By Manish Godha, Founder & CEO, Advaiya Solutions
For the better part of the last decade, “Digital Transformation” has dominated the corporate agenda. It has been the primary driver behind massive investments in cloud migration, data lake implementation, and monolithic ERP upgrades.
However, a closer examination of the current landscape reveals a stark disconnect between this promise and the operational reality. While organisations have successfully modernized their digital cores, the “last mile” of business operations often remains fragmented, manual, and surprisingly analogue.
This gap is why Peripheral Automation is emerging not merely as a tactical correction but as the critical missing link in achieving true, end-to-end digital transformation.
The Paradox of the “Core” vs. the “Periphery”
To understand the necessity of Peripheral Automation, one must first recognize the architectural tension within modern enterprises. On one hand, there are the “Core Business Applications,” which include Systems of Record (SoR) such as SAP, Oracle, and Salesforce. Core Business Applications represent the foundational elements of an organisation and are used to provide permanence, integrity, and security for all data within the enterprise. As a result, these applications are built to remain stable and risk averse.
Changing these Core Business Applications is very difficult, time-consuming, and expensive, much like trying to turn the direction of an aircraft carrier.
On the other side lies “Periphery”. This is the realm of everyday business execution—where the actual work happens. The ongoing changes, uncertainties, and variations in situational context will continue to generate chaos and confusion when organisations attempt to implement a digital transformation strategy. By attempting to fit the fluid, situational needs into a rigid core of systems that were primarily developed to support the traditional manner of doing business, organisations have created costly, over-customized systems that create technical debt and lock them into this technology for many years to come. The net result is that the digital transformation strategy of many organisations has become a continuous source of frustration and agony, both for the end user and for the organisation itself.
Bridging the Gap with Peripheral Automation
Peripheral Automation offers a strategic resolution to this paradox. It’s an architectural philosophy that advocates “differential innovation.” Rather than disrupting stable cores to accommodate fleeting business needs, organisations build agile, tailored applications and workflows that sit on top of the core systems. This approach treats the enterprise as a layered ecosystem. The core remains the single source of truth, but the periphery becomes the “system of engagement”. By leveraging modern low-code platforms and composable architecture, leaders can deploy lightweight, purpose-built automation tools that address specific friction points without altering the underlying infrastructure.
A key aspect of the Peripheral Automation approach is that it enables strategic agility. While the core infrastructure elements need to be robust—and thus difficult to change—the layers build on such stable core, with differential innovation, can allow rapid experimentation without causing disruption. Also, given the peripheral automation approach emphasizes inventorying and using the existing data entities and process blocks, it enables a much better utilization of existing investments while delivering innovation and fresher experiences.
Digital initiatives must ultimately influence the bottom line. Peripheral automation does this in three direct ways:
Revenue growth
By removing friction from customer-facing processes—quotations, fulfillment, service operations— organisations respond faster, personalize better, and convert more opportunities. When intelligence and automation reach the point of interaction, the business can scale moments that drive revenue without scaling cost proportionally.
Operational efficiency
Peripheral automation reduces process latency, manual effort, and rework. By addressing specific pain points rather than attempting broad, multi-year system redesigns, companies unlock measurable efficiency in weeks. This precision improves throughput, reduces cycle times, and frees teams to focus on high-value work.
Organisational efficacy
Workflows aligned with how teams actually operate promote clarity and accountability. Leaders gain visibility into real performance conditions, enabling more timely decisions. Employees benefit from intuitive tools that reduce cognitive load and enhance execution quality.
AI: The Multiplier of Value
The periphery automation represents the intersection of data and the real world, serving as the point of data capture. By embedding AI into these peripheral layers, organisations can transform static data operations into active decision support. In this model, peripheral automation acts as the delivery mechanism for AI. It operationalizes intelligence, placing it directly in the employee’s workflow, thereby augmenting human capability rather than just replacing it.
The Strategic Imperative for Leadership
C-suite leaders must move away from “monolithic” thinking and embrace a new IT strategy to fully support the digital experience of customers and realize the benefits of Peripheral Automation. Instead, they will need to adopt a “composable” approach to IT differently than they have in years past.
Adopting this new IT strategy will provide companies with three competitive advantages:
Speed to Value: Unlike multi-year ERP rollouts, peripheral solutions can be deployed in weeks, delivering immediate ROI and solving burning business problems “now” rather than “eventually”.
Agility and Resilience: When market conditions change, modifying a peripheral app is fast and low- risk. This allows the organisation to pivot operations without compromising its financial backbone.
Employee Experience: By removing the friction of manual data entry and disjointed processes, leaders can significantly improve the day-to-day experience of their workforce, attracting and retaining talent who expect modern, intuitive tools.
Digital transformation is not a destination; it is a state of perpetual adaptability. By securing the core and intelligently automating the periphery, organizations can finally close the gap between their digital aspirations and operational realities. The pragmatic, high-impact path leads to a truly transformed enterprise, not just digitised.