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Phases of an IIoT digital transformation journey - AWS Prescriptive Guidance
Before you begin

Phases of an IIoT digital transformation journey

AWS Professional Services uses a phased approach to build and realize a plan for an IIoT digital transformation journey:

  • Phase 1: Identifying business objectives – Clearly identify and prioritize the business opportunities or problems to address. These are the main driver and the foundation for the overall process. Your business objectives should be ambitious yet achievable, with top-down shared goals for the organization. A typical IIoT digital transformation journey is more than a single project. We recommend a holistic approach for success by thinking big, starting small, and scaling fast.

  • Phase 2: Evaluating your current state – Assess your current enterprise, IT, and OT systems, and assess the skill sets of your current team to identify any gaps. Invest in technology, training, or resources for the areas where you need long-term success. For success, ensure that you have strategic alignment between your IT and OT teams.

  • Phase 3: Defining a blueprint – Define your blueprint, which is your target reference architecture. It should be repeatable and reusable so that you can rapidly deploy it at scale across industrial sites. This blueprint is the foundation of your journey, and it helps you realize your business objectives by using a think big, start small, and scale fast approach.

  • Phase 4: Enabling continuous innovation – When your blueprint is operational, use the collected data to identify opportunities for continuous improvement and refinement. Continue to explore solutions to maximize insights from existing and new data.

Before you begin

It is important to have executive-level commitment to the long-term investment of an IIoT digital transformation journey. Executive sponsors must be aligned to a sustainable strategy and have patience for achieving the target outcomes. According to The age of analytics: Competing in a data-driven world (McKinsey Global Institute study), "Less than one-third of all respondents say their organizations have engaged a chief digital officer to support their transformations. But those that do are 1.6 times more likely than others to report a successful digital transformation.” Therefore, prior to starting your journey, make sure the executive team understands and is aligned on the investment strategy, budget, and timeline. Confirm that all of the business stakeholders across IT and OT are committed.