As businesses look to cope and come out on top of this economic crisis, which comes at a time of a global economic slowdown, experts have repeatedly advised leaders that technology will be one of the key enablers of any remodelling of business functions that they want to implement.

However, India is still in the initial stages of digital transformation despite favourable conditions such as having one of the youngest populations in the world who also happen to be fast adopters of technology, lowest data tariffs and public and private sector push through major projects such as the Aadhaar.

In fact, according to report released by McKinsey & Company post a survey of 600 companies, India is still at 40% of digital transformation adoption. Large companies who can be considered as leaders of technology or digital aggregated a maximum score of 58.2 in a scale where 100 is seen as complete adoption.

But can companies keep to the same pace of adoption during the pandemic outbreak? The simple answer is no which means that digital transformation can no longer be looked as an option but a necessity.

In Conversation:

Business leaders all around the world are currently addressing challenges in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic that require a short-term and long-term initiative strategy to address mission-critical needs while continuing to build resiliency for the future. Risks, inevitable market changes, and a great economic impact from COVID-19 must be included as part of the collective business functions, product, and supply chain planning and design process. As modelling and implementation will vary from sector to sector, leaders will need the help of a platform build with a combination of frontier technologies such as cloud, AI/ML, analytics, and so forth — working in accord with upstream IT systems that not only supports but combines all business functions.

The discussion will look to understand the key challenges of adopting digital transformation and why it can no longer be looked as an option for companies. It will also focus on different facets such as customer experience, industry collaborative cloud or blockchain platforms, networked manufacturing, digital resiliency and the new augmented workforce along with a cognitive platform for different business functions. The panellists, which will include chief information or digital officers from sectors such as pharma, IT/ITes and e-commerce, will not only highlight global trends that can be adopted for local use but also explain the steps they are taking within their own organisation during the pandemic outbreak to be future ready.