About This Book xxvii PART I: DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION FUNDAMENTALS Chapter 1: Understanding Digital Transformation 3 (What is Digital Transformation?) 3 Business, Technology, Data and People 5 Digital Transformation and Business 6 Digital Transformation and Technology 7 Digital Transformation and Data 9 Digital Transformation and People 10 Digital Transformation and Organizations and Solutions 11 Chapter 2: Common Business Drivers 13 (What Led to Digital Transformation?) 13 Losing Touch with Customer Communities 14 Inability to Grow in Stale Marketplaces 16 Inability to Adapt to Rapidly Changing Marketplaces 16 Cold Customer Relationships 19 Inefficient Operations 19 Inefficient Decision-Making 21 Chapter 3: Common Technology Drivers 23 (What Enables Digital Transformation?) 23 Enhanced and Diverse Data Collection 25 Contemporary Data Science 27 Sophisticated Automation Technology 29 Autonomous Decision-Making 29 Centralized, Scalable, Resilient IT Resources 31 Immutable Data Storage 33 Ubiquitous Multiexperience Access 34 Chapter 4: Common Benefits and Goals 37 (Why Undergo a Digital Transformation?) 37 Enhanced Business Alignment 39 Enhanced Automation and Productivity 42 Enhanced Data Intelligence and Decision-Making 44 Improved Customer Experience and Customer Confidence 44 Improved Organizational Agility 48 Improved Ability to Attain Market Growth 50 Chapter 5: Common Risks and Challenges 53 (What Are the Pitfalls?) 53 Poor Data Quality and Data Bias 55 Increased Quantity of Vulnerable Digital Data 55 Resistance to Digital Culture 58 Risk of Over-Automation 59 Difficult to Govern 61 Chapter 6: Realizing Customer-Centricity 63 What Is a Product? 64 What Is a Customer? 65 Product-Centric vs. Customer-Centric Relationships 67 Transaction-Value vs. Relationship-Value Actions 69 Customer-Facing vs. Customer-Oriented Actions 71 Relationship Value and Warmth 71 Warmth in Communication 71 Warmth in Proactive Accommodation 74 Warmth in Customer Rewards 76 Warmth in Exceeding Customer Expectations 76 Single vs. Multi vs. Omni-Channel Customer Interactions 77 Customer Journeys 81 Customer Data Intelligence 84 Chapter 7: Data Intelligence Basics 89 Data Origins (Where Does the Data Come From?) 90 Corporate Data 92 Third-Party Data 92 Creating New Corporate Data Intelligence 92 Common Data Sources (Who Produces the Data?) 93 Operations Data 95 Customer Data 95 Social Media Data 95 Public Sector Data 96 Private Sector Data 97 Data Collection Methods (How Is the Data Collected?) 97 Manual Data Entry 98 Automated Data Entry or Collection 98 Telemetry Data Capture 98 Digitization 99 Data Ingress 101 Data Utilization Types (How Is the Data Used?) 101 Analysis and Reporting 101 Automated Decision-Making 102 Solution Input 103 Bot-Driven Automation 103 Model Training and Retraining 103 Historical Record Keeping 104 Chapter 8: Intelligent Decision-Making 105 Manual Decision-Making 107 Computer-Assisted Manual Decision-Making 107 Conditional Automated Decision-Making 108 Intelligent Manual Decision-Making 109 Intelligent Automated Decision-Making 112 Direct-Driven Automated Decision-Making 113 Periodic Automated Decision-Making 114 Realtime Automated Decision-Making 115 Intelligent Manual vs. Intelligent Automated Decision-Making 115 PART II: DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION IN PRACTICE Chapter 9: Understanding Digital Transformation Solutions 121 Distributed Solution Design Basics 122 Data Ingress Basics 127 File Pull 127 File Push 128 API Pull 129 API Push 129 Data Streaming 130 Common Digital Transformation Technologies 132 Chapter 10: An Introduction to Digital Transformation Automation Technologies 135 Cloud Computing 137 Cloud Computing in Practice 138 Common Risks and Challenges 143 Blockchain 144 Blockchain in Practice 145 Partial Business Data Capture 147 Full Business Data Capture 148 Log Data Access Capture 150 Partial Business Data Store 151 Ledger Export 152 &nbs.