine excellence in both, operations and customer experience, to weave into a differentiated Business Model.

3. Deploying SMAC technology is not equal to Digital Transformation: Digital Transformation is not about adding technology. If your Facebook page is a copy of your web page OR if your mobile device is just another email device, it is not digital transformation. It’s not about building a mobile app but about engaging better with your customers through your mobile. Unless there is a radical improvement in performance and/or reach of a company, it is not really Digital Transformation. Note that, regardless of their industry, Digital Masters are 26% more profitable than their competition, which is not possible by just adding technology to existing processes and mind-sets. As part of their DNA, Digital Masters invest in digital innovations and build the leadership skills to turn technology into transformation.

4. Key expectations, asks of Customers from technology/services providers: Provide Business-centric solutions and help enterprises to embrace the Digital Transformation. Create proof points and make it easier for customers to embrace Digital Transformation. Create solutions that will take cost out of spending on traditional technologies to enable customers to invest in Digital Transformation.

5. Implications for IT Service providers/Solution providers:

• Weave SMAC technology into their service lines & solutions. Approach client solutions more from a business context and less of a technology context.Providing digital plumbing services is just not enough. Investments in creating digital platforms and business-centric solutions will be key
• Service providers will see decline in annuity revenue and explosion in new service lines
• Organisation structure will look like a 3-in-1 organization where traditional, transformative and disruptive co-exist. Need to shift to more of listening and consultative relationship based selling
• Over the next few years, 50% of talent have to be reskilled to be relevant
• Decoupling of revenue from headcount: While IT industry has added 3 million people for the first $100 billion, it will add less than 1 million people for the next $100 billion