delight customers with better digital application experiences€¦ · delight customers with better...

Delight customers with better digital application experiences


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The digital transformation agenda leads with customer expectations but is underpinned by a solid technology foundation for applications and services. Applications and services must augment and accelerate activities, and be easy to access and individualize. Further, because market demands change quickly, today’s digital applications call for well-defined outcomes presented in a friendly design and delivered with agility, speed and quality in a continuous delivery process. Customers want access to information, analytics and intelligence contextual to the activities they are undertaking — for example, getting approved for a mortgage while reviewing properties in a real estate application.

To do this well, IT must understand processes and data flows in the context of a customer’s journey and create digital services for those journeys based on a modernized digital business platform. The digital business platform makes it possible to turn data into insights and connect all aspects of the value network in real time to track and improve business outcomes.


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The role and contribution of chief information officers (CIOs) is changing. As most

companies are migrating IT infrastructure assets toward consumption-based hybrid

cloud ecosystems, there is an expectation that CIOs drive information insights, security

and customer experience — from the point of first interaction, to fulfillment, to post-

sales. Often this requires digitizing products and services. This can deliver step changes

in productivity by enabling employees to focus more on value-added work and

managing exceptions in automated, intelligent and conversational systems.

Moreover, CIOs no longer hold all the cards. They often must share responsibilities

with chief digital officers and chief marketing officers. And the increasing breadth

of customer journeys means more elements of the customer experience stem from

an ecosystem of providers — systems not owned by the CIO at all. For example,

integrating information flows from various providers depends heavily on having an

open and published set of APIs from the providers.

In addition to facilitating integration, APIs are becoming central to monetization.

For example, say you want to enable people to get approved for a mortgage while

reviewing properties in a real estate application. The real estate application can

leverage a federated identity of the customer and charge the mortgage company a fee

if the customer uses the mortgage service.

This calls for transforming the IT enablement of the business, which will also fall to

CIOs. They will be challenged to mitigate the risk of years of compounded technical

debt and low-quality data to create a solid digital foundation on which to build the

business. A lot of the innovation needed will be fueled by data, from having the right

intelligence to enabling efficient execution. CIOs will establish an information services

platform that includes code, data and the shared services that enable employees and

developers to unlock value in terms of productivity, collaboration and growth.

By 2020, 85% of new operation-based technical positions hires will be screened for analytical and artificial intelligence skills, enabling the development of data-centric digital transformation projects without hiring new data-centric talent.Source: IDC FutureScape: Worldwide IT Industry 2018 Predictions (Doc #US43171317 / Oct 30, 2017)


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Into this environment, CIOs must deploy emerging technologies that help differentiate

their companies’ products and customer experiences. They are constantly evaluating

technologies such as machine learning (ML), artificial intelligence (AI), the internet of

things (IoT), big data, blockchain, augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR) and even

3D printing. Scaling beyond pilots depends on agile business and development practices,

agile and continuous delivery approaches, and deployment of enabling technologies,

including hybrid cloud, edge computing, containers and serverless computing.

The bottom line: The sheer volume of business and technological change presented

to the CIO means that the technology estate must constantly evolve.1 It must now be

designed for constant and scalable evolution. That’s what enterprise-scale agility is,

and it is essential for being digital.

Exceed customer expectations

Organizations want each application to run in an environment that is both economical

and optimized. Organizations that evolve constantly eliminate friction by building

their business and IT capabilities to have few interdependencies. And when they

add digitally enabled business capabilities, they do so in a way that removes

interdependencies. This reengineering requires a significant change in the underlying

design and management of technology platforms.

In particular, it requires visibility, coordination, security, intelligence, orchestration

and automation. We want to continuously analyze the organization’s and business

network’s data exhaust by using ML/AI to gain critical insights into business processes,

and we want to publish software in a variety of engaging formats, including web,

mobile and AR/VR. Finally, we want to democratize application development,

providing technically adept people outside of IT with the ability to pull data from

a multitude of sources and write or adapt business rules to improve personal and

process productivity (citizen development). At the same time, the prioritization of

business outcomes reinforces the partnership IT must have with the business owners.

This sounds like a tall order, but there is a clear path forward that calls for building digital

services based on a modernized digital business platform, extended by a set of loosely

coupled, cloud-enabled and software as a service (SaaS)-based business applications.

Then, continuous insights for course corrections and decision making can be delivered by

big data analytics applications built on top of an elastic, resilient data platform.


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For artificial intelligence (AI) to be useful, it must be customized to your specific business context. The scarcest resource in AI today is talent — people who can apply AI to reshape the enterprise for better outcomes. Your vision of intelligent applications should be uniquely yours and specific to your organization, strategy and existing technologies.

The rise of intelligent applications

When building intelligent applications, remember that the nature

of applying AI is experimental. You won’t know ahead of time which

technologies and applications will be the most useful. Avoid biting off

large AI projects all at once. Instead, run small experiments that make it

easy for you to recover from mistakes. Create a portfolio of hypotheses

about where you think AI might make a real difference. Test those

hypotheses using small experiments. Learn and adjust as you go.

AI can mean competitive advantage beyond pure productivity

enhancements. It doesn’t make sense to wait until your entire company

has mastered more basic analytics before taking on AI. Some areas of

your business may be ripe for AI today. Identify those areas and make

them as smart as possible as quickly as possible — before your competitor

uses AI to get ahead of you.

The elements of an AI application

Get Good at AI



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Understand your end state and information flows

The concept of the application has changed over time from a static, monolithic,

installable entity to a dynamic, event-driven entity that changes based on the context

of the business. Due to this paradigm shift, it has become increasingly more difficult

to track, and have full knowledge of, the flow of all information in the business.

So the journey to digital services begins with understanding where you are and where

you need to go. A new generation of diagnostics is available to help with this process,

which leads to the classification of each application’s role in the enterprise’s value

streams. You need to be able to identify which applications support which business

capabilities and are appropriate for which platforms.

The enterprise also needs to understand the flow of information between systems,

between individuals, and between systems and individuals. Information flows

are now becoming information markets within firms, between firms and among

business ecosystems.

If you don’t understand these information flows in the context of a customer’s journey

and the business ecosystem, you’re stuck on a hamster wheel, delivering the next

app and the following app because you’re meeting everyone’s information needs on a

one-for-one basis. What you really want is to compose applications from a portfolio

of available digital services, reusing services and connecting data to yield the desired

information flows and outcomes.

Leverage a digital business platform as the foundation for digital applications

To do this, you need a digital business platform. A digital business platform provides

the agility to build and support the dynamic nature of modern applications.

A digital business platform is based on three pillars: intelligence, orchestration and

automation. (See Figure 1.) It is a primary driver of business transformation, as it

will help turn data into insights for making informed business decisions. It gives

companies the opportunity to bring together business process execution with

analytics applications to enable a smarter, faster, more streamlined enterprise.

Cleans and transforms data to derive insights using machine learning

Deploys standardized offerings, tools and processes

Automates to enable cost reduction, productivity, availability, reliability and performance

Figure 1. Three pillars of a digital business platform

By 2021, 90% of organizations will be incorporating cognitive/AI and machine learning into new enterprise apps.Source: IDC FutureScape: Worldwide Developer and DevOps 2018 Predictions (Doc #US42652317 / Oct 31, 2017)


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Execute the plan in three phases

Companies are taking a three-phased approach to implementing a digital

business platform.

Phase 1: Become a high-performing software delivery and operations

organization through agile and DevOps practices.

In the first phase, companies are adopting continuous delivery and improvement

programs that enable them to increase velocity while also becoming high-performing

organizations. Many have termed these programs DevOps, reflecting the shift in

the way development and operations teams work together to deliver and manage

systems for the business.

The latest generation of modern digital platforms connects firms with their business ecosystems and is becoming

intelligent, distributed and autonomous. These platforms enable the three value disciplines2 of customer intimacy,

product leadership and operational excellence, and reduce operational trade-offs between them — meaning that it is

now possible to excel in the three value disciplines simultaneously instead of leading in just one of them.

Today’s digital platforms:

• Are composed of software layers

that gather and synthesize large

volumes of data to make digital

services available and accessible on

different devices with superior user

experiences

• Provide economies of scale and

scope of data, within and sometimes

across organizations

• Simplify the complex interactions of

new and legacy systems and allow

them to evolve, enabling high levels

of innovation at a low total cost of

ownership

• Make it easier to define and enforce

rules about the way work gets done

and help coordinate activities

This new class of autonomous platforms is also self-configuring and self-healing, reducing the interruptions to data flows,

and uses machine learning to adapt internal workflows and external services to the personal experience of customers.

Leading Edge Forum (LEF) is DXC Technology’s independent cross-industry think tank.

LEF Persepective

Digital platforms reduce trade-offs between the value disciplines



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Becoming a high-performing software delivery and operations organization involves

both technology and people. If we take the technology as a given, the big challenge

is to change how work gets done and align the culture toward continuous delivery of

software products. Agile and DevOps practices make collaborative work the norm,

while the organization strives for continuously improving quality and more frequent

code releases to improve time to market and lower the risk of potential failures after

change. (See Figure 2.)

Operations personnel, through DevOps-enabled teams, develop a broader set of

skills that includes programming and an understanding of monitoring events of

the various layers of the runtime environment. This facilitates faster mean time

to repair and higher degrees of automation to reduce change failure rates.

Figure 2. The value of DevOps — achieving excellence in software delivery and operational performance

Source: Dr. Nicole Forsgren, Jez Humble and Gene Kim, “Accelerate: 2018 State of DevOps: Strategies for a New Economy,” DevOps Research & Assessment (DORA), p.15, https://cloudplatformonline.com/2018-state-of-devops.html

https://cloudplatformonline.com/2018-state-of-devops.html

https://cloudplatformonline.com/2018-state-of-devops.html


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The culture needs to support these practices for them to be effective. To ensure a

supportive culture, create a value stream map of the way work is being accomplished

today, identify latency, remove bottlenecks and constraints, and adopt a more agile

approach to delivering incremental solutions. This includes shifting from biannual “big

bang” releases to feature set-focused weekly or even daily releases, from waterfall

thinking to agile business product thinking, and from regimentation to experimentation.

Phase 2: Deconstruct the monolith.

Core business systems such as enterprise resource planning (ERP), supply chain

management (SCM), product life-cycle management (PLM) and customer relationship

management (CRM) are critical to the success of the business. However, the inflexible,

monolithic nature of these apps limits the organization’s ability to digitize experiences

to enable agility, speed and innovation. To be more responsive and provide improved

experiences, organizations need to gradually modernize and deconstruct the

monolith and its tightly coupled applications:

• Specific functionality enabled by applications such as sales, marketing,

manufacturing, logistics, human capital management, supply chain planning and

e-commerce can be gradually broken off and moved to their SaaS counterparts.

• Over time, move to cloud-native, loosely coupled applications. A lot of custom

code in packaged applications contains logic that can be transitioned into easy-

to-modify business rule frameworks, while microservices can extend complex and

differentiating business logic on top of standard business information flows of SaaS

applications.

For example, a manufacturing company might want to decouple its custom

Configure, Price, Quote (CPQ) application from the ERP system. Typical CPQ

applications might have hundreds of custom-coded rules. This business logic can

be migrated as business rules into the SaaS-based CPQ. Then, complex algorithmic

logic can be refactored as microservices on top of the SaaS CPQ application using

a rapid development environment. This enables employees to continuously improve

business rules rather than having to request changes to custom-coded rules.


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Looking ahead, coding and changes to complex logic will take into account insights

gleaned from user data as well as ecosystem data to discern new rules or constraints,

autogenerate business logic and amend decision streams. Instead of asking people

for business requirements and having important decision data potentially lost in

translation, systems will be able to take advantage of the reinforced learning from

ML/AI to automate these developments, with business outcomes the ultimate referee.

Phase 3: Become a digital business platform business.

In this last phase, companies create a digital business platform in which most

business processes are designed from an outside-in or customer journey perspective

and may include many business partners. Resulting transactional data is

continuously offloaded into a data lake, where ML/AI technologies can begin to

discern patterns and create business rules.

ERP apps have moved to the cloud by now, and the migration of line-of-business

apps to SaaS is complete. Innovative, outside-in, customer journey-enabling, cloud-

native custom applications and extensions are being built with microservices that

marry analytics and transactional processing. An agile platform for sense-and-

respond, event-driven applications has been built.

The digital business platform enables the company to become truly data- and event-

driven, essential for innovation and survival in a digital world. Organizations can

analyze performance data using ML/AI to evaluate the event-to-outcome trajectories

and how applications (and by extension, the business) are operating.3 In this way,

they can identify and eliminate latencies, misunderstandings, bottlenecks and

disruptions, and can also automate customer services while devising effective go-to-

market, differentiating, application-enabled services.

For example, by starting with the data and applying analytics and AI, lean processes

and automation, DXC Technology has achieved significant application delivery

results, including: 71 percent of incidents auto-resolved or auto-diagnosed without

human intervention, a 25 percent reduction in application testing costs, and a 65

percent reduction in business process transaction time with assisted robotic process

automation (RPA). Faster, smoother application delivery that minimizes costs and

downtime means happier customers, accelerated digital transformation, and freed-

up funds for investment in further transformation activities.

Platform fundamentals

The fundamentals that support the digital business platform’s three pillars —

intelligence, orchestration and automation — are:

1. Microservices: Microservices focus on doing one thing well and are contextual

to specific business domains, enabling integration and facilitating rapid delivery

of new capabilities (for greenfield applications) as well as modernization (for

brownfield applications). And, because they are loosely coupled, microservices

better enable continuous delivery activities.

2. Agile development: Efficiencies can be gained by using agile and rapid

development that employs iterative and incremental steps and offers improved

collaboration and continuous feedback.

3. Big data and IoT repositories: Leveraging IoT is all about gaining operational

and product insights from sensor data but requires intelligence at the edge to

process the massive flow of streaming events, as well as purposeful centralization


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If you think augmented reality and virtual

reality (AR, VR) are just for gamers, think again.

Augmented reality is already playing an important

role in the digitization of manufacturing facilities.

Looking ahead, AR applications will soon extend to

insurance, healthcare, banking and other industries.

Vendors today are already delivering enterprise-

class smart glasses with wireless technology, high-

definition (HD) displays, voice- and gesture-activated

controls, HD cameras and integrated sensors. In

other words, AR enables workers to be hands-free

and plugged in at the same time.

That’s important on the factory floor. AR enables

technicians to inspect machinery and connect with

remote experts to get help in fixing a broken part.

Using AR to provide instructions has also reduced

error rates in manufacturing assembly tasks.

But we can easily envision how AR could be useful

beyond the factory floor. For example, insurance

adjusters at the site of a natural disaster could

use AR to more easily assess property damage,

guided by an expert network of senior assessors. In

healthcare, doctors could share X-ray or computed

tomography (CT) images with remote experts, and

the entire process can be shared in real time with

colleagues or students. In banking, AR can help

tellers with minimal knowledge of IT equipment solve

computer-related issues at branches that don’t have

onsite IT personnel.

The possibilities are endless. It’s incumbent on IT

organizations to take the lead role in extending

traditional business applications to the AR

environment as part of the broader effort to deliver

new digital experiences that boost productivity and

engagement.

Reality check on augmented reality


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of information. Data needs to be ingested, tagged and aggregated for use in

streaming, predictive and preventive analytics insights that can enhance the

decision support and “intelligence” of applications.

4. Application programming interfaces (APIs): Business ecosystems are defined

by the relationships among the participants, and information exchange brings the

ecosystem to life. APIs provide the common interfaces and formats. Ecosystems

based on APIs allow applications built on top of a digital business platform to

extend their reach by leveraging internal and external data in an agile manner.

5. Easy-to-use intelligent automation: The platform will provide an easy-to-use ML/

AI foundation that will not be limited to IT. Democratization means that employees

everywhere can access the functions and data they need to write new application

logic as descriptive business rules and to use ML/AI algorithmic services that

improve their productivity.

6. Virtualization, containers and platform as a service (PaaS): These make it

easier to create loosely coupled components for application composition and

reuse, and for simplifying the implementation of key nonfunctional requirements of

digital applications such as security, resilience and availability.

Over time, the digital business platform will evolve from human-derived rules to

machine-derived rules, and its purpose will be to make data available and publish it

(rather than process it). Consumption will be driven by serverless architecture and

multimedia interfaces. And the platform will be in constant evolution.

The use of containers as a deployment vehicle for applications will continue to grow quickly; by 2021, over 95% of new microservices will be deployed in containers, but under 20% of enterprise containers will house microservices. Source: IDC FutureScape: Worldwide Developer and DevOps 2018 Predictions (Doc #US42652317 / Oct 31, 2017)


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Applications drive the experience for the business ecosystem

Transforming to a digital enterprise is a complex and ongoing process aimed at

allowing companies to move faster, make changes more rapidly for their customers

and respond more quickly to market shifts. This can’t be done with current monolithic,

transactional applications.

Organizations are looking to deconstruct those monolithic applications, move specific

functions to SaaS, add business logic to SaaS applications, and then take the leap

to the cloud-native world of custom code, experimentation, continuous delivery,

serverless computing, containers, ML and AI, edge computing and IoT. This new style

of execution must be based on automation and the democratization of application

development to establish continuous learning and improvement in a shared-

ownership construct.

In a broader sense, IT organizations must shift from being service centers or cost

centers to being full-fledged partners with the business. With DevOps and agile

methodologies, developers focus on delivering business value as they respond to

a continuous stream of new requirements coming from the business. Applications

operate and transform existing business models, and even help to drive new business

models. This, in turn, provides continually new experiences for customers, partners

and employees, raising the bar again and again.

Applications operate and transform existing business models, and even help to drive new business models. This, in turn, provides continually new experiences for customers, partners and employees, raising the bar again and again.


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How DXC and its partners can helpDXC Technology knows that every digital enterprise

applications project is unique. Each organization faces its

own blend of industry forces, customer requirements, budget

pressures and technology platforms. As a result, canned

solutions won’t do. That’s why DXC offers client engagements

using proven offerings that have been tailored to clients’

specific needs.

Next-generation managed services are key to how DXC

helps clients. These services, including service integration

and management, and API management, provide essential

help to managers of digital applications. Similarly, DXC’s

enterprise application modernization and transformation

services simplify business processes and accelerate

migrations of monolithic applications to SaaS and cloud-

native architectures to maximize savings, extend the lives of

mission-critical applications and revitalize an organization’s

application portfolio for faster time to market.

Learn more at

• dxc.technology/applications

• dxc.technology/ enterprise_and_cloud_apps

We offer full digital application life-cycle management

support, from application design through runtime, and use

the DXC BionixTM digital-generation services delivery model

to provide intelligent automation at scale. Bionix combines

analytics and automation to modernize traditional delivery

models and accelerate digital transformation. Underpinning

Bionix is Platform DXC, a digital-generation platform for

delivering and managing IT services that are high quality and

repeatable.

DXC delivers industry-leading solutions by working with

our powerful network of partners. Together, we help clients

create modern enterprise applications suited to their unique

needs. Our partners deliver a wide range of valuable skills

and industry expertise. They also have extensive experience

delivering effective solutions with nearly every technology and

industry.

To complement partner offerings, DXC also provides in-depth

consulting services. DXC’s highly experienced consultants

help our clients meet their needs for creating modern digital

applications. Whether you need help with planning, innovation

or transition, security or operational management on any

platform, DXC is ready and able to assist.

Now is the time to act. Don’t be disrupted — be the disruptor.

Let us help you innovate and transform to differentiate with

speed and quality. That’s DXC. That’s Digital Delivered.

http://www.dxc.technology/applications

http://www.dxc.technology/enterprise_and_cloud_apps

http://www.dxc.technology/enterprise_and_cloud_apps


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Chris Nøkkentved is the chief technology officer for Enterprise

and Cloud Applications at DXC Technology, where he focuses

on delivering value and innovation through business process

and systems integration services. Previously, as global chief

technologist for Enterprise Applications at HPE Enterprise

Services, Chris was responsible for internal and partner-driven

innovation with hardware, software and services, which led

to differentiating, full-stack, transformative offerings. Chris

has over 25 years of experience in enterprise applications

development and operation services.

Troy Richardson, DXC Technology’s senior vice president

and general manager of Enterprise and Cloud Apps offerings,

focuses on alliance-driven enterprise solutions and next-

generation cloud applications, as well as cloud-native

applications. Previously, Troy served as CSC’s general

manager, head of Global Sales, where he led all aspects of

sales, including operations and strategic alliances. Prior to

that, he held senior sales positions at Oracle, SAP, HP and IBM.

Contributors Bill Murray, senior researcher and advisor, Leading Edge Forum

Jerry Overton, data scientist and industrialized AI lead, DXC Technology, and DXC Fellow

About the authors

1. Chris Nokkentved, “How a digital core enables digital transformation in industries,” DXC Blogs, March 30, 2018, https://blogs.dxc.technology/2018/03/30/how-a-digital-core-enables-digital-transformation-in-industries/

2. Michael Treacy and Fred Wiersema, The Discipline of Market Leaders (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, 1995).

3. Digital Business Models, http://www.dxc.technology/manufacturing/offerings/140221/140225-digital_business_models

4. DXC Technology Unveils DXC Bionix™ to Provide Automated IT Services at Scale, http://www.dxc.technology/newsroom/press_releases/144214-dxc_technology_unveils_dxc_bionix_to_provide_automated_it_services_at_scale

https://blogs.dxc.technology/2018/03/30/how-a-digital-core-enables-digital-transformation-in-industries/

https://blogs.dxc.technology/2018/03/30/how-a-digital-core-enables-digital-transformation-in-industries/

http://www.dxc.technology/manufacturing/offerings/140221/140225-digital_business_models

http://www.dxc.technology/manufacturing/offerings/140221/140225-digital_business_models

http://www.dxc.technology/newsroom/press_releases/144214-dxc_technology_unveils_dxc_bionix_to_provide_automated_it_services_at_scale



© Copyright 2019 DXC Technology Companywww.dxc.technology

dxc.technology/digitaldirections

As the world’s leading independent, end-to-end IT services company, DXC Technology (NYSE: DXC) leads digital transformations for clients by modernizing and integrating their mainstream IT, and by deploying digital solutions at scale to produce better business outcomes. The company’s technology independence, global talent, and extensive partner network enable 6,000 private and public-sector clients in 70 countries to thrive on change. DXC is a recognized leader in corporate responsibility. For more information, visit dxc.technology and explore THRIVE, DXC’s digital destination for changemakers and innovators.

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www.dxc.technology/digitaldirections

http://www.dxc.technology/

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