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Key features of digital documents

Key features of digital documents

May 18, 2022 | Digital Cloud Spaces, Digital Data Fabric, Digital Documents, Digital Ecosystem, Digital Transformation

Businessman using digital documents on laptop concept

What are digital documents?

Digital businesses capture, communicate, process, manage and store information with digital documents.  

Digital documents are a great way to create easily distributed content to amplify your sales pitch, make presentations more persuasive, leverage data through analytics, streamline business processes, track things with IoT, and even take your business into the metaverse. 

Encanvas Digital Document Canvases (we call them canvases for short) take documents forward into the new era of digital business. Like their hardcopy counterparts, digital documents are versatile. Use Encanvas digital document software to:

  • Promote offers, products and services with high-impact digital rich media content like eBooks, published for use on website, mobile, desktop, digital whiteboard and digital billboard platforms. Combine video content with graphics, images, transitions, eye-popping fonts, and hover over effects to produce communications that stand out.
  • Educate your stakeholder audience with distance learning courses that make your business the authority in its subject and draw crowds to your website. Use analytics to track delegate progress through lessons and courses.
  • Automate business processes using the latest HyperAutomation and Digital GlueWare built into digital document cloud architectures.
  • Present ideas and data using charts, graphics, dashboards, visualizations, maps and more to build persuasive presentations.
  • Morph from and to hardcopy for the best of both worlds. It’s easy to convert digital documents into print and vice versa.
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DIGITAL DOCUMENTS REMASTERED

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Micro-Portals • Forms • Reports • Training Dashboards • Charts • Maps • Tables Checklists • Onboarding • Risk Registers • Presentations • eBooks

Create an unparalleled customer experience with added personalization 

Customer Experience today is a competitive game-changer. Having the means to bring maximum value to your buying audience by personalizing experiences to a much greater degree makes all the difference.

For decades, documents have been used to bring clarity and context to information, to bridge between organizations, and the processes that drive them. This added layer of digital flexibility is all important in the agile world of digital business.

It’s what Gartner describes as content ‘composability’ and it’s what increasingly makes the difference between digital leaders and laggards. 

”Incorporating composability into digital business enables the enterprise or public agency to change and grow despite persistent uncertainty. Instead of avoiding the risk of change, executive leaders must reinvent their thinking to see change as a well-trusted tool for business resilience and growth.”—Gartner,2021 

Key features of digital documents 

Digital documents increase data literacy and shift the conversation away from tools and technology and toward decision-making as a business competency.

Encanvas digit document canvases combine composable data with software bots, edge data processing analytics, and graph technology to create personalized content and data experiences that generate business value in new ways.

Customer experience personalization

Whether it’s about tailoring digital brochures to suit customers, or creating business processes shaped to what differs you from competitors, digital documents can be used to shape your offerings and how your business works to best-fit your audiences.

Simplified transition from analog to digital documents

One of the biggest costs to any business is the cost of change, particularly when root and branch changes are needed. One of the inhibitors to change is the natural resistance to a new normal. Digital documents represent a new, yet familiar construct in the enterprise.

The majority of capabilities performed by analog/paper documents are easily replicated by digital documents (report publishing and distribution, marketing communications such as presentations, brochures, promotional materials, data capture forms, content framing, management, storage and archival).

This familiarity helps organizations embrace digital document constructs like canvases, when more technical concepts like applications, micro-sites and applets are alien and judged to be high-risk.

Deskill digital publishing

There is a global shortage of tech talent, with about 95% of employers having faced a skills shortage last year.

Encanvas uses templates with point-and-click design elements to simplify design and publishing. It makes creating documents painlessly, without the need for specialist design knowledge or coding skills. Everything you need is in your subscription.

Publish on all digital form factors

Whether you want to communicate on the web, mobile, smart TV, digital billboard/whiteboard, or something else, digital documents are a great way to share information.

Manage with software bots

Behind the scenes, Encanvas digital data fabric is powered by software bots that do all the heavy lifting of harvesting data, recording it, moving it, transforming it, preparing it for processing or presentation, etc.

Digital documents and analytics

According to Gartner, businesses will move from big data to ‘small and wide data.’  Digital documents have a key role to play in equipping businesses with this new type of data.

According to Gartner, ‘Small and wide data, as opposed to big data, solves a number of problems for organizations dealing with increasingly complex questions on AI and challenges with scarce data use cases. Wide data — leveraging “X analytics” techniques — enables the analysis and synergy of a variety of small and varied (wide), unstructured and structured data sources to enhance contextual awareness and decisions. Small data, as the name implies, is able to use data models that require less data but still offer useful insights.’

Track user visits

Digital documents benefit from rich data analytics built in, meaning that executives can interpret which content is most popular, even which particular content elements are drawing the most attention.

Optimize documents for SEO

Design documents to gain high visibility on web search engines like Google by leveraging integrated SEO optimization tools.

Keep data safe

Thanks to our PassPort technology, you’ll never have to worry about cyber security when it comes to the documents you publish (or the digital ecosystem you publish them on!). 

Affordable scalability

Build as many digital documents as you need and change them as often as you like, without any extra costs.

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How Encanvas helped Overall Eesti become data-driven

How Encanvas helped Overall Eesti become data-driven

May 18, 2022 | Data Driven Decision Making, Data Management, Data-Driven Culture, Digital Data Fabric, Digital Documents, Digital Transformation, Digital Transformation Platform

Data driven businesspeople

The desire of most digital businesses is to make informed decisions driven by rich data analytics. In this article, we explore how digital documents are helping to achieve that.

Business challenges that drive change 

Tonis Haamer is one of the cleverest businesspeople I know. He runs a Overall Eesti, technology business in Estonia along with his brother, Mart. Still today, a big part of the business is office equipment, the company’s heritage. But the market for office printing is not what it was, and this caused Tonis to realize that the onward growth of the business demanded a rethink in how it is resourced.

Now, Overall Eesti is a very people-centric business. The team behind the brand is extremely hard working, extremely loyal. Shedding staff wasn’t a desirable go-forward plan. For this reason, Overall Eesti began its journey to become data driven, and one of the most advanced digital businesses.

What it means to be data driven 

I had the opportunity to interview Tonis on behalf of Canon Europe when I was running strategy around software solutions for the brand. I was looking to see how companies are adopting data insights, and Overall Eesti was an example.

Over a couple days, Tonis explained the objective behind the company’s data driven agenda was to make smarter decisions more often to answer new questions as they emerged, and to reinforce sub-optimal processes with new applications built using digital documents when it became obvious there was an opportunity to streamline.

Tonis explains, “To be data driven means being able to answer new strategic questions as they emerge. To do that means you have to harness your operational data that comes from ERP, service, CRM, HR, and other front-line business systems. It demands the ability to re-use this data for new purposes. And the challenge that brings with it is how to get the quality and integrity right. Once you’ve achieved that, the possibilities open up. But it is not a trivial task to create composable data.”

Data fabric 

Almost a decade ago, Overall Eesti became one of the first companies in the world to create a home-grown Digital Data Fabric they called ‘CLIO.’

As Tonis explains, “Preparing your data is one of the biggest technical challenges of creating a data driven approach to business. It’s not just about harvesting the data you already have. Almost inevitably there will need to be enrichment of data, and you suddenly realize how poor the quality of data is from systems that only use aspects of the databases designed to support their operation. Furthermore, we found that some of the key links between data-sets did not exist. We had to find ways of connecting records in one system with the next by using fuzzy logic matching to construct the relational ties that were missing.”

Data is a big challenge, but it’s not the only one 

As an early adopter of data fabric technology, the Overall management team are very familiar with the journey to overcome technical challenges, but Tonis is clear that data quality is only a foundational stone of a broader change agenda.

It starts with rewiring the culture of management towards the importance and use of data. This, and understanding what the strategic priorities are and what questions remain unanswered. You need these three qualities: clarity of purpose, data culture, and data integrity all in place before you start to see returns for your investment. For many businesses, the cost and complexity of that change has discouraged them from moving forward.

Final thoughts 

Digital documents, and the data fabric they reside on, offers the necessary blend of tooling for organizations to become data driven. These technology instruments are important, but—as this case example implies—overcoming the cultural, behavioral and strategic planning challenges may still yet be the greater obstacle to success for business leaders prepared to give the data driven business model a try.

Codeless web development in an agile world

Codeless web development in an agile world

Feb 26, 2022 | Codeless, Digital Ecosystem, Digital Transformation

How codeless web development is changing the world of application software development

With codeless enterprise software development platforms like Encanvas, it only takes ONE business analyst to take an app from concept to deployment. When a scrum of one becomes pointless, how do firms adapt their methods for modern software development?

The move to codeless agile software development

At one time, companies would buy an IBM AS/400 computer and a bundle of software.  They would expect to find everything in the box to run their enterprise.  Not today. Enterprise computing has become fragmented, complex, and more virtualized. Even with all the latest tech tools, it’s not enough to serve up the software applications they need.

This has led to enormous growth in demand for functional and task-specific Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions.  So-called ‘SaaS sprawl’ accounts for a growing proportion of technology spend, with the average company now relying on over 200 unique SaaS apps.

The average number of SaaS apps used by businesses has been steadily rising. In 2020, it was around 80, and by 2022, it jumped to an average of 130.

The biggest losers in the adoption of SaaS are data-driven businesses. Adoption of SaaS tools creates tens, if not hundreds, of discrete data repositories with each operating a data model designed by a vendor. Harnessing this data becomes a nightmare for departmental and business leaders who find themselves running blind on business-critical decisions.

business analyst making business application

Innovation factories powered by codeless deveopment

Faced with the need to originate high-quality real-time enterprise data insights, companies have resorted to creating in-house development teams; their ambition to become innovation factories in their own right.  Software Development Life-Cycles (SDLC) have changed.

Today, the state of the art in web development software is codeless agile.  In concept, codeless agile differs from traditional waterfall software development projects by encouraging cooperation between developers through daily dev team stand-ups and scrums. In this ‘must do it well and fast’ world of app development, digital leaders have encouraged the use of fewer, more capable tools—with many adopting cloud platforms with built-in tooling to assist rapid application development, deployment, scaling, containerization, security, and such like.

But that innovation in methods and tools still doesn’t cut the mustard.

For most application developments, additional layers of data aggregation and business intelligence tooling to make sense of the data squirting out of the myriad of apps used across the enterprise. And the trusty spreadsheet is hanging on for dear life to retain its stature as the accountant’s friend, and the first and last port of call when professional SaaS apps aren’t still numerous enough to solve the many and varied data processing problems of users and teams.

From Rapid to Low-Code, to No-Code and codeless web development

Cloud delivered software development tooling is more holistic and comprehensive in its design than the desktop tools that preceded it. Industry watchers have seen the enterprise software development industry transition from Rapid Applications Development (RAD), to Low-Code, to No-Code in less than a decade.

Today, cloud-delivered codeless web development platforms like Encanvas are fast becoming the state of the art. They remove the visibility of software code and script from the app design interface which means businesspeople can be directly involved in the applications development process, to steer priorities, and quickly identify shortfalls in User Experience (essential in a world that priorities customer experience above practically any other competitive strength).  

colleagues working on the app development process

From scrums to fusion teams

The use of No-Code development tools has presented organizations with the means to re-think their designs to foster dedicated change teams.   

Gartner calls these new development organizational structures as ‘Fusion Teams.’ These new ad-hoc structures in organization design appear as and when a new application development is needed; bringing together business stakeholders, change professionals, security experts, and business analysts together to create a solution for the new requirement. Once the solution is delivered, ‘the team’ dissolves.

In the context of a Fusion Team, the entire software development team (as was ‘the scrum’ in the previous team design model) is represented by a single Business Analyst, who, with the support of an IT architect, is empowered to take an app concept to delivery using No-Code tools and plug-in technologies.

Such a fundamental change in operational behaviors dictates that project management processes keep up. Fusion Teams today are experimenting with new approaches to project management, like Agile Codeless that have been purposely engineered to keep up with the development cadence of Fusion Teams and No-Code app development, that today are creating apps in days and weeks that would’ve taken months and years only a few years ago.

Application Fabrics are a natural evolution in enterprise computing technology

What makes this transition possible is Enterprise Applications Fabric technology. An Applications Fabric (AppFabric) is a cloud Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) equipped to design, deploy and run countless software bots and applications. It facilities the replication, scaling and operational performance management of published applications, while managing their life-cycle from birth to death. Using an AppFabric, it is left to the IT team to frame the fundamental user experience design rules, together with end-point security, core data tables, etc. This means Business Analysts operate within a suitably constrained and monitored ‘creative bubble’ determined by the IT experts of the enterprise.

This new approach to enterprise applications developments offers organizations the means to engineer their own built-to-fit digital ecosystem, without having to rely on spreadsheets and third-party SaaS tools, or the need to glue data together afterward. Fundamentally, all apps created in an Application Fabric bring data together in a single place, allowing organizations to fully leverage and re-use their accessible data.

Ian Tomlin

Ian Tomlin

Author

Ian Tomlin is a marketer, entrepreneur, business leader and management consultant. His passion is to help make great ideas happen. Relentlessly optimistic about the potential of technology for good, Ian’s 30+ year career has focused around the intersect of strategy, technology and marketing. He writes on subjects including enterprise computing and organizational design. He also works as a consultant and advisor to the executive teams of PrinSIX Technologies, Answer Pay and INTNT.AI, helping to rethink their marketing in order to tell their brand story.

Ian has founded a series of successful businesses including NDMC Ltd (2003), Encanvas (2006), and Newton Day Ltd (2019). He has written books, articles and guides on brand, digital transformation, enterprise applications, data science, workforce management, and organizational design. He can be reached via LinkedIn or Twitter.

Now read:

Codeless web development in an agile world

Enterprise app software platforms allow companies to create their own agile codeless digital ecosystem, bringing data together in one place.
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What is Codeless Software?

Codeless software is a type of enterprise computing platform used to design, deploy and operate software apps without the use of, or visual presence of code

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Codeless enterprise software

Ian Tomlin, CEO of Encanvas predicts the rapid adoption of Codeless enterprise software in the coming years and gives his reasons why.

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What is Agile Codeless?

Agile Codeless is a software development life-Cycle (SDLC) approach that embraces codeless authoring tools and methods to produce enterprise apps

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What is a Digital Transformation Platform?

What is a Digital Transformation Platform?

Mar 11, 2020 | Digital Ecosystem, Digital Transformation Platform

Discover why digital transformation platforms are a critical technology component to power your growth

About

A Digital Transformation Platform is a computing platform used to support the orchestration of business models in support of the digital transformation of an enterprise, where digital transformation describes a foundational change in how an enterprise delivers value to its customers. A digital transformation normally represents an adjustment to the business model adopted by an enterprise to create its customer value and profitable returns for shareholders.

Digital Platforms and Ecosystems

Technology leaders increasingly talk about digital platforms and ecosystems; but what are they, and what’s the difference between them?

Our interpretation at Encanvas is that a platform is a computing platform used to orchestrate business models serving the data processing needs of an organization, while an ecosystem does more to serve the data processing needs of a community. That said, when people speak of digital transformation platforms, they often blur the line between the two. It has become quite a muddy area of technology understanding!

The impact of digital transformation platforms on business success

The outcome of implementing a digital transformation platform is normally a step-change in operational effectiveness and growth.

Recent research conducted by Harvard Business School suggests that companies that are digital laggards don’t perform as well as those that embrace digital transformation. They write, “Organizations that scored in the top quartile of our digital transformation index obtained much better gross margins, earnings, and net income than organizations in the bottom digital quartile. Other financial and operating indicators showed similar disparities.”

Harnessing new digital technologies to create more customer value and reduce operating costs is a challenging prospect for many organizations accustomed to primarily investing in slow-coach IT to keep the lights on. To leverage the potential of technologies like big data, artificial intelligence, blockchain, the Internet of Things, virtual reality and cloud computing (etc.), your enterprise needs to embrace a digital ecosystem that’s able to embrace new technologies and adapt to change affordably and expediently. That’s why

NDMC invented encanvas to support digital transformations by equipping organizations to adapt their IT to fit their business model. We describe it as a business model orchestration and it normally means the evolution of enterprise IT architecture to embrace codeless ‘Live Wireframing’ of applications.

A 2019 report by Zenzar found that employees too understand the value of having the right digital tools to get the job done. More than three-fourths (76%) of the 1,000-plus survey group said having the digital tools they need at work makes them more productive. More than half (53%) said it makes them more successful. The same share said they would be more empowered to better manage workflow if provided with the IT tools they needed, and 42% said it speeds up boring tasks. Some 68% of the 18 to 34 age group said having the digital tools they need at work makes them more productive. That’s a significant share. But it’s even higher – at 80% – for the 35 to 54 age group. And a whopping 83% of workers age 55 and older agreed.

Adopting a top-down approach to enterprise IT – and creating a single, unifying digital transformation platform with modern cloud technology – will transform your business and its ability to compete in the digital age.

McKinsey & Co. suggest companies with digital platforms enjoyed an annual boost in earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) of 1.4 percent, compared with the 0.3 percent gains of non-players. They go on to state that performance effects are cumulative, with EBIT improvements adding to early-year gains, so over a five- year period, platform players may capture an additional 10 percent in EBIT growth—a company’s 2 percent EBIT growth, for example, would increase to 2.2 percent in year five. Source: ‘The right digital-platform strategy’, McKinsey & Co, May 2019

According to IT analyst firm Gartner, a digital ecosystem is – ‘..an interdependent group of enterprises, people and/or things that share standardized digital platforms for a mutually beneficial purpose, such as commercial gain, innovation or common interest, growth and shareholder returns.’

Example

A good example of a digital transformation platform is Amazon. At amazon.com customers get the benefit of using the Amazon platform to find and purchase products. They also are able to manage their own account, coordinate logistics, see the progress of orders, and more. At one time, all of these duties would’ve been performed by back-office workers operating Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems. Not today. Digital Transformation Platforms displace much of the need for businesses to enter data or operate Systems of Record.

About Encanvas

Encanvas is an enterprise software company that specializes in helping businesses to create above and beyond customer experiences.

From Low Code to Codeless

Better than code-lite and low-code, we created the first no code (codeless) enteprise application platform to release creative minds from the torture of having to code or script applications.

Live Wireframe

Use Encanvas in your software development lifecycle to remove the barrier between IT and the business. Coding and scripting is the biggest reason why software development has been traditionally unpredictable, costly and unable to produce best-fit software results. Encanvas uniquely automates coding and scripting. Our live wireframing approach means that business analysts can create the apps you need in workshops, working across the desk with users and stakeholders.

AppFabric

When it comes to creating apps to create a data culture and orchestrate your business model, there’s no simpler way to instal and operate your enterprise software platform than AppFabric. Every application you create on AppFabric adds yet more data to your single-version-of-the-truth data insights. That’s because, we’ve designed AppFabric to create awesome enterprise apps that use a common data management substrate, so you can architect and implement an enterprise master data management plan.

Customer Data Platform

Encanvas supplies a private-cloud Customer Data Platform that equips businesses with the means to harvest their customer and commercial data from all sources, cleanse and organize it, and provide tooling to leverage its fullest value in a secure, regulated way. We provide a retrofittable solution that bridges across existing data repositories and cleanses and organizes data to present a useful data source. Then it goes on to make data available 24×7 in a regulated way to authorized internal stakeholders and third parties to ensure adherence to data protection and FCA regulatory standards.

Encanvas Secure&Live

Encanvas Secure and Live (‘Secure&Live’) is a High-Productivity application Platform-as-a-Service. It’s an enterprise applications software platform that equips businesses with the tools they need to design, deploy applications at low cost. It achieves this by removing coding and scripting tasks and the overheads of programming applications. Unlike its rivals, Encanvas Secure&Live is completely codeless (not just Low-Code), so it removes the barriers between IT and the business. Today, you just need to know that it’s the fastest (and safest) way to design, deploy and operate enterprise applications.

Learn more by visiting www.encanvas.com.

The Author

Nick Lawrie is the CEO of NDMC Ltd and a member of the Encanvas Steering Group. His background is in corporate finance where he served for several decades as a Fortune 500 CFO. Nick is an experienced practitioner in large-scale enterprise IT and change management projects. He can be contacted via his LinkedIn profile.

Further reading

What is a digital ecosystem?

What is a digital ecosystem?

Mar 11, 2020 | Digital Ecosystem, Digital Transformation

Find out why digital ecosystems are taking off…

About

According to IT analyst firm Gartner, a digital ecosystem is – ‘..an interdependent group of enterprises, people and/or things that share standardized digital platforms for a mutually beneficial purpose, such as commercial gain, innovation or common interest, growth and shareholder returns.’

Digital Ecosystems have become more visible in enterprise computing owing to the increased focus towards digital transformation. Digital transformation describes a foundational change in how an organization delivers value to its customers. It normally represents an adjustment to the business model adopted by an enterprise to create its customer value and profitable returns for shareholders.

As a matter fo fact, the world of business has gone mad for digital ecosystems in the last few years, partly driven by the awareness of technologies like Blockchain that make it possible to create a federated and trusted digital market-place for ‘anything.’

Purpose and benefits

The purpose of a digital ecosystem is to provide the data processing capability needed support a community of users in the delivery of a process or function. The benefit of using a common digital ecosystem across a community is to reduce frictional costs, not to mention the cost of operating IT for each contributor. With Digital ecosystems, IT costs are shared by the community, probably in the form of a subscription charge.

Example

A good example of a digital ecosystem is a city-wide Internet of Things platform. These are being developed by leading cities around the world including Barcelona, London and Tallinn in Estonia. The principal of a city-wide digital IOT ecosystem is to enable all digital services to be provisioned and paid for using a common technology substrate. It means that citizens and visitors can register for a service with their ID and then pay for (and consume) services more easily.

Examples of services include car park payments, transport payments, lifelong learning and gym fees, computer printing and copying etc. For any such digital ecosystem, a digital platform is required able to manage and house applications deployed as services.

About Encanvas

Encanvas is an enterprise software company that specializes in helping businesses to create above and beyond customer experiences.

From Low Code to Codeless

Better than code-lite and low-code, we created the first no code (codeless) enterprise application platform to release creative minds from the torture of having to code or script applications.

Live Wireframe

Use Encanvas in your software development lifecycle to remove the barrier between IT and the business. Coding and scripting is the biggest reason why software development has been traditionally unpredictable, costly and unable to produce best-fit software results. Encanvas uniquely automates coding and scripting. Our live wireframing approach means that business analysts can create the apps you need in workshops, working across the desk with users and stakeholders.

AppFabric

When it comes to creating apps to create a data culture and orchestrate your business model, there’s no simpler way to install and operate your enterprise software platform than AppFabric. Every application you create on AppFabric adds yet more data to your single-version-of-the-truth data insights. That’s because, we’ve designed AppFabric to create awesome enterprise apps that use a common data management substrate, so you can architect and implement an enterprise master data management plan.

Customer Data Platform

Encanvas supplies a private-cloud Customer Data Platform that equips businesses with the means to harvest their customer and commercial data from all sources, cleanse and organize it, and provide tooling to leverage its fullest value in a secure, regulated way. We provide a retrofittable solution that bridges across existing data repositories and cleanses and organizes data to present a useful data source. Then it goes on to make data available 24×7 in a regulated way to authorized internal stakeholders and third parties to ensure adherence to data protection and FCA regulatory standards.

Encanvas Secure&Live

Encanvas Secure and Live (‘Secure&Live’) is a High-Productivity application Platform-as-a-Service. It’s an enterprise applications software platform that equips businesses with the tools they need to design, deploy applications at low cost. It achieves this by removing coding and scripting tasks and the overheads of programming applications. Unlike its rivals, Encanvas Secure&Live is completely codeless (not just Low-Code), so it removes the barriers between IT and the business. Today, you just need to know that it’s the fastest (and safest) way to design, deploy and operate enterprise applications.

Learn more by visiting www.encanvas.com.

The Author

Nick Lawrie is the CEO of NDMC Ltd and a member of the Encanvas Steering Group. His background is in corporate finance where he served for several decades as a Fortune 500 CFO. Nick is an experienced practitioner in large-scale enterprise IT and change management projects. He can be contacted via his LinkedIn profile.

Further reading

Digital Transformation Platform

Digital Transformation Platform

Mar 11, 2020 | Digital Transformation, Digital Transformation Platform

Why is Digital Transformation such a hot potato? Read this article to better understand it.

About

The impact of digital transformation on business success

The outcome of a digital transformation is normally a step-change in operational effectiveness and growth.

Recent research conducted by Harvard Business School suggests that companies that are digital laggards don’t perform as well as those that embrace digital transformation. They write, “Organizations that scored in the top quartile of our digital transformation index obtained much better gross margins, earnings, and net income than organizations in the bottom digital quartile. Other financial and operating indicators showed similar disparities.”

Harnessing new digital technologies to create more customer value and reduce operating costs is a challenging prospect for many organizations accustomed to primarily investing in slow-coach IT to keep the lights on. To leverage the potential of technologies like big data, artificial intelligence, blockchain, the Internet of Things, virtual reality and cloud computing (etc.), your enterprise needs to embrace a digital ecosystem that’s able to embrace new technologies and adapt to change affordably and expediently. That’s why

What subjects does digital transformation focus on?

Research suggests that the most common focus of digital transformation are projects that improve customer experience or create more customer value. Examples include:

  • Portal applications to encourage self-service
  • Projects to make more information and services transparent to customers
  • Simpler logistics, automation, and billing
  • Chatbots and customer support services brought online
  • Projects to capture more customer insight to deliver more personalized, tailored products and services

Orchestrating your digital transformation

NDMC invented encanvas to support digital transformations by equipping organizations to adapt their IT to fit their business model. We describe it as a business model orchestration and it normally means the evolution of enterprise IT architecture to embrace codeless ‘Live Wireframing’ of applications.

A 2019 report by Zenzar found that employees too understand the value of having the right digital tools to get the job done. More than three-fourths (76%) of the 1,000-plus survey group said having the digital tools they need at work makes them more productive. More than half (53%) said it makes them more successful. The same share said they would be more empowered to better manage workflow if provided with the IT tools they needed, and 42% said it speeds up boring tasks. Some 68% of the 18 to 34 age group said having the digital tools they need at work makes them more productive. That’s a significant share. But it’s even higher – at 80% – for the 35 to 54 age group. And a whopping 83% of workers age 55 and older agreed.

Where to start?

Adopting a top-down approach to enterprise IT – and creating a single, unifying digital platform with modern cloud platforms – will transform your business and its ability to compete in the digital age.

McKinsey & Co. suggest companies with digital platforms enjoyed an annual boost in earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) of 1.4 percent, compared with the 0.3 percent gains of non-players. They go on to state that performance effects are cumulative, with EBIT improvements adding to early-year gains, so over a five- year period, platform players may capture an additional 10 percent in EBIT growth—a company’s 2 percent EBIT growth, for example, would increase to 2.2 percent in year five. Source: ‘The right digital-platform strategy’, McKinsey & Co, May 2019

About Encanvas

Encanvas is an enterprise software company that specializes in helping businesses to create above and beyond customer experiences.

From Low Code to Codeless

Better than code-lite and low-code, we created the first no code (codeless) enterprise application platform to release creative minds from the torture of having to code or script applications.

Live Wireframe

Use Encanvas in your software development lifecycle to remove the barrier between IT and the business. Coding and scripting is the biggest reason why software development has been traditionally unpredictable, costly and unable to produce best-fit software results. Encanvas uniquely automates coding and scripting. Our live wireframing approach means that business analysts can create the apps you need in workshops, working across the desk with users and stakeholders.

AppFabric

When it comes to creating apps to create a data culture and orchestrate your business model, there’s no simpler way to install and operate your enterprise software platform than AppFabric. Every application you create on AppFabric adds yet more data to your single-version-of-the-truth data insights. That’s because, we’ve designed AppFabric to create awesome enterprise apps that use a common data management substrate, so you can architect and implement an enterprise master data management plan.

Customer Data Platform

Encanvas supplies a private-cloud Customer Data Platform that equips businesses with the means to harvest their customer and commercial data from all sources, cleanse and organize it, and provide tooling to leverage its fullest value in a secure, regulated way. We provide a retrofittable solution that bridges across existing data repositories and cleanses and organizes data to present a useful data source. Then it goes on to make data available 24×7 in a regulated way to authorized internal stakeholders and third parties to ensure adherence to data protection and FCA regulatory standards.

Encanvas Secure&Live

Encanvas Secure and Live (‘Secure&Live’) is a High-Productivity application Platform-as-a-Service. It’s an enterprise applications software platform that equips businesses with the tools they need to design, deploy applications at low cost. It achieves this by removing coding and scripting tasks and the overheads of programming applications. Unlike its rivals, Encanvas Secure&Live is completely codeless (not just Low-Code), so it removes the barriers between IT and the business. Today, you just need to know that it’s the fastest (and safest) way to design, deploy and operate enterprise applications.

Learn more by visiting www.encanvas.com.

The Author

Nick Lawrie is the CEO of NDMC Ltd and a member of the Encanvas Steering Group. His background is in corporate finance where he served for several decades as a Fortune 500 CFO. Nick is an experienced practitioner in large-scale enterprise IT and change management projects. He can be contacted via his LinkedIn profile.

Further reading