As a father of a 13-year-old boy, I've often marveled at how different we are when it comes to using technology. Call me old-fashioned, but my son has it good.

Even now, lots of businesses first design their website to work on laptops and desktops. Afterwards, they will also make sure those same sites function well enough on phones and tablets, almost like an afterthought. Surprisingly, that's what most people mean when they discuss responsive website design. In an era when even Google has advocated for mobile-first development, such a cart-before-the-horse approach doesn't signal digital transformation leadership.

One of the biggest problems that most organizations deal with these days has less to do with the sheer volume of data they're working with on a daily basis and is more about just how much of it is unstructured. Unstructured data, as the term suggests, is that information that either doesn't have some type of pre-defined model, or that isn't organized in any pre-determined way.

At its core, federated search is a technique commonly used for searching multiple collections of text at the same time — thus making it easier for employees within a business to find the data that they need to better do their jobs.

When it comes to your organization's data, it's critical for you to understand that you're talking about so much more than just a series of 1s and 0s sitting on a hard drive somewhere. Contained inside that data is the true story of what is going on with your business. It contains the insight you need to do better and more informed work on a daily basis. To always make the right decision as quickly as possible given the circumstances.

By far, the most important contributing factor to the success of your digital transformation efforts can be summed up in just a single word: Data. The type of data that your business is creating, storing, and sharing on a daily basis is inherently valuable.

A digital filing system, as the name suggests, is a way to use technology to convert some of the more traditional filing systems you're dealing with — ranging from regular filing cabinets to those stacks of folders that litter your office — into a digital format. Not only does this make it easier to search for the information you need when you need it the most, but it also makes the process of storing those documents for the long-term effortless as well.

To say that the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has represented a disruption for us all is, at this point, probably a bit of an understatement. Businesses of all types and their technology leaders were already trying to keep pace with the rapidly accelerating speed of digital business transformation. Then, the pandemic began in 2020 and upended just about everything, sending industries in wild new directions that few could have predicted.

Much to the joy of employees everywhere, "bring your own device" (otherwise known as BYOD) is a movement that has become common in the workplace. On the one hand, it makes a certain degree of sense. Why wouldn't you want your employees to be able to use the smartphones, tablets, and other types of mobile devices that they're already comfortable with?

One of the most important things to understand about the types of legacy systems that you're likely dealing with is that you're talking about so much more than just a minor inconvenience. Legacy solutions may start out helpful, but they typically don't last that way for every long. Before you know it, your IT teams will be struggling to manage the growing number of disconnected applications and data sources across your enterprise.