Technology is redefining the competition rules of the 21st century. Companies are completely changing the way they produce, supply, consume and interact. The importance of the Technologies that triggered this change has become more evident in the global epidemic conditions. The businesses of the new era will shape their future by understanding big data and managing innovation. This transformation we are experiencing is different from others.

TECHNOLOGY IS NO LONGER a field that only technology enthusiasts understand its details. From an ordinary person trying to maintain his/her daily life to huge businesses; everyone uses digital Technologies everywhere. This goes beyond being a choice and becomes a necessity. Yes, the technology-based World brings its own dynamics. As new businesses emerge, there is also unprecedented competition. Companies of all sizes in every sector are looking for ways to be more efficient by using information technologies (IT). The importance of digital transformation, which rapidly changes traditional business models, has been clearly seen, especially during the pandemic period. There is a transformation in automotive, finance, production, energy, public services, in short, at every point of our lives. Digital transformation studies are on the agenda of the business world, the public, academia and education system. Digital transformation and smart production systems bring revolutionary innovations. Increasing customer satisfaction, collecting data about production or business processes, and making consistent predictions with these become the most important goals of digital transformation.

“IT HAS GAINED A GREAT ACCELERATION”

Boğaziçi University Management Information Systems Department Faculty Member Assoc. Dr. Bilgin Metin says on this subject: “The ever-increasing competition in the age of technology is like a monster who wants to catch up with companies and eat their profitability. Businesses want to feel safe in digital transformation, just like crossing a rough river”. This transformation will of course have a cost. This is one of his sensitive points. Digital transformation can be very costly when businesses do not determine their information technology strategies correctly. One way or another, not transforming into digital has a cost, such as losing competitive power. Stating that there is already a risk in the nature of change, Metin continues: “The positive risk opportunities here lead to negative risk, while the negative risk causes harm. How will this strategy be created before digital transformation? Creating an effective communication and management culture to ensure harmony between business goals and IT goals is the first step in this. Then a risk assessment is a must. As a result of this risk assessment, you can use the technology safely. Otherwise, the technology itself poses an extra risk. Then, by collecting data about production processes and business processes, more realistic cost calculations for the business, production planning and more effective decisions will come. In this way, in the most accurate way, critical business processes that we were not aware of before will be noticed or they will be arranged according to the order of importance of existing processes. As a result, business interruptions that may cause financial losses can be prevented. “

PRODUCTION PROCESSES ALSO CHANGE

Digital transformation takes place with the combination of many physical and digital technologies. Companies are gaining competitive advantage by using a wide range of physical and digital technologies such as sensors, embedded systems, cloud computing, and the Internet of Things (IoT). It not only drives change in core business processes, it reveals smart and connected product concepts. In this way, service-based new business models emerge for revenue generating. Production processes are changing with digital transformation. At the same time, new business models are emerging. IT-based competition creates new processes and business models. These are IT and product integration, embedded software, sensors, processor and wireless connections. Smart and connected products acquire different capabilities. Autonomous product activity, coordination with other products, selfdiagnosis and maintenance are the examples. Big data, cyber security, augmented reality, cloud computing, artificial intelligence, simulation and system integration are the first technologies that come to mind among the technologies that trigger digital transformation. These are also the tools of the 4th revolution in the industry, covering today and the near future.

TAILOR MADE SOLUTIONS FOR YOUR COMPANY

In today’s conditions, it is not difficult to have an access to these technologies. However, the critical point starts here. Noting that the majority of companies make mistakes at this stage, ITU Industrial Engineering Department Head Prof. Dr. Alp Üstündağ points out that it is not enough to purchase these technologies for digital transformation. According to Üstündağ; It may be the best way to find unique solutions for your company. In other words, it is necessary to focus on product development solutions instead of ready-made products. However, Technologies integrated into production in this way can work flawlessly. Üstündağ says that regardless of the technological tools, the main purpose of industrial transformations is to increase resource efficiency and productivity.

DATA VIOLATIONS INCREASE

In addition to the advantages of the current period, data breach possibilities become a serious problem. More data is produced today than ever before. Connected devices are growing rapidly with computing power. At the same speed, data are emerging. This situation becomes a huge responsibility for security teams. It seems that companies investing in cyber security automation technologies have more advantages in reducing the impact of data breaches. In the research published by IBM Security Business Unit in July 2020, the costs of data breaches on organizations are clearly seen.

According to the research; the average cost per data breach in Turkey increased by 10.3 percent a year and reached 12.3 million TL. Data breaches, average per lost or stolen record to organizations in Turkey would cost 630 TL. This average shows that the cost of violations has increased by 10.5 percent since 2019. According to the research results, the sector with the highest data breach per record is financial services. Service and technology sectors follow, respectively, financial services. There are interesting findings in another study by IBM published in October 2020. This research was carried out with the participation of senior executives from around the world. According to the research; 6 out of 10 organizations accelerated the digital transformation process. 94 percent of executives surveyed say they plan to participate in platform-based business models by 2022. Another point that the research reveals is that companies will give 20 percent more priority to the adoption of cloud technologies in the next two years. “Customer interaction” and “marketing” are the top two functions to be moved to cloud technology.

“THIS IS NOT POSSIBLE WITHOUT THE BUSINESS CULTURE CHANGING”

Cavit Yantaç Deputy General Manager of Microsoft Software Engineering Department, pointed out that the word “digital transformation”, which has been used extensively nowadays, has brought a misconception: “It is believed that digital transformation will be possible by using more computers and consuming more software. Of course, it is necessary to use computing systems for digital transformation. But alone is not enough. If this were the case, giant holdings, industrial enterprises or public institutions could easily transform with huge IT budgets and large human resources.” If you want to transform, you have to change your business culture. Do not be afraid that employees will make mistakes in this process.

Put your customers first in all your work. If your strategy is not transformation, your job is difficult. According to Yantaç, it might be a good idea to examine the transformation examples that transform the sectors. Fast, agile companies have achieved the digital transformation before the big players.

Yantaç emphasizes that such examples must be examined. How did they manage to do that? How do they act? Do they have common features? In fact, when you take a closer look at these types of actors who are leading the transformation, a few of the most prominent common features immediately draw attention. For example, they first establish the necessary strategic framework to create a platform. Then they develop software accordingly. They care about software and data. Firms that trigger transformation in different sectors receive support from cloud service providers, instead of allocating capital for their own hardware, and direct their teams to software and data architecture. They’re constantly experimenting with data. One of their most critical features is that they learn by mistake.

5G BRINGS NEW OPPORTUNITIES

While digital transformation fundamentally changes the way all sectors and companies do business, communication technologies in general, especially mobile technology, form the basis of digitalization. In order for businesses to make the most of the opportunities brought by new technologies in their digitalization journey, a solid, flexible, secure and advanced technology communication infrastructure is required. With 5G, we will step into a new generation world by meeting the needs in digitalization. The power of the combination of IoT and mobile technology and 5G will open up many opportunities that were not possible before.

Ericsson Turkey General Manager Isil Yalcin says in this regard: “As a result of supporting 5G technology with developments in artificial intelligence and edge computing, mobile technology will not only increase productivity, but also reveal brand new business models and ways of doing business. Regardless of the sector, in a world where all systems, business processes, employees and devices of the enterprises can be in real-time connection with each other, a structure that makes the best use of the possibilities offered by connections, attaches critical importance to automation and has minimum security risks.” With the opportunities offered by 5G, we will not be surprised if our oven, speaking with our car, bakes our food just in time while we are on the way home, or that our television communicating with our business agenda and smartwatch has already chosen a movie that suits our pleasure. When we look at different industries, smart factories that work with full automation on their own, and agricultural areas that can be monitored remotely from our mobile phones and irrigation themselves are not far away.

Pointing out that the new digital age that is coming will not be limited to the data behind the screens and keyboards, Yalçın continues: “It will also be part of the cyber-physical space through sensors, robots and autonomous systems. Digital transformation will both reveal different vulnerabilities in the field of cyber security and trigger proactive efforts to prevent them. New types of attacks, new privacy and cyber security regulations will affect many industries. Cyber security efforts of businesses are always ahead of the threat environment and new risk factors, and should be constantly renewed by taking these new threats into account.”

CYBERSECURITY IS NOW A BUSINESS ISSUE

Cybersecurity has become a business problem today. Because when a cyber-attack occurs, businesses are negatively affected by business interruptions, ransoms that can be paid to cyber hackers, penalties and reputation losses if personal data are exposed as a result of cyber-attack. So, with the power of innovative digital technologies, what measures should be taken against this kind of “smart” attacks? It is recommended to act with a three-step strategy against threats. These are listed as preventive measures, rescue measures and monitoring measures. Preventive measures can be summarized as introducing effective information security policies, raising awareness of senior management and employee information security, and investing in necessary software and hardware solutions such as antivirus and firewall for information security.

Today, target-oriented cyber-attacks, called APT as Advanced Persistent Attacks, have reached such a stage that the slightest vulnerability can reach great damage. Using ransomware, cyber hackers can demand ransom by capturing and deleting the servers that make up the IT systems of the business, encrypting all backups, all critical data, causing business interruption. Against this, it is recommended that they keep copies of their backups that are not connected to the system, even if they have hot backups. These are called recovery measures. Tracing measures are as follows: When cyber attackers enter a system, they can stay inside for a long time to determine the right moment to harm. Therefore, investments such as SIEM and SOAR that can follow the traces left by cyber attackers on the system must be made.

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE CHANGES THE COMPETITION ENVIRONMENT

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is one of the technologies that are trying to be adapted quickly to business processes. AI is actually a broad term that encompasses a range of technologies that simulate human reasoning and activities. The adoption of AI by businesses is becoming widespread. World giant technology companies focusing on making AI more accessible to the business world are carrying out important works in this field. For example, IBM has an architecture that is completely based on customer insights, called the “Artificial Intelligence Ladder”. Here; A four-step approach based on Data Collection, Organizing and Analyzing Data and then finally applying artificial intelligence in the system is presented. According to KPMG’s Enterprise Reboot research; One of the areas where businesses will invest the most in the next year will be AI. According to KPMG, trends focus on a range of issues from technology delivery to governance and the rise of “artificial intelligence as a service.” To summarize: First, AI quickly moved from “technology to watch” to “technology to deploy” position. Until recently, corporate artificial intelligence was seen as a Horizon 3 technology. Accordingly, it was something that would be available in three to five years. But big companies are now using AI. Another important subject; Automation, AI, analytics, and low-code platforms are getting closer to each other, and teams are using these Technologies together, realizing that they are working more efficiently by this way. This means that more AI algorithms and operational solutions will be combined. The factor seems to be the growth of corporate demand. Many large businesses invest heavily in AI. The scale of the business and the size of the sector it covers are similar to the rate of AI adoption by business teams. With their demand increasing, new organizational capabilities are critical.

To take full advantage of AI, companies need to invest heavily in talent, business processes, data, and values and norms. The accompanying need for internal governance shows that the investments required to establish policies and procedures for AI deployment will increase. The move towards solutions that can replace business teams’ decision mechanisms has also created the need to control AI. AI can increase risks and ethical concerns. There is a growing interest and debate about what types of guidelines are appropriate and where they should be implemented, followed and done. In this field, it has created the necessity to establish a tracking mechanism of the results and actions of AI solutions.

On the other hand, the rise of artificial intelligence as a service is increasing. Businesses will increasingly be able to take advantage of the AI as a Service (“AIaaS”) market. Thus, it will be easier to apply more correct solutions with less cost. In the light of all these developments, needs and results; AI can change the competitive landscape.

“Total transformation is risky; you should just improve your team’s digital competence”

CAVIT YANTAÇ Microsoft Technical Program Management Lead

It is critical to take a gradual approach in digital transformation projects. First of all, a solid infrastructure must be established. Then, instead of trying to run with instant projects, importance should be given to developing digital competencies within the team. Projects in line with business strategies should be prioritized. We have to admit that it is very normal to make mistakes. I consider focusing on learning from mistakes as the best approach. It is not very easy for an institution with limited digital competencies that does not provide all of these to make digital transformation by making an artificial intelligence project or using the trends that are fashionable in technology. Digital transformation is usually based first on automation from analog processes, then on service-oriented business models, and then on the development of intelligent processes. Therefore, their products, their processes, their employees or their customers who want to transform their relationships with companies, primarily to increase their digital competencies (software teams, the establishment of the establishment of data engineering teams, the adoption of agile methodologies such as production, distribution, and service, such as all the processes to be automated, this automation they are incurred as the result of large amounts of data and these data are used in decision-making processes of business strategy rather than technology investments at all stages of the orientation of the guidance required.

“Continuous innovation is the strongest method”

VOLKAN SÖZMEN IBM Turkey General Manager

Since almost everything related to the basic functions of companies can now be created with codes, directing digital transformation and change has become the most powerful method for continuous innovation. Many internal and external reasons such as intense competition, rapid technological changes, diversity and frequent change of regulations, the need for effective Access to customers, and the necessity to be user-oriented, constitute the infrastructure of digital transformation of businesses. In the face of these problems, the advantages of cloud technologies as a technology application such as flexibility, cost advantages, access to the market and security solutions have caused businesses to place cloud technologies as a tool in digital transformation projects, as well as to place them at the basis of their business and strategic model. In the first period, it was user applications that shaped cloud technologies; however, the leading need in the new era stands out as “critical workloads”. The most important reason for this is that 80 percent of these critical workloads are still kept on traditional platforms and not moved to the cloud. Mission-critical workloads that sustain large businesses and organizations often encompass traditional data centers, extensive IT assets that include multiple clouds - private, public, and edge. Some companies have tried and implemented so many non-interoperable cloud solutions that they unwittingly created a formidable barrier to creativity. Without a centralized strategy for cloud-based business transformation, this can expose a business to potential disruption, security breach, and rising cost risks. However, these risks can be mitigated with the right IT architecture. At IBM, we believe that this can be achieved with an intelligent architecture that enables the portability, organization and management of workloads across multiple environments, i.e. “hybrid cloud”.

“Effective controls need to be re-established”

GÖKHAN MATARACI KPMG Lighthouse Turkey Coordinator and Technology Sector Leader

Studies on cyber security have accelerated with the increase in technology use, but although I do not want to believe that it is true, it was in the position that following the dangers one step behind. However, with the effect of the pandemic, many digitalization products have been included in our lives and business life at a speed above expectations. The existing difference has widened the gap even further. The risk assessment teams of companies are not satisfied with the danger of this gap created by the steps taken in rapid response to changing conditions. Along with all of these, first of all, companies are making great efforts to reduce the phase difference and are working on road maps. As an accelerator in this adventure, I can list the following: Effective controls need to be re-established as a result of new working models. It requires more effective email and web security, dealing with a series of updated patches, more robust (ideally two-factor) authentication for remote access, checking our cloud security configurations, and a closer look at shadow IT created during the crisis. Part of this capture is reviewing security detection and fraud control algorithms and updating them to the new reality of working models. Beyond all of these, strategically handling digitalization roadmaps and cyber security studies as a whole enable us to prevent the risks that may occur in the upcoming period.

“Interest in personalized products and services will increase”

TOLGA BİZEL Mitsubishi Electric Turkey Factory Automation Systems Product Management and Business Development Department Senior Manager

We can consider digital transformation and smart production systems as concepts that will change all countries. Especially during the pandemic, manufacturers, brands, individuals, actually employees and consumers from every sector have experienced the importance of digitalization very closely. Traditional business models are expected to change with the effect of technologies such as mobile communication, wearable devices, smart vehicles, smart homes, Internet of Things, artificial intelligence, and augmented reality. With digitalization, our individual habits will continue to change. Interest in personalized products and services will increase even more. If we look at the subject from production, which is the main field of Mitsubishi Electric; in this new era, a new understanding of production accelerates with interconnected production machines and human interaction. It is possible to say that digital transformation will become a must for businesses and industrialists in this process of change. We can say that businesses that develop and invest in these areas will also continue their existence and make a difference in their fields. In our world, where all humanity is deeply connected to each other, it is not possible to isolate one country from another in any field from disease to technological developments.

Digitization is now a necessity in production in Turkey as well as their industry manufacturers to compete in order to sustain their presence in the digitalized world as well. It is very important for industrialists to use resources efficiently, apart from routine business plans. As Mitsubishi Electric, we use lean production techniques and support industrialists in this direction. While some production lines can be transformed very easily, others require very serious investments and changes. Industrialists in our country, which is very advantageous in both human resources and machine manufacturing, are also very enthusiastic about keeping up with digital transformation and being informed. This potential and interest makes us very happy because there is a very tough competition in the world and we want our manufacturers to be successful on a global scale. If digital transformation is desired in factories, we recommend that a related department be established and one person from each team be involved in this process. We recommend companies and industrialists to have a digitalization strategy and even get mentoring if necessary.

“Cybersecurity is not a forced task but a useful process”

BURAK ÇİFTER Bilge SGT General Manager

If it is a part of our digital life, cyber security is now an indispensable element. While we move all our flows, contracts, and information assets to digital, cyber security becomes the security of the enterprise for us. For this reason, it is necessary to make a decision by considering every step of the processes in the enterprises as a useful and important process, not as a forced task. From the simplest business partnerships to the uninterrupted and healthy new digital services to be offered internally or externally; privacy, accuracy and accessibility requirements need to be designed and enforced. In another sense, digital transformation requires companies to make cyber security a part of their daily life. Cyber security solutions are now more easy to access when compared with 10-15 years ago in which only very large companies could afford them. In particular, the spread of digital transformation to cloud-based services has also had its effect on cyber security solutions. Now, companies may not have to make an additional infrastructure investment in addition to the solution to own and manage cyber security measures.

Robot solutions in particular have started to enter our business life very widely. We can see that machine learningbased solutions that you train to do routine work are now used in our country. Routine but still requiring human tasks such as document verification, invoice control, data extraction and processing of data from different sources and entering the enterprise’s system as desired, can now work both with less error rate and uninterruptedly and integrated into processes thanks to these robot solutions. With the contribution of the development of image processing technologies in this field, we can easily foresee that we will transfer many processes from production quality control to information and document classification to robot software in the next five years.