A management professional with over 18 years of industry experience, Gagan has excelled in leadership roles at Polycom, TANDBERG - Cisco, Codian, and Avaya Global Connect Ltd.

Digital Transformation is the buzz word in India Inc. irrespective of the sector. Its importance has grown significantly in the last two years to an extent that `Digital Transformation' has become an essential and critical stepping stone for any organisation with long-term business goals for sustenance. Consequently, Digital Transformation is changing the landscape of businesses in India ushering new dynamics to the way transactions are conducted these days with customers at the core of every operation. Currently no organisation can claim to flourish or undertake market expansion by insulating itself against Digital Transformation. According to a research paper published by Tata Communications, six out of ten organisations are digitising their customer journeys in India. The spending on cloud services will be equal to what is spent on traditional IT by 2020 while 50 percent of Fortune 500 companies have an official Chief Digital Officer Role. The paper further revealed that 33 percent of all industry leaders believe that businesses will be disrupted by digitally enabled competitors by 2018. It is not a surprise that 67 percent of them expect Digital Transformation to enable greater value chain integration.

Under these critical circumstances, it is obvious that Indian business have already embarked on the digital transformation journey. In fact, many organisations and startups that have taken shape in the last two years are already digital ready ­ meaning they are on par with international standards. Such companies in music, travel, e-retailing, video and photography have become trailblazers by challenging the traditional businesses in a short span of time. This has prompted the traditional and family-held companies, which were earlier averse to adopt digital innovations to wake up to the sudden trend. The notion that Indian business can still flourish in the absence of digital transformation is being gradually eroded as organisations are realising the value of customer engagement through online platforms. For example, the BFSI sector was quick to adapt to the changing times and effectively implemented digital transformation strategies. Likewise, traditional companies are implementing the `bi-model' strategy ­ retaining their traditional business as well as going digital. It is not that only those organisations with customer interface are realising the value of digital transformation, other B2B organisations and enterprises are leveraging Robotics, Automation, Big Data and Cloud Services to optimise their business goals.

There are other industry-level impacts of digital trans-formation on some sectors and the effects are already being felt at a macro level. Take the instance of online taxi hailing services. The success of Indian as well as international brands in several metros is impacting the car purchasing behaviour and ownership patterns of the consumers. One of the operators has even announced plans to produce battery-operated cars on its own to augment the services. When compared to the car-ownership cost, the expenditure incurred by hailing a cab online appears to be cheaper for a segment of the users. This is just one instance of how digital transformation is disrupting the traditional business models in India where Internet penetration is still poor. Imagine the dividends that businesses can reap if they are digitally ready by the time at least half of India's population has access to a robust and strong Internet service.

As technology continues to disrupt businesses, organisations have placed `Digital Transformation' at the fore-front of their investment spends. Traditional organisations are more than willing to launch digital transformation initiatives spanning multiple sectors as adapting to the latest trends will necessarily realise in better value proposition to businesses as well as their stakeholders.