CHAPTER V & VI

MANAGING CHANGE
Q. 1. Describe the role of Digital Change Agent in digital transformation.

 EMBRACE BEING A CATALYST

Organizations are largely risk-averse by design, which makes enterprise-wide digital
transformation a challenge for most companies and daunting for many would-be digital
change agents. Even though they have a vision for the future and a desire to lead the way,
they are often also operating largely in their comfort zone, which makes it difficult to have an
impact outside
of their roles. Only when change agents embrace being catalysts who create alignment with
others in the organization and help them overcome their reluctance to change, do they begin
to positively affect digital transformation.
Effective change agents must become bridge builders, guiding and empowering others to
change.
To do that, they must learn to navigate the human dynamics involved in helping people see
and do things differently. They must understand their colleagues’ perspectives, beliefs, and
realities to find common ground with them.

 ORGANIZE WITH OTHER CHANGE AGENTS

Digital transformation, just like any change management initiative, requires support across
the
organization. Getting it is not always easy. Colleagues can be territorial. They might guard
information or processes, claiming ownership over them. That’s why it’s important for digital
change agents to seek out others like them: to form groups of self-support and mount a
coordinated case for a unified digital
transformation strategy.
 LEARN TO SPEAK THE LANGUAGE OF THE C-SUITE
With a view to get a support from top level management, change agent should learn to speak
technical language. It’s not enough for digital change agents to talk about the technological
side of digital transformation. Digital innovations must be translated into the context of
everyday work, accountabilities, and value to the organization. It’s also difficult to get people
to jump on board digital transformation efforts if they can’t see or feel tangibly how it
benefits them and their work.
To gain traction with digital transformation, change agents must:
• Translate technology and digital trends into everyday language. Bring executives together
by emphasizing the potential benefit that digital transformation can have on their work.
• Engage in storytelling. Telling stories of successful digital transformation efforts help
humanize change and bring executives around to formally support change agents.
• Listen. Some executives may not jump on board immediately because of their existing
biases. By listening and engaging them, change agents might find what these biases are and
evolve their narrative from how change agents speak about digital transformation to how
others need to hear it.
• Be empathetic. Understand that some executives believe they can’t “get digital” and that
they can’t see the world the way that change agents do. Be open to their perspectives and
positions to gain mutual understanding.
• Bring outside voices. Whether aimed directly at senior executives or as part of a conference
series for all key stakeholders, external thought leaders can help change agents introduce new
ideas and trends on digital innovation without a political agenda.
 MAKE ALLIES
Many digital transformation efforts are bigger than any one department. They often require
cross-functional resources for support and to be properly executed and funded. Change
agents must make allies across departments and form cross-functional working groups and
steering committees to champion change across the enterprise.
Change agents must also make a case for digital transformation that is grounded in reality,
facts, and provable evidence — and change agents must explain why digital transformation
will benefit these stakeholders, as well as the organization as a whole.

Making allies is critical to getting official sanctioning for cross-functional engagements. In

turn, these official cross-functional initiatives are critical for digital transformation efforts to
spread under a shared vision across the enterprise. Once change agents are able to make allies
and form cross-functional groups, they can organize, execute, self-govern, and report
progress to the C-Suite — and in the process get traction on advancing the organization
across the stages of digital transformation.
 SPREAD DIGITAL LITERACY
Digital literacy is becoming a huge competitive advantage, and one of the key roles that
digital change agents play is as “digital educators.” Change agents must help their colleagues
identify the new skillsets needed to succeed in a digital economy, audit the expertise that is
available internally and externally, and introduce new training programs to ensure everyone
in the organization can help advance digital transformation.
Acquiring digital literacy is challenging — but crucial — for our changing workforce.
Learning new skillsets and adopting new perspectives, while also unlearning legacy processes
and skills, is instrumental in modernizing the workforce. It also sets the stage for a culture
that’s the opposite of risk-averse.

 A DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION ROADMAP

There is no prescription for how to achieve digital transformations, and, as we’re learning,
there’s no end to business evolution either. New innovations are constantly disrupting
businesses. To compete in this ever-changing market, organizations need to invest in bold
technology and agile business models.
Digital change agents play an instrumental role in helping organizations continually adapt
and innovate. But it’s often not easy for change agents to trade short-term success for long-
term focus.
The key to helping their organizations constantly innovate is for change agents to work on
local pilots and on a longer-term, enterprise-wide digital transformation roadmap that
everyone can work against. By focusing on local digital transformation initiatives, change
agents can use their incremental, quick wins to prove concepts and garner support for larger
efforts.
When designing a long-term, enterprise-wide digital transformation roadmap, change agents,
along with their executive sponsors, should consider not just the business opportunities tied to
transforming the organization digitally, but also internal and external challenges facing digital
transformation in the organization, the stakeholders who should be involved in managing
these efforts, and the critical skillsets and experience necessary to achieve them.
 LINK DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION EFFORTS TO BUSINESS AND
INDIVIDUALS GOALS
When designing a digital transformation roadmap, change agents must also have a clear
business objective in mind. A strong digital transformation roadmap must state a specific and
clear business end goal and the key milestones necessary to achieve it.
Successful change agents also link employee’s goals to digital transformation objectives.
 SET METRICS AND MILESTONES
All digital transformation efforts must be tied to ROI. Digital change agents might initially
struggle to predict and measure ROI for their individual efforts. But as they form cross
functional workgroups and collaborate on digital transformation initiatives, they are able to
establish more clear milestones, KPIs, and metrics to measure progress. Metrics for digital
transformation efforts don’t always have to be tied to market share or quarterly profitability
though. They can be linked to market opportunities or to developing new customer segments.
Change agents need to define metrics for their initiatives that substantiate their personal and
team efforts. When they don’t, there’s a tendency for them to focus on the long list of tasks
that lay ahead without acknowledging the steps they’ve taken and accomplishments they
made thus far.
 DEMOCRATIZE IDEATION
Digital change agents must play a role in democratizing idea generation so that as many ideas
for digital transformation can be heard and considered, regardless of where these might come
from. More important, change agents must bring executives to the table so that the best ideas
can be implemented into official pilot programs.
For digital transformation to take hold, change must become part of an organization’s culture,
managed as part of everyday work. Tata Group in India launched the Tata Group Innovation
Forum, a company-wide initiative to create a climate that fosters innovation. Whether it’s by
learning new skills or by contributing new ideas, all employees are expected to participate.
 CAPITALIZE ON YOUR INHERENT “SUPER POWERS”
Change agents possess qualities that help them learn and experiment in areas where there
isn’t much clarity. Change agents must capitalize on their “super powers,” which allow them
to remain strong in the face of criticism and resistance to change — and even when they
themselves are reluctant leaders or scared.

Q.2 What are the influential powers and skills required for digital change agent?
Change agents frequently rely on influence to get things done. Even with some level of
authority, influence skills are vital to create lasting change. Because of this a deeper
understanding of influence skills is guaranteed to improve change agent effectiveness.
Influence tools fall into following general categories.
Reciprocity: the desire to return a favor
•People naturally wish to reward a good deed done for them - this is a powerful force
•Change agents can leverage this tendency by assisting someone with something, then asking
for cooperation in return
•Reciprocation also applies to concessions
Examples: Favour: Assisting a team with a group planning activity, then asking for a personal
introduction or invitation to a meeting afterwards.
Concession: Asking someone to volunteer for weekly task force meetings (which they
decline) , followed by a request for a single work session on the same topic.
•Commitment and Consistency: The need for a consistent image of ourselves
Most people have a strong urge for consistency-it helps them identify who they are.
By shaping this view we can change the individual beliefs. Public comments have very high
leverage.
Examples : An application for software quality award can be used to enlist a group’s support
for software process improvement later on - it’s who they are
Once a group has decided to pursue a change, their opinion of the activities and potential
benefits will improve even though nothing else has changed
•Social Proof: Judging proper behavior assessing the behavior of others
We use social influence heavily in our decision making, this is a valuable, time saving
heuristic. By observing what others do-especially successful rivals we can ease our learning
process. Change agents can exploit social proof of convince others to adopt a behavior, tool
etc.
Example : Once a significant percentage of a company adopts a product life cycle, social
proof works to rapidly expand adoption
Change agents are frequently asked “who else has done this?” before engagement decisions
are made
•Likeability: The degree to which we like or relate to a person
Individuals will say “Yes” more often to people they like. Likeability comes from past
relationships, similarities or frequent contact with those we seek to influence, cooperative
gestures, and even simple compliments. Look for cultural clues, dress code, social customs,
and publicly available information about a person to establish similarity.
Example : A change agent obtains participation in a new offering from to her old business
unit
An agent converses with influence targets to find common history, hobbies, etc
•Authority: The professional reputation or granted authority of an individual
Authority comes in many forms, including position, experience, title or degree. An outside
consultant often has greater authority than a company employee, even when presenting the
same message. Authority operates consciously and subconsciously in almost any situation,
and is powerful in either form.
Examples:
Change agents can gain authority by increasing their status within industry, writing books, etc
A General Manager who has been promoted after accumulating deep experience can use both
positional and experiential authority to influence others
•Scarcity: A limit to the availability of something

Scarcity causes an object’s desirability to increase by invoking someone’s fear of losing

choices. Quality and function are secondary issues in most cases, the primary desire is to
possess the object rather than experience it.
Examples : A limited number of experts that book engagements at the beginning of the year,
influencing customers to commit quickly
•A group desires to learn about a new process before it becomes widely known because it
promotes feelings of exclusivity and prestige

Skill set

1. Digital Competence- The Digital Agent must have digital competence. ―Digital
competence is the set of knowledge, skills, attitudes (thus including abilities, strategies,
values and awareness) that are required when using ICT and digital media to perform tasks;
solve problems; communicate; manage information; collaborate; create and share content;
and build knowledge effectively, efficiently, appropriately, critically, creatively,
autonomously, flexibly, ethically, reflectively for work, leisure, participation, learning,
socialising, consuming, and empowerment.
2. Digital Mindset- A mindset is a set of knowledge structures, based on experience, which
are shared between a group of people who not only possess this common way of thinking but
also act accordingly in the process of absorbing and processing information.
In other words mindset is a mental attitude or disposition that predetermines a person‘s
responses and interpretations of a situation. The mindset is not unchangeable. It can be
changed in order to serve the person‘s needs.
The digital mindset is a set of mental knowledge-experience structures which are
formed due to living in a digitalised society and which are recognised and used by an
individual in order to become successful in the digital environment.
3. Collaborative Skills
Digital transformation is a collaborative effort of all stakeholders. Top level management,
investors, suppliers, customers and employees. Change agent collaborate efforts done by
different departments and sections in the organization. Working with cross functional teams
is a crucial element in digital transformation.
4. Communication skills- Having good team is not enough however, one must also be a
good communicator in order navigate the obstacles of change and ultimately gain buy-in,
high low, for positive outcomes with the proposed changes.
5. Dedicated leadership -  While change champions advocate for change, change agents
actually are able to realize it through their actions and leadership. Digital change agents are
passionate about digital innovation.
6. Other Skills: other skills like structuring (Effective planning of various activities),
capability in providing required resources, openness (open environment), reward
(consideration of good work, energy (the extent of efforts applied for making change
realizable), and synergy means right combination of people, resources and activities.
Q.3 What are the different types of Digital Change Agents?
There is no one type of change agent, however. They each boast different skillsets, goals,
aspirations, and management experience. While their path isn’t typically linear, earlier
research has found four recurrent organizational roles that change agents adopt or progress
through (see Figure below):

DIGITAL/INNOVATION ADVOCATES: Individuals who are passionate about digital

innovations actively spread the word about its potential to colleagues and executives. Even
though they realize they don’t have experience in navigating corporate change or guiding
change management, they feel like not doing something is not an option.
DIGITAL EXECUTIVES: Individuals who are tasked with heading digital efforts in specific
roles, groups, or business units and are motivated to expand their insights and efforts within
their sphere of influence. But they are not naturally or initially inclined to deploy change
management tactics to inspire enterprise-wide digital transformation.
ASPIRING LEADERS: As Digital/Innovation Advocates and/or Digital Executives realize
that their expertise can be productive and beneficial to the rest of the organization, they learn
to navigate corporate relationships better and become skilled in the art of managing-up and
managing-across to rally support and collaborate with others. In short, they learn how to align
their digital innovation expertise and passion with change-management initiatives to
advocate for organization-wide digital transformation.
EXPERIENCED DIGITAL TRANSFORMERS: Those Aspiring Leaders who master the art
of change management, over time, are sometimes promoted to leadership positions to help
bring the right people together and align everyone’s work toward a mutually beneficial and
productive charter of digital transformation efforts. In short, they build bridges across
stakeholders groups and the C-Suite to lead and manage digital transformation formally.
As the saying goes, “Practice makes perfect.” Change agents might start out as digital
advocates who, with the right digital expertise, ambition, and support from their colleagues
and leadership, eventually learn how to become experienced leaders in both digital
transformation and change management.

Those change agents who start their journey as digital executives can become experienced
transformers by making allies and leading crossfunctional teams that help them extend
their expertise and vision beyond their initially discrete domain. This was the case with Chief
Digital Officer and EVP, Digital Ventures, Adam Brotman. He first led a cross-functional
team at Starbucks that brought together people from multiple departments to craft the
company’s mobile vision. “That [initiative] worked well, and [it] catalyzed, moving into web,
where we were charged with figuring out what our mobile web strategy looked like and how
it connected to our loyalty and payment groups,”

Q.4. What is meant by Digital Transformational Change? Explain in detail approaches

to Digital Transformation Change.
Transformational change is defined as a ‗radical shift of strategy, structure, systems,
processes or technology, so significant that it requires a shift in culture‘. Transformation
projects are largely uncertain at the time of project inception. Transformational projects
create instability and uncertainty in an organization. We are pursuing emerging targets
because we don‘t know the end game with 100% certainty, resistance goes up. As resistance
goes up, commitment and performance levels become uncertain.
Digital Transformational change is ‗a change designed to change the way we work. It‘s not a
new application, a new system or a new process. It‘s all of those. Digital Transformational
change requires a behavior change. New tools and new ways of working and thinking make
real breakthroughs possible. The key is having an institutional open-mindedness that
perceives and welcomes the value-added benefits of a breakthrough.
Approaching Digital Transformational Change
1. Align Digital Transformation with Organizational purpose
A truly holistic approach is technologically agnostic. In other words, it doesn‘t start by
assuming that X platform or Y tool needs to be an integral part of a digital transformation.
Instead, the approach begins with the core of any organization, its purpose. Organizational
purpose then drives every aspect of the digital transformation. Available technology that
clearly enhances the organization‘s ability to achieve its purpose is targeted for
implementation, and technology that doesn‘t is discarded.
2. Address leaders and change targets
Just like in any other form of organizational change, digital transformations are typically
driven by change agents who understand both the organization‘s purpose and the power of
available technologies. Change agents actively seek out useful new technologies. Identify the
internal technology change agents in your organization and empower them to implement
technology, educate collegues and inspire additional team members to become change agents.
While internal change agents are often sufficient to implement ongoing small digital updates,
larger digital transformations often require an external change agent. External change agents
come from outside the organization and typically have extensive experience with both
specific technologies and organizational change. These external change agents help hone the
organization‘s vision for digital transformation, implement the more technical aspects of the
transformation, on-board key internal change agents across the organization, and (often)
provide one time organizational on boarding or ongoing managed support for the new
technology.
3. . Build Executive Cohesion and Cross Departmental Collaboration
Any successful digital transformation requires collaboration between leadership from across
the organization. The organization‘s attitude toward the digital transformation will often
mirror that of the executive team, so it is vital that the team shares a clear vision and has
carefully planned for the articulation of that vision to the organization as a whole. Often, an
external change agent can be useful in this process, serving as a catalyst for the kinds of
collaborative discussion and decision making that encourages positive organizational change.
The holistic approach also emphasizes the importance of having leadership from the
technology department of the organization integrate with leadership from other departments.
The same holds for CIOs and other organizational strategists. The greatest transformation
occurs when these leaders connect with the organization as a whole and blend understanding
and perspectives from variety of disciplines. A classic example is Satya Nadella, CEO of
Microsoft. He has an undergraduate degree in engineering and two masters: one in computer
sciences and the other in business. He also served in a variety of departments within
Microsoft before becoming CEO: the server and tools division (President), the research and
development department (VP), and the cloud and enterprise group (VP). His cross-
organization understanding has enabled Microsoft to engage departments and adopt
technology innovations across the organization.
4. Identify Concrete Elements of the Digital Transformation
Once an organization has aligned its overall digital transformation goals with the core
mission of its organization, it needs to identify very specific transformation targets and
timelines. Especially for organizations relying exclusively on internal change agents, we
recommend first using a holistic approach and cross-organizational collaboration to
implement a simple digital solution and then progressively targeting increasingly complex
systems. For corporations using an experienced external change agent like Vander Group to
catalyze transformation, we recommend jumping right into moderate or major
implementations to achieve more rapid and integrated digital transformation.
 Potential Cross organizational implementation by Size and Relative Complexity
 Chat/Collaboration App
 Improved online meeting App
 E Commerce Replatform
 Cloud CRM
 Mitigation to Cloud infrastructures
 Cloud ERP
5. Engage the entire organization and stakeholders actively
Engaging the entire organization in technological updates removes silos and inspire
innovations that actually work. This results in lasting organizational change from the inside
out, and gives a massive edge in efficiency compared to purely top-down digital mandates
that are poorly received by individual organizational members. It‘s not enough for the CIO
and CTO to understand and embrace digital solutions. Every member of the team that is using
a new digital tool must recognize its importance and feel invested in its implementation.
Achieving this kind of engagement depends heavily on establishing a collaborative and
respectful company culture. Any kind of change, especially digital transformation, which
often requires team members to learn new skills and change work habits, will be better
received if members feel that their input contributed to the change and that their concerns
during implementation are being addressed seriously by company leadership. In practical
terms, this means offering personalized and systematic support during roll outs, enabling
embracing team feedback and implementation, and offering direct and respectful feedback to
team members about the effectiveness of their use of new tools.
6. Bolster Required “Hard” Skills”.
One of the major obstacles to digital transformation is a lack of hard skills among team
members and leadership. While today‘s digital solutions are more user friendly and
responsive than ever, there are still some hard skills required, and team members must master
these skills. It‘s also useful if these skills go beyond just everyday use of the most common
digital tools. Empowering team members to expand their technology hard skills will improve
their value to the organization and understanding of technology. Team members with a
greater technical understanding are more likely to envision more efficient and creative uses of
the technology that is made available to them, and their added understanding can drive
innovation across the organization.
Because of this, every organization should consider all available options for increasing team
member technical know-how. Formal education and training programs are great, as are
specific talent acquisition strategies that center on bringing in new team members with hard
technical skills. Crash course classes, online courses, certification programs, and hands-on
training are also very effective at boosting the skill of existing team members and ensuring
the organization has the collective skill base to execute ongoing digital transformation.
7. Build two-way communication channels – Focus on listening – Develop a culture of
openness and authenticity
 Early in the program, leaders should identify influential individuals who may be inclined
to resist the proposed digital change, and be prepared to personalize benefits communications
with these stakeholders, possibly at the senior sponsorship level.
 Inclusive, extensive and transparent communications will help encourage adoption of the
digital strategy, by giving anyone who is interested an opportunity to be part of the solution.
 Adoption and enthusiasm can also be nurtured with digital methods that encourage
audience participation.
 To instill a culture of participative innovation, organizations can crowdsource and
prioritize employee ideas, ideally on open voting platforms. Such platforms can also help to
scale and rapidly monetize innovation ideas, thus further generating excitement and adoption.
8. Develop Sustainable Organizational Digital Transformation
Technology is constantly evolving and being applied. Today‘s digital transformations must
be built on the understanding that today‘s technology will be progressively replaced with
digital solutions that are currently non-existent. Rather than intimidate organizations, this fact
should inspire team members to create and recommend new technology solutions, knowing
that their organization is interested in constantly adapting to new tools that further its
mission.
To sustain ongoing digital transformation, organizations should build structures that provide
for the progressive adoption and holistic integration of new technologies as they become
available. While organizational roles like chief information officer and chief technology
officer carry much of the responsibility for this process, company leadership across
departments needs to create processes that foster consistent re-assessment of the available
technological tools in light of the company‘s primary mission. To do this, organizations of
the future must create a culture that embraces a holistic technology mindset and empowers
team members to live and work with a mindset that consciously assesses the potential of new
technologies and implements new solutions in transformational ways.

Q.5. Elaborate the Organizational Challenges in Digital Transformational Change.

• Complexity - To navigate the complexity of digital business, companies should
embrace what we call digital congruence — culture, people, structure, and tasks
aligned with each other so that executives can effectively address the challenges of a
constantly changing digital landscape.
• Digital Adoption- Various research shows that there is a trend, employees and senior
level management is keenly interested in adoption of digital technology. Significant
numbers of employees and executives are ready to leave companies that aren’t
keeping pace with digital change.
• Cultural Changes- Although specific digital strategies will be unique to a company’s
industry and opportunities, research demonstrates that effective digital culture is the
common denominator that propels digital efforts across industries and stages of digital
maturity. Once that culture is in place, committed and engaged employees will help
make strategies take flight. The main characteristics of digital cultures include: an
expanded appetite for risk, rapid experimentation, heavy investment in talent, and
recruiting and developing leaders who excel at “soft” skills. Leading a digital
company does not require technologists at the helm.
• Pace: Keeping pace with advancing digital technology is an important challenge. It is
difficult to maintain the pace because of employee resistance and lack of management
support Learning from mistakes, move on quickly and constantly push the ambitions
further is a challenge.
• Competing priorities: For example, an Amezon successfully balanced its many
competing priorities and implemented what has turned out to be a wildly successful
foray into the digital age. The most important step of their story was the legwork done
to understand the competing factors underlying their immediate goals both internally
and as it related to their direct competition.
 What is required, then, is a more mature approach that takes into account a set of
objectives and priorities assessed through many lenses. By using digital as an enabler
instead of simply an end goal, a business can ask itself these questions:

 Has the business defined their current position in the digital ecosystem by
benchmarking themselves against their competitors?
 Does the business have the right people and teams in place to initiate and drive new
digital efforts and how does it make the necessary improvements to get there?
 Does the digital roadmap include measurements of success or failure that can be
iterated on?
 Are teams empowered to make the needed business decisions to succeed?

The reality of many large organizations in need of digital transformation is a complex

one: priorities are misaligned, goals and objectives often restate the same ideas to the
detriment of actual progress, and processes are often so segmented that little can be
accomplished. To sift through these challenges, organizations should be asking
themselves the above questions and using the answers to drive a better understanding of
where they are, and how to get where they need to be.
• Security: The most crucial challenge is data security in the organization. Change
agent should work on cyber security before starting digital transformation.
• Defining success- To specify success criteria for a change management project is
start with specifying high level objectives and a statement of work. For each
objective, develop one or more quantified measures to serve as criteria. In some
cases, you have to rely on indirect or surrogate measures as criteria. There are several
categories of success criteria to consider
• Reaction and satisfaction’
• Knowledge and skills transfer
• Application and implementation
• Business impact
• Financial benefits and ROI
• Intangible Benefits.
Q.6 Elaborate Legal, Ethical and social issues in digital transformation.
Privacy :
Data collected through men-machine, machine-machine interface can be used for any purpose
by the possessor of the data. “Personal data", meaning information from which it would be
possible to identify a living individual (such as name, email address, IP address, or device
information).  However, certain considerations (for example, security) remain relevant even
where the data concerned is not personal data.  You are monitored by various machines and
CCTVs.
Autonomy
With technological paternalism, the paternalism is ‘delegated’ to technology. A smart fridge
is technologically capable of changing the order for your favourite cheese to a low-fat cheese
because the biometric sensor has measured that the particular person’s cholesterol levels are
too high. Technology tempts the people to purchase specific products, it reduces the choice
of selection of consumers.
Safety and security
Digitization also presents serious crime problems: the Internet or the devices connected to the
Internet can themselves be the target of crime, as is the case with hacking or DDoS
(Distributed Denial of Service) attacks which paralyse websites or systems. Experience
shows that virtually any digital system can be hacked. 
Hackers can also gain access to sensitive information, and that information could end up in
the hands of the wrong people.
Balance of power
When products become more dependent on software controlled by the manufacturer, this
strengthens the manufacturers’ control and how that can be utilized. In addition, there is a
noticeable trend that the products themselves are being offered as services. This is called
‘servitization’: consumers no longer buy light bulbs but purchase light as a service, they do
not purchase a washing machine but make use of washing services, etc.
Certain platforms’ success is not only due to the technological possibilities, but is to do with
the companies concerned applying ‘illegality as a method’. This leads to unfair competition
between platforms and regular companies, because platforms do not (have to) stick to the
rules or permits that apply to regular companies. 
Human Dignity
No human touch to job. It creates gap between service provider and service user. It also
unlearns moral skills.
VR technology defies the usual distinction between virtual and real worlds. This arouses the
fear that at a certain moment, people can no longer distinguish ‘real’ from ‘fake’. VR users
will regard the real world and their body as unreal, and that their sense of reality shifts
exclusively to the virtual environment. They end up neglecting their actual physical and
social environment.
Q.7 Describe Technological issues in Digital Transformation. IT and
Telecommunication Infrastructure Issues
At present, the availability of digital inc is substantially greater in developed countries than
in developing economies. Many developing countries do not have the necessary
telecommunications and internet, commercial, bureaucratic and legal infrastructures to
support the widespread introduction of e-commerce. Access to the Internet is a major
problem in the developing world, and presents an obstacle to the growth of e-commerce

Capacity/Scalability Problems
It is difficult to predict the usage of e commerce/e governance on an hourly or daily basis.
These ‘scalability problems’ can give rise to a slowing down of the website, or even a
website
crash (temporary unavailability). This can cause many reputation problems and financial
damage. Some of the ways of addressing this problem according to Seargeant (2000) are:
• Undertake market research to predict demand,
• Adopt systems with adequate capacity and scalability,
• Undertake proportionate advertising campaigns, and
• Ensure adequate staff coverage and develop a suitable business continuity plan which not
only helps coping with scalability problems but with other causes of systems failure.
A number of other technical solutions are also available to address this problem but owing to
the high cost associated with them, some companies/ Government departments do not
implement them..
Availability and Systems Integration
One of the basic requirements of e commerce/ e Governance services is their 24-hour
availability. This often requires e commerce/ e Governance applications’ integration with
legacy systems, which were designed to provide services during only specified periods, often
with suspension of services at other times for various reasons such as data backups and end-
of-day processing. Usual legacy systems are accounting, banking, payroll, customer
information, product management, and inventory systems. The new business applications
are often not built from scratch and they normally rely on the functionality of the existing
legacy applications.

. Systems integration has been and is still, to some extent, a key barrier in e commerce/ e
Governance. Shortcomings in technological infrastructure are often the biggest hurdle in the
implementation of e-business channels and their integration with other parts of a business.
This type of integration is essential for the success of e commerce/ e Governance, as an
electronic request for a typical financial transaction passes through a number of different
systems before an action is complete.

Web Site Design and Operational Functionality

There is considerable weight attached to the appropriate design of e commerce/ e Governance
websites. Poor design of website has been estimated to result in the loss of up to 50 percent of
potential repeat visits. Poor design may include use of inappropriate colours, contrast, font or
navigation functions. Lack of proper functionality, excessive use of graphics or other similar
factors can also deter customers from coming back to that website. Web usage barriers can
also be attributed to vision, cognition, and physical impairments associated with the normal
aging process.
Vision changes include a decline in visual acuity resulting in inability to see objects on a
screen clearly, decreased capacity to focus at close range, or increased sensitivity to glare
from light reflecting or shining into the eye. These physiological changes, and many others,
impact the users ability to see Web objects and read online content. These factors need to be
taken into account when designing a website as aging population in most industrialized
counties means that this segment is increasing in size. These are the people who might need
the online services most due to mobility issues.