Digital evolution in the 21st century

There is no doubt that a new Digital Society has emerged in the 21st century. This new society is being built on new rules across all areas: social, cultural, legal, labor, and economic. No aspect of our lives remains unaffected. The term Digital Transformation refers to the process companies are following to adapt to this new world, where digital technology is at the center of everything.

There is currently great confusion about what companies should do to get on board with the Digital Society and adapt. From our point of view, a separate approach through two strategies is needed: one for Transformation and another for Digital, then combining and aligning the changes implied by each. The Transformation strategy addresses the changes organizations must undertake to adapt to new customer requirements and new means and systems of production and distribution, thus creating and fostering a corporate culture that facilitates these changes.

Two ideas are central here: a customer-centric vision of the company and a cross-functional organization based on processes. From these two points, a new organizational structure is built, where new technologies are fundamental and the human factor is critical in the transformation process.

The Digital strategy focuses on incorporating a plethora of new technologies, which will provide the ability to redefine our business model. These technologies are well known: drones, autonomous cars, artificial intelligence, blockchain, robotics, additive manufacturing, cognitive systems, and more.

However, new technologies do not solve the problem of a new business organization if we continue to drag along old technologies. Traditional systems become an anchor that slows down any change within the company. For example, if processes are not flexible, how can new distribution channels be tested?

Therefore, legacy systems must also be gradually replaced as the company integrates step by step into the new digital society. We need new technologies in this field as well. The traditional ones—Java, .NET, vertical packages, systems with so-called “best practices”—no longer solve the problem; instead, they worsen it and make it chronic.

At UGROUND, we have created a new family of technologies called Semantic Engineering, based on the transformation of knowledge. Semantic Engineering is a new paradigm that allows a radical rethinking of any organization’s system architecture from two fundamental axes: process platforms (not applications) and the elimination of programming (zero code).