The UAE cabinet has approved a strategy in which the digital economy will contribute 20 percent to the gross non-oil national economy within the next 10 years. This is a clear recognition of the impact of digitization on the country’s economic and societal progress.
Digital business in the UAE is a reality. It disrupts all industries with new business models, new processes, and new decisions, enabled by next-generation enterprise applications and the simplicity of the cloud, which powers technologies like Artificial Intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT), and Machine Learning, Blockchain etc.
IDC estimates that in 2021 the UAE recorded a massive public cloud services (PCS) uptake with 35.1 percent over 2020 to reach a total value of $956.7 million. Especially, platform-as-a-services (PaaS) and infrastructure-as-a-services (IaaS) witnessed the fastest growth.
The research firm also expects that in 2022, the total spend on the public cloud services in the country is expected to reach $1.2 billion, a year-on-year growth of 28.9 percent. The growth momentum in PaaS and IaaS will continue in 2022 with a massive growth of 42 percent and 37.6 percent, respectively.
These are indicators that many organisations in the UAE have embarked on their digital journeys, thus making a direct or indirect contribution to the nation’s digital economy. Yet, there are several organisations that are waiting on the sidelines to create their individual digital roadmap.
The transformation into a digital business is something that every organisation, no matter what its size, industry, or region, has to go through. It is no longer a question of if. If you want to lead in this new paradigm, then now is the time to start your digital journey.
Common practice vs. best practice
With industry and market leaders regularly challenged by newcomers offering new products and services enabled by new technologies, we need to rethink whether established common practices are truly best practices. When revolutionary new technologies are available, how can business processes optimised with old technology be best?
As more emerging technologies reach commercial availability, today’s best practices may be out of date.
Elements in digital transformation
To really succeed in your digital transformation, our experience shows you need to start by digitising your mission-critical business processes in finance, human resources, and across operations. And you must extend the transformation across the whole enterprise – and beyond – to drive new business value and personalise customer experiences.
Digital transformation is much more than simply plugging in new technology. It requires a strategic approach that addresses three foundational elements.
- Physical: Digital transformation is physical in that it involves employing technology to migrate the business away from manual and toward digitised processes. The transition from paper-based recordkeeping to computerised data collection; the implementation of robotics, AI, and machine learning; and the installation of data sensors that transmit information are all examples of physical transformation.
- Cognitive: Digital transformation is cognitive in that digitalisation, including AI and machine learning, is enabling sophisticated data analysis where machines are doing advanced analysis that resembles thinking. These capabilities are changing the roles of data scientists and analysts and driving the need for expert-level knowledge workers.
- Cultural: Digital transformation is cultural because it involves human beings who are used to acting and reacting in a certain way in their environment (work or home, for example). In the digital world, workers work alongside smart machines. Workers’ roles change to accommodate new technology-enabled processes and capabilities.
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