JavaOne 2016: What's driving digital transformation?

Features Writer

Looking for a Oracle OpenWorld/JavaOne session schedule on paper? Of course you aren’t. All of us at JavaOne 2016 in San Francisco are accessing conference info on digital devices.

“That’s what is driving digital transformation. Everyone, including all your customers, are using digital devices to get information from your business and access your transaction tools,” said Rahul Gupta, vice president of enterprise applications at Capgemini.

I talked with Gupta about digital transformation projects and the differences between that process and business transformation at the conference-that-ate-downtown-San Francisco.

“Today, the end customer is a digital customer,” Gupta said. “Everybody is socially active, using mobile devices, tweeting. Businesses need to be digitally active to keep the point of touch with the customer.”

In the past year, Gupta has seen a big uptick businesses taking on the challenge of digital transformation projects. In previous years, many businesses took Band-Aid approaches to digitizing systems and processes. They focused on the front office, redesigning user interfaces to improve the user experience for customer using digital devices, Gupta said. Now, more businesses are seeing that digital technology must be implemented on the back end, too.

Digital transformation is not an outside practice or technology that sits on top of business processes, Gupta said. “Digital is the way business is done today.” From sales to running operations to handling customer complaints and on and on, digital technology is the dominant methodology in business processes.

Many who hesitate to start digital transformation projects see it as a costly expense. It’s quite the opposite, said Gupta. “Digital is about bringing agility to your business.” Digitization should not be regarded as a Capex expense. “It is an ongoing revenue-producing process,” he said.

Coming soon, you’ll find more advice about digital transformation in my video interviews with Rahul Gupta on TheServerSide JavaOne news page.