Digital transformation is the process of using digital technologies to create new — or modify existing — business processes, culture, and customer experiences to meet changing business and market requirements.

It’s easy to get caught up in the newspaper headlines and online media negativity around the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) displacing human jobs across all industries. After all, the potential impact, particularly on repetitive processes and manual tasks, is all too real.

Imagine for a second that there's a really important decision to be made based on heaps of data. Who do you trust will do a better job of dissecting that data and making a decision: humans or artificial intelligence (AI)?

Artificial intelligence is transforming all sectors of the economy, but there’s no reason to fear that robots will replace all human employees. In fact, companies that automate their operations mainly to cut their workforces will see only short-term productivity gains, say the authors. Their research, involving 1,500 firms in a range of industries, shows that the biggest performance improvements come when humans and smart machines work together, enhancing each other’s strengths.

Cognitive technologies are increasingly being used to solve business problems; indeed, many executives believe that AI will substantially transform their companies within three years. But many of the most ambitious AI projects encounter setbacks or fail.

Today markets are being reshaped by a new kind of firm—one in which artificial intelligence runs the show. This cohort includes giants like Google, Facebook, and Alibaba, and growing businesses such as Wayfair and Ocado. Every time we use their services, the same thing happens: Rather than relying on processes run by employees, the value we get is delivered by algorithms. Software is at the core of the enterprise, and humans are moved off to the side.

Artificial intelligence has disrupted every area of our lives — from the curated shopping experiences we’ve come to expect from companies like Amazon and Alibaba to the personalized recommendations that channels like YouTube and Netflix use to market their latest content. But, when it comes to the workplace, in many ways, AI is still in its infancy.

The past decade has brought tremendous advances in an exciting dimension of artificial intelligence—machine learning. This technique for taking data inputs and turning them into predictions has enabled tech giants such as Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google to dramatically improve their products. It has also spurred start-ups to launch new products and platforms, sometimes even in competition with Big Tech.

Supply chain systems are changing. Blockchain is creating new opportunities for companies to gain visibility into their supply chains, and that’s going to affect how companies think about their ERP systems.

An Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system is a software used by organizations to manage their business activities such as accounting, procurement, project management, risk management and compliance, and supply chain operations.

Early adopters are already using blockchain-inspired approaches in certain HR areas. These use cases offer HR leaders a glimpse of what’s to come.

With unemployment numbers at record highs, millions of people around the world are embarking on the daunting task of job hunting – which is even more challenging for both candidates and recruiters in today’s world of remote work.

The technology most likely to change the next decade of business is not the social web, big data, the cloud, robotics, or even artificial intelligence. It’s the blockchain, the technology behind digital currencies like Bitcoin.

The technology most likely to change the next decade of business is not the social web, big data, the cloud, robotics, or even artificial intelligence. It’s the blockchain...

The most significant transformation opportunity in managing supply chains will be the ability to know the past, present, and future of every asset across the entire supply chain

Traditional supply chains face challenges at every step. Deliveries are vulnerable to delays, theft and spoilage, and issues are not always apparent until goods arrive at their destination (or fail to). With entire shipments routinely at stake, the logistics industry has long needed a smart, modern solution.

The Internet of Things (IoT) will impact virtually all industries but none more so than manufacturing. In fact, IoT—with its potential to transform traditionally linear systems into dynamic and interconnected ones—may be the biggest driver of change in factories and other facilities.

Smart, connected devices have already had a huge affect on people, culture and the workplace. However, we haven't even begun to see the disruptive potential of IoT innovation.

As economies are opening up and people are going back to their traditional work environments, employee safety and health is paramount.

Can we change our corporate cultures and the ways we train and reward our people as rapidly as new technology is changing the work we do, the products we make and how we engage with customers?

Internet of Things (IoT) technology holds incredible promise for transforming the enterprise, but one of the biggest hurdles for companies implementing IoT will be extracting insight from the incredible volumes of fast-moving data these systems produce and integrating that resulting intelligence into business processes in real time.

In response to stay-at-home orders around the globe, organizations had to adapt at pace to move customer interactions solely online.

Over 70% of CX leaders struggle to design projects that increase customer loyalty and achieve results. This is especially troubling, considering that the report also indicated that CX drives over two-thirds of customer loyalty, outperforming price and brand combined.

Today’s customer journeys are much more complex with multiple lines zigzagging about to move customers from discovery to the final purchase. And even after the purchase, their journey is still continuing.

Field service hasn’t been immune to the COVID-19 pandemic. Many on-site service jobs were canceled or deferred for months due to safety mandates, travel restrictions, and customer concerns. As a result, some field service organizations have had to halt operations and reduce resources.

As companies try to adapt to the new reality, we expect to see strong enterprise COOs play an increasingly prominent role. In our ongoing dialogue with forward-thinking supply chain organizations, leadership teams have consistently expressed interest in elevating the function to become a true strategic partner to the enterprise.

Logistics management today involves not just your transportation management system (TMS), but also many other internal systems and external websites in your logistics ecosystem.

The COVID-19 crisis has put the spotlight on supply chains like never before, and the average shopper now realizes that the lack of their favorite product at the local drugstore is a result of breakdowns across an intricate global network.

The next journey for HR leaders will be to apply a consumer and a digital lens to the HR function creating an employee experience that mirrors their best customer experience.

‍Onboarding has always played a key role in helping employees make a successful transition to your organization. The COVID-19 pandemic raises concerns that many HR organizations have never dealt with before, whether it’s remotely onboarding newly hired employees or employees returning to the office after months of remote work.

A recent global survey on which I collaborated with Oracle suggests that HR is right up there with the most analytical functions in business — and even a bit ahead of a quantitatively-oriented function like Finance.

There are two realities for today’s human resources (HR) departments: In the first, HR is on the cusp of major change, adopting technologies that automate tedious systems and transform how employees are managed. In the second, HR is still mired in administrative tasks and paper applications, preventing HR professionals from becoming strategic and stalling the shift to modern HR.

Human Resource departments had a difficult job prior to the pandemic. In 2019, more than 50% of HR leaders struggled to ensure that employees had the skills necessary to navigate an increasingly digitized workplace. But, admittedly, this “future of work” had always seemed a safe distance ahead — far enough, at least, to thoughtfully prepare for.

To stay relevant and attract top talent, many companies have developed recruitment marketing programs to build their brand beyond the services and products they offer. Recruitment marketing is a combination of outbound reach out to marketing channels and inbound accessibility, both of which offer a view into how a company operates. Channel effectiveness depends on the industry, but as applicants become more technology-savvy, it also requires a combination of finesse and the right tools.

Forward-thinking organizations have leveraged digital transformation for decades with a single goal in mind: respond quickly and efficiently to change.

Enterprise resource planning (ERP) platforms are arguably the most important applications in a company’s data center. The core modules range from financial and order management systems to supply chain planning and human resource management. In short, if the ERP platform goes down, orders can’t be booked, invoices can’t be paid, and business grinds to a halt. This high-risk proposition helps explain why enterprises need a compelling reason and an airtight business case before upgrading their ERP system and incorporating the project in a digital transformation strategy.

Business transformation is a battle fought on many fronts, and one of the most important is the modernization of core business processes. By optimizing enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, for example, enterprises can unlock new insights from business data for better decision making and to identify new market opportunities.

With the business landscape under constant and rapid change, companies need a stronger focus on the connection between business strategy and workforce strategy. Business leaders must constantly reevaluate their talent to ensure they have the skills needed for an ever evolving environment.

Organize information about people or things for use in software.

As difficult as these times are, imagine experiencing the pandemic without reliable on-demand internet network bandwidth and data storage. At Western Digital, one of the world’s largest data storage infrastructure companies, we worry about solving those challenges, so you don’t have to.

For the 4th year in a row, Gartner has named Oracle ERP Cloud a Leader in its Magic Quadrant for Cloud Core Financial Management Suites for Midsize, Large and Global Enterprises. We’re thrilled to make this report available to our readers with our compliments.

We call it work from home, remote, or virtual—all describing employees working physically outside the company’s offices. Not every profession qualifies for this privilege, but all signs point to more people working at home more often or permanently after COVID-19 restrictions are lifted.