Digital Transformation Archives - Argility Technology Group

Future proofing your software solutions

ajustus Jul 30, 2024 Digital Transformation, Retail4U, Software Solutions

By Shawn Wilsnach, Argility Technology Group, Java Divisional Manager.

The pace of technology change can only be described as exponential. If you are to keep pace with these advances, it is essential to future proof your software.

What does that mean?

Well, you may have mature, feature rich and stable software solutions – but that’s not enough. They must be future proofed if you are to guarantee the longevity and ongoing success of your solutions.

In simple terms, “future proofing software” means to minimise the negative impact that future events have on your software. The aim of future-proofing an application is to give it longevity by making use of the latest technology to refactor the product over time.

Why Is It Important?

Because your software solutions will remain relevant ensuring that your technology partners will be able to attract young talent who are interested in working with the latest tech, and the technical debt in your software will constantly be reduced. This latter is defined as the implied cost of additional rework caused by choosing an easy or limited solution instead of using a better approach that would take longer to produce.

This will also result in continuous improvement because over time there will be learnings about what was good or bad about a specific component. Thereafter, plans to refactor these components should be devised in a manner that serves to maximise useability.

How do you achieve future-proofing?

Development frameworks, web browsers and operating systems are constantly changing and improving. Making sure software stays as up-to-date as possible with the latest versions is important. Apart from allowing you to use the latest tools, this will also reduce cyber security threats and, as such, improve overall security. New and powerful tools are always being created. It makes sense, over time, for your software development partners to utilise these tools/frameworks to replace older ones in your software. However, it is also vital to ensure the software is not destabilised in any way. So, tackling one component at a time is the best modus operandi. The deletion of old code is equally important during refactoring processes – this also reduces technical debt.

Engage with your customer base

Customers and users are the most important when it comes to future-proofing software. To know where the real strengths and weaknesses lie in software solutions, user feedback is crucial. Powerful software partnerships consist of ongoing customer engagement. This helps solution providers to highlight the weakest components of a system and tackle them first. Over years of providing software solutions, my experience has confirmed that customers are interested in the future of the software they are using, and they will certainly start looking for greener pastures if suppliers do not pay attention to future-proofing.

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Argility Winning the Java Talent War and Leading the Way

ajustus Oct 25, 2023 Digital Transformation, JAVA, Talent, Work Culture

ATG’s successful collaboration with Java Training leader – VZAP – by Keenan Naidoo, Argility Divisional System Manager.

The battle for tech talent has intensified in today’s competitive digitally transformed landscape, with Java skills emerging as a crucial differentiator. These skills remain scarce in the country, posing major challenges for organisations who need to stay ahead of the curve in the digital era. We firmly believe that by bolstering our technological prowess, we can contribute not only to the growth of our business but of the industry as a whole by equipping our local workforce with the tools they need to thrive.

These initiatives take various forms, including comprehensive technology training, workshops, and seminars led by industry experts. By providing opportunities to enhance skills and upgrade general capabilities, we ensure staff are positioned to tackle the challenges of today’s fast-paced digital business environment.

We recognise the importance of a supportive and collaborative work culture in nurturing talent. Our employees are our most valuable asset, and their development is pivotal to our overall success. By investing in that, ATG is not only empowering our people with the skills they need to excel but also fostering a culture of innovation and continuous learning. Ryan Hanson, Best Buy, once said – “I believe that the talent that we need for tomorrow exists within our organisation today,” which sums up our approach at ATG. We work hard to provide an inclusive environment where our people have access to online and face-to-face learning programmes, cross-functional collaborations, and knowledge-sharing platforms. Through these initiatives the group encourages the exchange of ideas, expertise, and collective growth.

We have tailored a specialised programme that directly caters to our group’s unique requirements. Unlike generic training programs, our focused initiative is designed to enhance our current capabilities, aligning closely with our solutions and software. By investing in this approach, we make sure our people acquire the exact skills needed to excel in their roles, thus creating a pool of talent primed to tackle the challenges of today and tomorrow.

The reskilling of our highly trained technical staff in Java has proved to an immensely successful collaboration with VZAP – renowned in IT for the quality of its Java training courses. These are geared for both first-time programmers as well as experienced developers looking to up-skill or cross-skill to Java.

Our people possess incomparable domain knowledge, technical skills and experience with our iRIS platform team alone boasting more than 340 years combined retail experience – a record, not many companies can boast. The business took a strategic decision to dip into this phenomenal tech reservoir and reskill in areas specific to our wider tech stack requirements and with rewarding outcomes for both our people and our company.

VZAP was only too happy to cater to ATG’s bright bunch of candidates and provided specialised short training courses in an atmosphere of collaboration with input from the Argility team to create individualised content. We knew what we needed, and our VZAP lecturers displayed great enjoyment in delivering it. They embraced the challenge of tailoring the curriculum to meet the needs of our teams with vigour and enthusiasm.

Gregory Guy, VZAP Senior Lecturer noted: “As we navigate this educational journey together, I find myself savouring every minute of it. ATG’s hard work, inquisitiveness, and commitment to learning creates an environment that fosters growth and mutual respect. We look forward to hosting more courses and collaborations with Argility in the future and believe their candidates are achieving great success going forward with their new skill set.”

We concur with that and envisage a future where our workforce possesses a deep well of Java and Google expertise, enabling us to deliver innovative solutions and maintain our competitive edge.

By continuously investing in our people’s growth and development, we are securing their professional success and contributing to the overall progress of our organisation plus the wider industry.

Contact Information:

Website: www.vzap.co.za

Email: java@vzap.co.za

Tel: +27 11 447 6620

Château Gâteaux optimises delivery process through ATG’s MultiTRAX

ajustus May 31, 2023 Customer Service, Deliver Management, Delivery and Scheduling, Delivery App, Digital Transformation, Last Mile Delivery, Management Module

Château Gâteaux, ‘The Cake People’, now in its 25th year of supplying gourmet cakes across SA, has optimised its delivery processes with the MultiTRAX delivery application from the Argility Technology Group (ATG).

With 20 outlets and still growing, Château Gâteaux has implemented the solution in its primary locations – Johannesburg, Pretoria, Cape Town and Durban – to streamline deliveries and allow customers to track their celebration treats delivery in real-time.

Stefan Terblanche, ATG’s Client Success Manager, says the newest features to MultiTRAX include enhanced Management Module functionality such as:

Improved delivery file integration;
KPI dashboards with graphical driver and customer metrics;
Improved map views including optimised route numbering;
In-depth self-service driver and customer reporting functionality; and
Estimated time of arrival (ETA) visibility to control room staff across all deliveries in a delivery schedule, allowing effective communication with the customer while goods are in transit.

Château Gâteaux vehicles make up to 25 deliveries daily. The company, therefore, implemented MultiTRAX to ensure optimal delivery efficiency.

“The MultiTRAX system integrates customer delivery data from the Château Gâteaux e-commerce site, validates address quality against Google Maps and then allocates the daily deliveries to the nominated driver. A critical dependency of the system is quality and address validation at the point of input by the customer. Because the accuracy of the address data is crucial for seamless navigation by the driver, the address validation feature simplifies user capture ensuring tighter control and fewer delivery failures. Another benefit of MultiTRAX is that delivery notes are digitised in logical process flows and are immediately made available to the control centre through the MultiTRAX Management Module, ensuring delivery note real-time availability to control centre staff,” says Terblanche.

The MultiTRAX Management Module allows the central delivery control room to view and track the driver’s progress on the optimised delivery route. Review of previous delivery routes and obtaining a better understanding of driver productivity is enabled through the Management Module. Extensive reporting regarding all delivery activities, per driver, is available to the central control room through the selected MultiTRAX reporting parameters.

Terblanche explains that MultiTRAX is a customer-centric delivery application that keeps the customer informed of the delivery progress. Customers can view the driver position and ETA via their smartphones and each delivery is concluded with a digital customer satisfaction score entered by them onto their phones. This helps Château Gâteaux to gain a clear picture of its customer satisfaction levels. Driver inefficiencies can be promptly identified to allow for performance improvement on highlighted areas of weakness based on specific customer scores and celebrations of what ‘good’ service looks like.

Geospatial stamping on all deliveries will allow Château Gâteaux to analyse and clearly understand their selling and delivery areas.

Michelle Crafford, Château Gâteaux Operations Manager, says MultiTRAX has provided a much-needed solution for its e-commerce delivery service. “We are obsessed with excellence and mastery of everything we do. Due to the nature of our products, it is important for us to deliver each handcrafted cake to customers as efficiently as possible. Not only has MultiTRAX provided us with an easy-to-use system, which optimises our delivery routes, they have also enhanced our customer experiences through the live tracking feature. Additionally, clients can rate our delivery service, which assists us to ensure that the highest possible standards are maintained,” says Crafford. “Château Gâteaux is a highly valued customer of ATG and we are proud that the power of MultiTRAX is contributing to the continued growth and success of this high-profile South African brand,” concludes Terblanche.

For more information, contact our Business Consultants at 011 712 1300, email info@argility.com or visit our website, www.argility.com

Source: IT Web | IT Online

Is it digitisation, digitalisation or digital transformation?

ajustus Feb 9, 2023 Digital Transformation, Digitalisation, Digitisation

In the ‘digi-world’, companies are confusing these terms in ways that short-change the power and importance of digital transformation.

By Tanya Long, Chief Operating Officer – Argility Technology group

There is, of course, no such word as ‘digi-world’ but from the outset, I think you get the drift. What company is not scrambling to keep abreast of the latest digital transformation strategies aimed at effecting significant change in business operations?

You’ll note I don’t talk about companies ‘considering’ digital transformation. The reason for that is clear – the digital horse is well out of the box and any company not, in 2023 (post- the pandemic/remote working and more) in the throes of digital transformation is probably destined for the scrap heap.

But it can be a daunting prospect in terminology alone. We have digitisation, digitalisation and digital transformation. I will outline the differences between them and show how this is anything other than an argument in semantics.

Each one is often interchangeably and inappropriately used, with people using one but then clearly meaning another. I will also shed light on where it is all headed and what it can do for businesses.

Let’s kick off with a definition of each term.

Various sources, including Gartner, describe digitisation as the process of changing information from analogue to digital form, also known as digital enablement. Whereas digitalisation as a term is accused of being fraught with ambiguity, but is defined as the use of digital technologies to change a business model and provide new revenue and value-producing opportunities, it is the process of moving to a digital business.

Each one is often interchangeably and inappropriately used, with people using one but then clearly meaning another.

In short, migrating from analogue to digital: digitisation relates to information, digitalisation relates to processes.

Let’s move on to digital transformation, which McKinsey defines as an effort to enable existing business models by integrating advanced technologies. It allows digital technologies to be integrated into already existing business models, changing the way the company operates and delivers its product or service.

Hopefully, at this point, you are not feeling even more muddled because, as Forbes notes, companies confuse them at their peril. So, as can be seen from the foregoing, all three of these terms have distinct meanings but again, I confirm this is more than an argument in semantics.

Forbes emphasises that in reality, people are confusing them in ways that short-change the power and importance of digital transformation, thus putting the very survival of their organisations in peril.

It explains that a company may undertake a series of digitalisation projects, from automation through to employee retraining, but that is not digital transformation, which Forbes notes is not something that organisations can implement as projects.

Instead, this broader term refers to the strategic business transformation that requires cross-cutting organisational change, as well as the implementation of digital technologies.

Digital transformation initiatives will typically include several digitalisation projects, but again Forbes emphasises that executives who believe there is nothing more to it than digitalisation are making a profound strategic mistake.

Each of these terms is required for different actions/scenarios in a business, but are not enough in themselves to drive the next action. The real distinction is that digitisation and digitalisation are about technology, whereas digital transformation is about the customer, and on that note, all sources are in agreement with Forbes.

Where my opinion differs is that none of the definitions brings disruptive technologies into the picture.

If digital transformation has turned the business world on its head by revolutionising how companies do business with their customers and above all how their customers interact with them, what have disruptive technologies done? Think about it the next time you tap your phone to order a taxi.

So, yes, digital transformation is a reality that businesses today are forced to embrace, plan for, or risk being fired out of the market by competitors that are getting it right.

But it is the digital disrupters such as blockchain, artificial intelligence, the internet of everything and more, that are having the greatest impact.

Of course, all of these terms eventually end up interwoven, with all roads leading to a successful and agile digital transformation implementation – without it, there is little hope of being a market disrupter.

Let’s break down what’s driving digital transformation and what are the caveats on the journey.

Unquestionably changing consumer demand is at the top of the list. Customers today have the power of choice that is enabled by digital technologies, and they wield it like a weapon and quite rightly so.

Service, convenience, user-friendly interactions are all top of their – not a wish list – but rather their demand list.

Changing technologies and evolving competition in markets where businesses capable of embracing change and focusing more on customer-driven strategies are capturing, keeping and growing their businesses. Companies with the vision to transform and in doing so, see opportunities before they turn into imperatives for sustainability are winning.

Two factors are highlighted as the biggest obstacles to successful digital transformation journeys: poor change management and not focusing on the crucial customer experience.

Strategic planning that aims to apply digital technologies – across all aspects of the business – is essential if companies are to meet ever-changing customer demands.

Digital transformation is about removing customer effort and frustration, being relevant and providing hassle-free convenience. It is the ability to be agile and take a holistic look at the entire customer experience.

In a nutshell and to again refer to Forbes, we digitise information, we digitalise processes and roles that make up the operations of a business, and we digitally transform the business and its strategy.

Source: IT Web

Tanya Long, Chief operating officer, Argility Technology Group.

Long has 30 years of industry experience. Her career in the IT sector started in 1988 in IT support for point-of-sale solutions. She moved formally into software development with UCS/Argility in 1989 as a developer and progressed through to team leader, account management, project and development management roles, which led her into various industries and corporations.

In 2017, Long returned to Argility (having previously worked at the company in a technical capacity) as human capital executive, where she reunited her retail, IT, leadership and HR knowledge to drive her zeal for transformation.

In her capacity as COO, Long is responsible for overseeing operations, with a specific focus on human capital, sales and marketing, and ensuring the company culture and vision shows up daily for customers through an engaged technical team of experts.

Using data to discover the future of retail

ajustus May 19, 2022 Artificial Intelligence, Data, Digital Transformation, PredictRetail, Retail

As business digitalisation continues apace, more and more data is being generated. Retailers need to understand its value and how to leverage it.

By Tanya Long, Chief Operating Officer, Argility Technology Group

Digitalisation has been growing for many years, and the social and business changes driven by the global response to the COVID-19 pandemic have accelerated it.

Hybrid working models that involve increased working from home get a lot of the limelight, but equally significant has been the definitive growth in online retail.

For example, e-commerce in the US increased from $431.6 billion in 2020 to $469.2 billion in 2021, with shopping habits looking like they have permanently changed to include a growing online proportion.

The move towards digitalisation across all industries has resulted in record levels of IT spend. Gartner forecasts that worldwide IT spending will jump by 5.5%, its biggest increase in more than a decade, to reach $4.5 trillion in 2022.

Unsurprisingly, given that data is the major by-product of digitalisation, a hefty proportion of that spending is going on big data and business analytics. Investment was projected to reach $215.7 billion at the end of 2021, with a compound annual growth of 12.8% until 2025.

These are all big numbers but, as always, much of that spend does not necessarily result in bottom-line benefits. There’s a lot of focus on collecting data but turning it into insights that generate business benefits is rather more hit and miss.

Effecting that transformation requires not only a profound understanding of the technology involved but, even more critically, how the particular industry sector works.

Goldilocks technology

It seems as though we’ve been talking about data warehouses and business intelligence forever, and business is littered with projects that never really lived up to expectations.

What’s changed is the emergence of new technologies that make it possible not only to collect and store vast amounts of data, but also to process it to extract valuable information.

Thus far, predictive analytics is not a crystal ball, but if one believes half the hype one reads, that could happen in the distant future.

Perhaps the most important of these is the cloud itself, because it provides a way for companies to access the plentiful and cost-effective storage they need to deposit huge and increasing amounts of data, and also the sheer computing power needed to process and analyse it − think artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), both used to turn data into information.

As always, though, technology is only part of the story − and not necessarily even the most important part. The real point is that the cloud’s resources make it possible to mine data for patterns, deploy sophisticated statistical models and create models on which to base decisions.

In short, the real story is data and what it can be used to do. There are basically three ways in which data can be used, namely: to describe, to diagnose and to predict. The first two are backward looking: using data to establish what happened (descriptive), and then to understand why it happened (diagnostic). Both are obviously very valuable and can be used profitably to improve future performance.

However, the real benefits come when one starts to be able to use data to look to the future − what is usually called predictive analytics. It uses AI, ML, data modelling and the rest of them to analyse current data and make predictions about the future.

Of course, one has to understand this approach is predicated on the assumption that the future derives from the past, and thus that the past contains the seeds of the future.

Predictive analytics thus becomes less useful when change is highly disruptive, and also the further into the future one goes. The further forward in time one goes, the greater the tendency to regress to the mean, to become more and more generalised.

Clear benefits

Thus far, predictive analytics is not a crystal ball, but if one believes half the hype one reads, that could happen in the distant future.

But it does offer an evidence-based − or data-driven, to quote the industry jargon − way to identify how the near future is likely to unfold, and what actions a specific business should be taking to defend its current position, or to take advantage of new opportunities.

In this way, it can help an organisation to move away from the challenge of choosing between a large number of 50% probabilities, to choosing between a small number of high probabilities.

This is an extremely valuable strategic tool given the growing complexity of the business environment, and the intense competition fuelled by the globalisation of markets and a volatile economic environment.

All of these combine to create what is known as a VUCA world − one that is volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous − and so the company that is able to develop a likely-to-succeed strategy based on evidence rather than intuition is already better positioned than competitors.

In certain environments, organisations have experienced that business intelligence delivers a return on investment of 80%, which just goes to show the importance of data-driven decision-making − but the return can shoot up to 250% when predictive analytics is used.

The reason for this startling increase is that decisions are taken based on the rigorous analysis of fact and not on intuition.

The frustration for CFOs when considering the investment in AI and ML is that actual guarantees on ROI is not set in stone, the statistics come from passageway talk about successful projects. But there is no doubt the success is there and that the benefits abound.

Retail is a particularly VUCA sector because it straddles both the real and digital worlds, and consumers are growing ever-more demanding. For them, as I will explore in my next article, predictive analytics is especially attractive.

Source: IT Web

Tanya Long, Chief operating officer, Argility Technology Group.