Digital Transformation – Who is it for?

Most articles that we read about Digital Transformation talk about its importance, its relevance and fundamentally what is “Digital Transformation”.

There are several actors in the script of Digital Transformation – IT engineers, product vendors, business analysts, CIO, CDO, CTO, CEO, CFO, CMO and many other C”X”Os. We talk endlessly about the need of being in the forefront of emerging technologies, cloud adoption, cyber-security, infinite scaling, dev-sec-ops, speed of software releases, speed of access, ease of access and many more concepts that cover one or many focus areas of Digital Transformation.

The question is “Who are these for”? I have heard many leaders talk about why these are needed and who will benefit from Digital Transformation – for businesses to know what they are getting and being a partner in tech initiatives, for support and development staff to work together, for application and infrastructure owners to have joint accountability, for bringing in agility to business, to be competitive, to be relevant for organizations and many more.

In my view, they all are actors of the script called Digital Transformation. The real audience is the end consumer. The end consumer dictates everything today. The new age of digital and internet has opened endless possibilities and choices for the end consumer. For a retailer, it is about customer retention, making shopping experience seamless, cross-selling and up-selling to the consumer. For an insurance firm, it is about retaining and making the buying and claim experience seamless. For a government, it is about bringing government services to its citizens in a seamless manner. Consumers have choices; even in the case of government services; at least in democratic societies and possibly in non-democratic societies as well (consider an investor exploring options between countries).

One common theme that you will see in my above references is “experience”. It is all about the experience that a consumer gets. The better the consumer experience, the better the chances that your organization will succeed. All organizations driving Digital Transformation need to have the consumer and the consumer’s experience as the focal point. Enabling cloud, enabling mobile experience, speed of transactions, ease of navigation, access to required information, security of data, rapid and dynamic changes to features; all themes of digital transformation; are for the consumer. The actors of an organisation are only enablers for this.

If the consumer aspect is not the focal point of Digital Transformation, providers of these services will have to navigate existential crises.