Applying Digital Transformation Trends in Your Business: An Expert Guide for 2025

Real-World Improvements in Healthcare

Healthcare providers are turning to modern technologies to improve both clinician productivity and patient care. Today’s key digital transformation trends in healthcare include AI-assisted image reading, electronic health-record interoperability, and telemonitoring.

At Coherent Solutions, we’ve seen firsthand how changes can deliver results. Our engineers worked with a healthcare company to implement robotic process automation (RPA), which resulted in 85% faster data processing and a 92% cost reduction while also minimizing the risk of human error.

Digital Transformation Trends in Banking & Financial Services

As regulations tighten, banks, insurers, and fintechs are under growing pressure to adapt and develop new solutions. Some of the more pressing regulatory issues include:

• Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA):  Since January 17, 2025, banks, insurers, and fintechs must prove their ability to withstand ICT outages, meet mandatory incident‐reporting requirements, and manage third-party risks.

• FCA Consumer Duty: In effect from July 2023, firms are legally required to demonstrate that every product, fee, and communication delivers “good outcomes” for retail customers.

• Basel III “Endgame”: Set to take effect on July 1, 2025, these capital requirements demand that large and mid-size banks enhance their data quality and modelling capabilities.

In response to these pressures, the current digital transformation trends in financial services include reg-tech, secure open-banking APIs, and AI-powered fraud engines. All of which is backed by real-time risk reporting.

One Silicon Valley-based firm decided to address such challenges by building a data science platform for risk assessment. Working together, we helped them develop an intuitive platform that made it easier to check the quality of financial data, spot issues fast, and explore trends, enabling them to make informed decisions backed by data, not assumptions. 

Adapting Retail to Meet Modern Demands

Retailers are using edge AI cameras, dynamic pricing engines, and hyper-personalized loyalty apps to convert foot traffic into lifetime value. These tools reflect some of the most impactful digital transformation trends in retail, as they help collect meaningful customer data to boost revenue and strengthen customer engagement.

At the same time however, long-standing priorities like Single Sign-On (SSO), user-friendly UX, and scalable architecture remain essential. Retailers who invest in these foundations are better equipped to adapt while those who don’t risk falling behind. 

Smart Manufacturing Moves Beyond the Pilot Stage

Factories are shifting from pilot cells to plant-wide rollouts, driven by GenAI work-instruction bots and predictive-maintenance digital twins. These developments reflect key digital transformation trends in manufacturing, with one of the more promising outcomes being workforce retention through upskilling. In fact, 94% of firms say smart-manufacturing tech allows them to retain headcount by upskilling workers—letting existing teams grow instead of replacing them.

Another major shift is toward cloud-based solutions. For example, we helped Daikin Industries cut costs by 50% by developing a custom cloud-based management platform. This gave users greater data visibility while maintaining compliance through strict RBA controls.

New Learning Tools Reshape the Classroom

Digitalization now targets both access and outcomes in education. One of the most visible digital transformation trends in education is the rise of AI-powered tutors and predictive analytics. Some 60% of educators use AI tools daily to personalize learning and improve retention. Immersive VR/AR labs for subjects like chemistry and anatomy not only cut consumable costs but have been shown to increase concept retention by 15-20%. Meanwhile, AI-assisted grading can reduce marking time by 80%, giving faculty more opportunities to mentor students.
 

Digitizing Operations in Energy and Utilities

Utilities are increasingly being digitized, with key digital transformation trends in energy & utilities driving change across operations. One major innovation is the use of grid digital twins—which combine SCADA, GIS, and IoT—to give dispatchers real-time situational awareness and scenario-planning capabilities. AI-powered scheduling has been shown to boost field-crew productivity by 25-30%, while ML asset-health models help reallocate up to 80% of CapEx toward the riskiest assets.

AI Agents: The Leading Digital Transformation Trend in 2025

According to the 2024 Broadridge Digital Transformation & Next-Gen Technology Study, more than 95% of firms are investing in AI. Among those investments, GenAI agents are the most discussed solutions for the next decade. Why? It’s all because they can:

• Slash modernization timelines by 40-50% and trim delivery costs by 40% by automating requirements gathering, code scaffolding, and test-case generation.

• Bridge talent gaps by capturing institutional knowledge in easy-to-access workflows, freeing up SMEs for higher-value work.

• Automate orchestration by covering everything from claims routing in insurance to adaptive scheduling in factories, often delivering double-digit productivity gains within the first six months.

Beyond these benefits, AI agents also enable autonomous operations, enhanced personalization, fraud detection, and personalized healthcare treatment. As stated by Igor Epshteyn, the CEO of Coherent Solutions, “Early adoption of AI agents allows organizations to deliver innovative services and stay ahead in the market.”

Technologies You Should Use for Digital Transformation

While AI continues to dominate the headlines, it’s just one piece of the innovation puzzle. Here are several other technologies defining the next wave of digital transformation industry trends and how your organization can benefit from their usage.

Machine Learning

Machine learning continues to deliver measurable value in forecasting, customer targeting, and cost-out automation. It’s also easier to deploy than some GenAI models. Teams that redirect budgets from hype to high-impact ML see faster ROI and the data-driven culture they’ve long wished to build.

Blockchain & Distributed Ledgers

Enterprise blockchains now track supply-chain provenance, automate cross-border settlement, and anchor zero-trust data exchanges. Smart contracts cut reconciliation cycles from days to minutes, while tokenization opens entirely new revenue streams from carbon credits to real-estate shares—all on secure, auditable systems where every change is traceable. As a result, you get improved security and reliability.

Robotic Process Automation

RPA 2.0 pairs task bots with GenAI, letting software robots handle exceptions, read unstructured docs, and interact with users. Adoption is rising fast as 53% of businesses have already implemented RPA. And the payoff for doing so is real, up to 200% ROI in the first year alone.

Biometrics & Digital Identity

Passkeys, face-ID payments, and voiceprint verification are replacing outdated passwords with who-you-are factors. They slash the risk of credential phishing, support compliance with regulations like PSD2 and FedRAMP mandates, and keep personally identifiable data out of the cloud when combined with on-device processing. What you get is compliance with modern regulations and secure customer data.

Edge Computing & 5G

As data-hungry IoT sensors, vision AI, and AR services evolve, pushing computation to the edge reduces latency from hundreds of milliseconds to near-instant speeds and minimizes bandwidth demands. Manufacturers, retailers, and telcos are now deploying micro data centers in stores, rigs, and cell towers to run analytics even when connections are unreliable. This turns “near real-time” into “right-now” decision-making.

Max Belov

CTO at Coherent Solutions

 

This technology is transforming industries like manufacturing, healthcare, and autonomous vehicles by enabling real-time analytics and decision-making, enhancing efficiency and responsiveness.

Crypto & Digital Assets

The EUs MiCA regulation and new U.S. stable-coin legislation, enable bank-grade custody, regulated tokenization, and near-instant T+0 settlement for digital assets. Treasury teams are piloting on-chain cash management, while loyalty programs are issuing tradable reward tokens—creating secondary-market engagement and enabling real-time accounting for better control and efficiency.

AR/VR

Extended reality is getting more accessible as hardware slims down and prices fall. IDC forecasts a 44% CAGR for headsets through 2028. Modern startups already use AR for technician guidance and VR for immersive training, customer co-design, and digital showrooms. What was once a novelty is now a revenue driver.

Starting Digital Transformation is Easier Than You Think

Digital transformation has a reputation for being risky, but the right approach significantly improves your odds of success. A Gartner survey found that only 48% of digital transformation projects succeed. Common reasons for failure include lack of commitment, poor pilot design, resistance to change, and most importantly a lack of outcome-driven metrics.

Culture also plays a critical role, as 80% of initiatives miss their ROI targets, and one-third of executives blame entrenched behaviors or siloed teams.

Still, the upside is clear. As Deloitte’s global study shows, companies that align digital change capabilities with strategy and tech investments receive a 14% market-cap premium over peers that treat transformation as a bolt-on project.

At Coherent Solutions, we’ve helped guide clients through this process at every stage. Drawing on insights from our engineering teams and CEO, Igor Epshteyn, here are five essential steps to launch a successful digital transformation and unlock measurable ROI:

1. Set a single target backed by data. Start by selecting a high-impact KPI (churn, OEE, DSO) and auditing the data owners, quality gaps, and governance rules you’ll need to move the needle.

2. Form a “fusion team” that embeds culture from day one. Technical talent alone won’t cut it. Lasting transformation succeeds when engineers, operators, HR, and finance co-create workflows and share accountability. Nominate change champions from each function and give the team decision-making rights to avoid political bottlenecks.

3. Prototype a contained use case in weeks. Choose a small, automatable use case, like AI ticket triage or predictive maintenance, that can ship fast (think 90 days). Early feedback will uncover data debt, deliver a quick win to leadership, and build confidence for larger investments.

4. Upskill the pilot team while the tech ships. Technology outpaces skills unless learning is embedded. Offer micro-credentials in agile, prompt engineering, and data literacy that match the prototype’s needs. When 70% of the team earns a new skill, you lock in a workforce that can scale to the next use case.

5. Measure, share, and reinvest (or kill) the pilot. End the pilot with a “continue/pivot/stop” demo. Publish the KPI delta, cost curve, and lessons learned. If ROI is clear, double the budget for phase 2. If not, stop the effort and redirect talent and resources. This transparency accelerates buy-in and ensures leaders are funding only what works.
   
   

Why the Right Partner Matters

Digital transformation is never “finished.”  The most successful businesses are those that commit to continuous evolution—adapting, improving, and growing as new technologies and challenges emerge.

But the process doesn’t have to be overwhelming. In fact, organizations that outsource 50% of their customer-facing product overhauls were 52% more likely to have an “extremely positive” experience compared to those that kept most of the work in-house. The reason? The right digital product engineering services partner brings the expertise to fill skill gaps, modernize technologies, and deliver innovation aligned with your goals.