Accelerating Digital Transformation to Capitalize on the Next Data Decade

Living and working in a digital world means we all expect our experiences, through applications and services, to run seamlessly and intelligently. We’ve come to expect the possible, where we’re engaging in well-designed experiences that are highly informed and relevant. For IT organizations, we’re on point to help drive these experiences, including making the relevant data available in the appropriate context. This will be one of the biggest opportunities for digital transformation.

In the last several years, we’ve gathered data at an unprecedented rate, and there isn’t a slowdown in sight. We also have both the storage and compute power to take advantage of this data to bring compelling experiences to life. Our IT teams are adopting modern processes and taking advantage of cloud-based infrastructure, coupled with enabling the data science, machine learning, and AI capabilities that are showing up in our environments at scale. The key for us has been to do all these things in parallel to be able to use our data assets to generate insights in real-time and take these results into our transactional systems.

While this is happening, we’re still balancing the delivery of new capabilities with modernizing and streamlining legacy portfolios and incorporating security into everything we do. Transforming our IT processes and operations is necessary to create the capacity for our teams to focus on the issues, innovations and insights that matter.

IT the Dell Digital Way

To do this, our IT leaders must continue to drive – operational excellence, new business processes and capabilities, and take advantage of new technologies. At Dell Technologies, our IT teams work in the Dell Digital Way – a people, process, and technology-based approach that leverages technology to shift how we partner with other business functions using direct, simplified and streamlined methods. With a focus on the process and engagement, we can quickly design, develop, iterate and deliver new solutions and capabilities.

People

We are investing in design and design thinking, together with the technical and process skills in a multi-cloud, continuous delivery construct. We take a product-oriented approach to deliver experiences that accelerate our transformation – challenging the status quo and questioning the norm to make sure we apply resources to the highest priority item at the right time.

Process

We are moving DevOps and design to the forefront of IT to more quickly adapt and to meet our internal business partners’ needs. We are transforming our IT processes to eliminate waste and digitally transform ourselves. Our focus on design ensures that we’re building the right solutions and solving the right problems. Altogether, the Dell Digital Way has helped improve our team member experiences and deliver better quality business outcomes faster. Here’s a video of how some of our internal business function teams have worked with us in the Dell Digital Way to innovate and transform.

Technology

We leverage Dell Technologies’ products to improve experiences and reduce operating costs. VMware Workspace ONE lets us work on any device from anywhere. Pivotal Cloud Foundry is our platform for modernizing to the cloud for our IT practitioners. And of course, our hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) underpins our implementation of Dell Technologies Cloud Platform to deliver applications and data the right way – whether in a private cloud that is fully under our control, or as a public cloud that provides resources as and when we need them. When we leverage the design, engineering and validation of our product teams, it’s a game changer for our operations teams.

Doing Business in the Next Data Decade

We see our greatest opportunities working side by side with our business partners. We’re leveraging the data we have today to create the insights and actions that will drive compelling experiences for both employees and customers. Using data science to understand key influences and using machine learning to predict next best actions and identify patterns are powerful capabilities we’re incorporating into our transactional systems. We have nearly 1,000 active data science/machine learning efforts going on today across the company, and I think we’re just scratching the surface on what’s possible.

Summary

Looking ahead, I expect we’ll see more reasoning applications emerge that will not only predict what we’ll do based on the past but guide us to more data-driven insights to achieve our goals. I’m quite optimistic about the opportunities ahead for us.

What advanced technologies is your organization leveraging to accelerate digital transformation to capitalize on the next data decade?


For more on our vision for the next data decade, please join the Dell Technologies Summit livestream on November 12, 2019, at 9:00 AM CST.

About the Author: Jen Felch

As Chief Digital Officer and CIO, Jen Felch drives the strategy, direction and delivery for Dell Digital (Dell’s IT organization) while leading the transformation and adoption of digital technologies across Dell. Jen’s position combines the traditional roles and responsibilities of a CIO, along with the emerging role of change agent for digital transformation. She leads the organization in the Dell Digital Way – a simplified and innovative approach to quickly introducing new products and capabilities that provide Dell with an unrivaled competitive edge. Most recently, Jen was a senior vice president in the Office of the CIO, leading corporate supply chain, IT strategy and business operations. Prior to that role, Jen dramatically improved the order experience for businesses throughout Dell and held several global business architecture, supply chain and factory operations roles. Before joining Dell, she held a variety of engineering and leadership roles at Boeing, Parametric Technology Corporation (PTC), and successful software startups. Jen has a Bachelor's and Master's degree in Mechanical Engineering from MIT and is an alumnus of the Leaders for Global Operations Program at MIT, where she earned her MBA and an MS in Computer Science.