5 KEY ELEMENTS & 12 TIPS FOR DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION

In an era where?the most tech-innovative companies get rewarded with 1.8x growth (according to 2021 McKinsey studies) versus the report by CNBC that 60% of businesses had to close their doors permanently due to COVID, digital transformation is an extraordinary differentiator that offers survival and exponential growth.?

So, is your organization ready for this new “Fractured Future” era? ?

WHAT IS DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION?

Digital transformation is the rapid adoption of digital technologies that improve efficiency, value and innovation by an organization so it can transformation itself into the center of a digital platform or marketplace and embed your organization as part of the critical infrastructure of today, plus tomorrow. ?

This new model empowers organizations to leverage data collection for multiplied and much fast revenue generation while reducing costs to an absolute minimum.?As such, Amazon became a global digital shopping mall providing an online marketplace benefiting from huge savings by abolishing the costs of a storefront, sales staff and inventory and offering more targeted ai-empowered solutions for its clientele.

Be aware of the digital lipstick syndrome as yesterday’s managers may focus on protecting yesterday’s environment and refusing to adopt transformative technologies.?By living in the past, they miss an extraordinary opportunity to transform their business and embracing this fastest growth era ever that the pandemic created. Eastman Kodak is an example of a fantastic giant that was too slow to transform and decided to protect its traditional environment instead of embracing change and becoming the digital platform that companies like Getty Images, Adobe Stock and Shutterstock became.

Examples of digitally transformative technologies and approaches that are at the forefront include: artificial intelligence, 3D manufacturing, augmented reality, 5G, Blockchain, virtualization of point of sale systems,?machine learning, resilient cloud orchestration and Agile.

WHY NOW?

As reported by the World Economic Forum, the pandemic has given birth to an unprecedented amount of new global risks called the "Fractured Future". This latest reality includes: continued global health challenges, practices and costs, the rise of a mental health crisis era, unemployment, persistent and emerging risks, widening digital divides, youth disillusionment and geopolitical fragmentation.

For example, as a result of worker scarcity, lack of key components and raw materials, trucking shortages, increase compliance requirements and shipping backlogs, the supply chain is rapidly the next lethal strangling bottleneck of our economies. ?Further, as Acronis Cyber Readiness reports 53% increase in companies being exposed by cyber-attacks against their supply chain, Venture Beat reports 32% performance increase in companies using artificial intelligence (AI) via errors reduction.

Across all industries, business leaders are now confronted to new realities with shortages in manpower, materials and resources, immensely burdened and under-protected supply chain, countless members of the ecosystem (e.g. partners/suppliers/staff) are no longer in existence, augmenting cyber-crime, hyper-complex world (sense-making intelligence), flexible and remote work practices, new regulations, constant scrutiny (media, social media, citizens, etc.) & higher expectations.

5 KEY ELEMENTS OF THIS DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION

1)?????DEFINE A GROUND-BREAKING NEW DIGITAL STRATEGY – As entry barriers are at an all time low with limited competition, low interest rates and powerfully enabling technologies, go back to the drawing board and define a new powerful corporate identity that aligns with the new needs of your clientele.?Become social-media obsessed with your customers so you new corporate mission, goals and roadmap are in extreme alignment with your clientele wants.?Ensure that your clientele takes pride and ownership throughout your lifecyles and pay particular attention to micro-trend analysis so you can capture the hidden wants (aka immense growth opportunities. Use rapid and low-cost prototyping such as 3D manufacturing so you can become more flexible, efficient, unique, irresistible and critical.?An example of this critical transformation is happening at Adidas where they are now offering the opportunity for customers to co-create new products and offering extremely personalized 3D manufacturing.

2)??????IGNITE DIGITAL INNOVATION – Start by expanding the scope of your market analysis by developing an on-going tight relationship with all members of your ecosystem.?Use multi-platform fluent chat solutions like Telegram so you can canvass, differentiate and take market leadership in building tech solutions and developing new market strategies that best align with your entire environment.?Look at digitalizing your current products through backward reconstruction via digitalization.?Continuously experiment in an Agile manner so you find yourself in a never-ending growth and make money selling off your failed experiments to Venture Capitalists. Make sure that you have in place well-oiled orchestrated resiliency and crisis communication plans that all know how to execute flawlessly. Collaborate heavily with start-ups as they are most poised to innovate rapidly.?Digitalize your value chain so you can reshape processes, ensure better multi-lateral collaboration, engage continuously smaller cross-functional teams for more valuable delivery and be empowered to experiment so your organization can deliver original digital innovation that they entire world embraces as their own creation too.

3)?????BECOME THE CRITICAL ENABLER OF A NEW DIGITAL PLATFORM - By embracing your economic ecosystem, the more central you become as an enabler, the more critical and indispensable you become.?Remember to develop partnerships with all members of your ecosystem so, all have a clear role and gain immense benefits from this relationship.?Become the dream maker,?As you transform into a business enabler that connects sellers and buyers, ensure global co-creation, competitive interactions and deliver secure transactions between sellers and buyers for which there is currently no digital infrastructure.?Consider how Ford now has reduced its manufacturing capabilities but, is growing larger than ever before through global partnerships where all play a key role in their enhanced ecosystem.?Also, harness the power of crowds like Netflix is doing in a context-based approach with its Netflix prize in opposition to the contrast, community-based approach that Wikipedia and Linux are using.?By creating innovation contests, you will reach a much larger audience and can iterate via multi-rounds of development with attractive prices that will capture the interest of top-tier talents.?Make sure that you organize innovation communities in advance so contributors are recognized properly and IP rights are clearly addressed, understood by all.

4)?????HARNESS AI, AIMING TOWARDS ARTIFICIAL GENERAL INTELLIGENCE (AGI) - Artificial intelligence has been developed so algorithms can now replicate tasks historically requiring human intelligence.?This has led to great developments improving the quality of life for millions globally by earlier cancer detection, finding better romantic partners, etc.?Yet, we still can’t codify human reasoning as it is too complex and can also not emulate human-powered innovation.?So, as AI experienced a rebirth around 2012 with very large databases (VLDBMS), better processing and new learning approach, one needs to well-defined upcoming AI experiments, decide on an approach (top-down versus ground-up trial and error machine learning), focus on high-impacts and avoid biases through analysis of several segments and audit before release while ensuring privacy.?Best advice I received, become data and process-quality obsessive.

5)?????REORG IN BETTER ALIGNMENT WITH THE 5 AGILE PLUS PRINCIPLES – Make sure that your entire ecosystem is included in this re-org so all parties are active participants of:

a.??????DECENTRALIZED DECISION-MAKING for well-informed decisions and more timely deployed solutions

b.?????CROSS-FUNCTIONAL TEAMS for faster, more cost-efficient and well-rounded results

c.??????CULTURAL NORMS FOR HEALTHY NETWORKS where outcomes are prioritized and iterative (done beats perfect) as well as experimentation / innovation is highly encouraged

d.?????CONTINUOUS LEARNING becomes a must for all involved parties and gets rewarded

e.??????DIGITAL TOOLS ARE USED FOR TRANSPARENCY

12 KEY TAKE-AWAYS:

1)?????ADOPT A NEW LEADERSHIP APPROACH: in order to survive, executives, boards and investors will have to change their business models radically in order to fully leverage the gift that digital transformation offers.?Prioritize customer obsession and value delivery over everything else as part of your new digital strategy.

2)?????AVOID DIGITAL LIPTICK: As Amazon took 20 years to transform itself, no organization is now left with such time leniency.?So, as profound as the necessary transformations are, they will have to be implemented rapidly in a very iterative manner where continuous learning is a must for all members of the ecosystem and community learning becomes a daily reality.

3)?????EMBRACE DIGITALIZATION WITH CUSTOMERS: Ensure ownership by customers, partners, suppliers, etc. of the outcome throughout all stages of its lifecycle.?Celebrate all stages and turn into profits your lessons learnt from failures.

4)?????BE OBSESSED WITH GROWING CUSTOMER VALUE: Align your personalized customer delivery with the vision and dreams that your clients have.

5)?????EXPAND BEYOND FOR ALL: Make sure that all parties benefit from your central role in the new digital platform and ecosystem that you are creating.

6)?????DIGITALIZE ALL ACTIVITIES: So the focus of all human interactions is on innovation as opposed to costly, tedious tasks.

7)?????CAPITALIZE ON DATA MONETIZATION: Correlate new data to organizational value.

8)?????ENGAGE AND GROW LARGER ECOSYSTEM: Ensure on-going communications with all parties as well as use engagement tools like competitions with appealing rewards to secure online interactions via social media.

9)?????SPEED-UP DEVELOPMENT: Leverage the wisdom of the crowd, determine smaller deployment timeframes, celebrate all milestones and honor an historical log of the continuous improvements.

10)?HARNESS TRIAL AND ERROR MACHINE LEARNING: engage closely with your GRC team so a culture of tolerance and continuous improvements is in place.?The main objective is for smarter decisions to be made from lessons learnt and shared, greater speed to be acquired through collaboration and lower cost to be reached by repurposing completed goods and supplies obtained from extended partnerships.?As AI is the most disruptive technology, leverage it to improve supply chain.

11)?MAKE YOUR ORGANIZATION MORE AGILE: Transfer decision making to a decentralized model so you can move faster, learn faster and make much better decisions.

12)?EXPERIMENT CONTINUOUSLY: If you fail, learn your lessons and share them with others.?If it succeeds, scale up.

Time for you now to take the radical steps necessary so your organization and expanded ecosystem become a key digital enabler via your new digital platform so you can operate as the center part of the critical digital infrastructure of today and tomorrow. ??For more information on how to get there expediently, visit: https://executivesconfidante.com/ .