Digital Isn't A ‘One-Size-Fits-All'

The waves of Digital have created exciting opportunities for businesses and spurred rapid transformations in business and organizational activities, culture, processes, and IT. But marrying new technology with old is not an easy task as well as changing the mindset. Lingraju Sawkar, General Manager, Global Technology Services, IBM India/South Asia speaks on the digital maturity of businesses, and why it isn’t a OneSize-Fits-All solution. Excerpts.

- Soma Tah Somat

Where do you see indian companies on the digital maturity curve and also in terms of creating and building the true digital core?

That depends on the technology legacy of the organization. Like most parts of the globe, there is a new generation of companies in India as well which do not have the technology legacy or baggage and they can straightaway skip a whole lot of technology. They can just jump-start and get straight into a full-fledged digital world.

But the companies which have been there for a while, jump-starting into the full-fledged digital world is not easy. Hence, they are picking up key projects that make a business impact. Those projects that they pick up are the ones through which they are able to show business benefits and then replace some part of the legacy technology simultaneously that still exists with them. So I think that’s where the dilemma is and different organizations have different strategies based on where they are.

It’s also very difficult to put all Indian customers into one frame, as I noticed even companies from the traditional manufacturing industries have actually taken the leap to appoint the chief digital officer and are driving successful digital initiatives.