Digital Transformation Game Plan

Introduction

We can see the Digital Age unfolding everywhere we look. After getting out of bed, you might find yourself checking your watch for the quality of your sleep and asking Alexa for the weather; before walking out the door, you could order your favorite Starbucks coffee on their mobile app, get a ride to work with Uber, and start listening to your favorite music on Spotify. This doesn’t even include the time you might spend checking emails, Twitter, and Facebook, among all the other digital social activities.

Here is another story: on September 17, 2018, a small grocery store opened in an office building in downtown Chicago. It sells mostly prepared grab-and-go food and staples. You need to scan a QR code from your mobile phone at a turnstile when you walk into the store. When you finish your shopping, you can walk right out without seeing a cashier to pay. In fact, there is no cashier in the store at all. Your account is automatically charged for the items you take.

How does the store know which items you take from the shelf? The moment you walk into the store, a network of cameras and sensors begin to capture your shopping actions. These are not the simple security cameras we usually see in stores; they are computer vision, weight sensors, motion sensors, radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags, and more. When you take a sandwich from the shelf and put it in your bag, a variety of digital footprints related to this action will be collected and sent to a system. Artificial ...