The complexity of the digital transformation

Recent history shows that many companies face high levels of difficulty to initiate and to transform their activities to a digital 'process'. It remains a challenge to insure simplicity for customers while developing the company’s assets.

Besides the question "how can we adapt?", one might ask how we can provide access and control to the customer while remaining in line with the values ??and the company's legacy products.

Different C-level views

In an executive committee caricature, one might find very different expectations and perspectives:

In many cases the CDO must make an integrative plan of all business components, products and resources relevant to the company.

- The CMO needs to make the brand and products more modern and accessible digitally, if possible before the usual competition. He/she faces the risk to lose advantage against purely digital 'disrupters'

- The CCO and COO should ensure that conventional product distribution and production adapt without creating "lethal revenue gap bubble" facilitating the emergence of newcomers including the above-mentioned digital disrupters

- The CIO or CTO often sees the CDO challenging "legacy systems" architectures through a plan that must now be co-developed with newcomers. He might feel that work performed by IT is underestimated and that the modernization project portfolio underway is ignored.

- The CFO must accept that the company often has to invest in expensive digital plan that will take years to unroll with depreciation and uncertain ROI while this question is resonating: “How to justify investing while often nobody really understands when all this will turn into real business replacing the existing?”

- The CPO must manage resources that have not necessarily adapted yet and compensate by finding without delay dozens of experienced “geniuses” motivated to join the business although the company is not the hottest Silicon Valley start-up

- The CEO needs to measure results and to track the progress of the digital transformation plan to be able to justify investments

In addition to seven relatively distant points of view, a transformation never comes without unexpected problems, delays and aborted projects.

Consulting firms and other experts are not necessarily of good advice in this defining moment with their capacity to destroy big ideas by a few sentences:

 "no one has done it so it is not a good idea or a priority " or

 "before defining what we want to do, let’s start by analyzing the pre-existing resource and begin to hire several hundred people at the global level we lack in parallel creating the plan "...

The risks associated with divergent interests

Each C-level, anchored in his main role, carries a risk to the development of the project, and some examples can be observed near and far:

- The CDO not knowing where to start, settles with the "me too" and “copycat” of the more inspired advanced competitors

- The CMO somehow seeks to add makeup on the "me too" and present it as innovation and then struggles to find how to boost engagement.

The worst idea is then to use incentives to increase the use of the digital medium! The discount is never the permanent solution to launch something big and strong. It is rather the opposite, it is generally used to sell something obsolete cheaply.

- CCO / COO opposes any launch without parity with the existing functions and seamless integration with production systems

- The CIO / CTO puts his job in the balance imposing to keep control of all developments in these services, which effectively never become agile and responsive and potentially get stuck in the slow evolution cycle of historical systems. At best he consults suppliers and historical IT agencies that naturally offer distant and expensive solutions for real business needs but guarantee no headaches for the IT department

- The CFO shows 'quarter' after 'quarter' that all this cost much and that these investments are preventing some potential acquisitions, even some which seemed to include digital parts saving years (provided they can integrate and merge IT systems which proves difficult most of the time).

- The CPO eventually procrastinates because the C-levels group does not give him enough unity of vision and purpose, while the talent market is showing incredibly signs of "anemia".

- The CEO carries the greatest risk when he requires the foresight of old friend "expert" or longtime senior consultant who (of course) knows exactly what to do first. This sometimes turns out to be just what is already on the shelves as developed with more or less success for another company or project before. How many C-levels will oppose this aware of the potential prejudice in the relationship with their immediate boss and eventually putting their job at risk?

Here we see how these projects can explode in flight, with the company remaining finally still or giving birth to lukewarm compliant platforms without real motivation to change things - when the company does not suddenly consider itself the new star of the Silicon Valley trusting subcontractors yet delivers better than the "me too" at the cost of digital Northern Californian caviar. Delays generated by these failures are not at all what startups like Facebook called "fail fast"! The “fail fast” is to have an idea on Monday, make a model in the week and realize the following Monday that the idea is not good.

How to put the odds on the safe side?

So how to manage the digital transformation in light of this complexity?

After a long time of managing large interactive public projects and observing how in recent years some major groups and their agencies and partners have been doing it, I have come to the conclusion that only an "under the radar" mode could work.

The CDO must have a clear mandate of the CEO and all other C-level to create the plan and platforms / digital products independently with historical departments.

Independence does not mean total separation. The understanding,  creation and integration of new business tools in facilitating the customer experience based on the habits and customer devices, must be done by learning processes and systems. Architects of the digital transformation must successfully soften the pain of CIO / CTO, while designing what will make the public success for the good of the relieved CMO, as related products and services to the existing CCO will now use / market. The legitimate plan will enable the CPO to find the right people and to promote those already part of the group. The CFO and CEO will plan with phases and KPIs supporting the efforts and reassuring shareholders. I do not speak here of the classic pattern: 1-pilot 2-small market 3-full deployment, but quick wins bearing maximum impact on the market and users, without requiring dozens of back-ends redesign. A quick win is not a site to place an order or an app that does the same as those already launched by the nearest competitors. A quick win is a digital vector that enables a central asset simply as well as an innovative way for customers to rediscover a process / product that has long existed.

Digital Commando mode

To avoid being trapped by a lack of resources to start, it is possible to operate in "commando" style with small agencies and the ability to develop in a few months what would require a year or more by internal IT staff. The first project is an attempt to answer the dreaded question: "If Airbnb and Uber landed in our industry / market, what would they do first? "

The role of the CIO / CTO is to find smart solutions for connections between existing systems and "front ends" of the first external digital projects.

The role of the CMO and the CCO is working with the CDO on what will have the greatest impact on the business and how to engage with end customers without devaluing the product via the short fuse discounts.

The CEO meanwhile must grant to the CDO the ability to move quickly and take shortcuts to prove that the transformation can function prior to the consolidation of all services and systems.

The CDO proving:

- he can understand where the real assets are and what digital challenges are facing the group

- how to turn them on and make them more easily accessible without undermining what makes the activity

will positively impact the entire business with the support all reassured colleagues.

This task is not easy and requires the assimilation of issues and capacity constraints of virtually every positions C-level group in a short time, to assess the what and the how and the why???.

Unfortunately, it is rare to combine in the same person and the same career experiences of CEO, CMO, CIO / CTO, CCO / COO, CPO, CFO or at least enough understanding of these areas ...

Eric Caen

October 2016

@ericcaen