How Digital Enterprises Delivers Next-Generation Business Performance

As your business looks towards its post-pandemic future, creating a digital enterprise that delivers your business goals means using the right digital tools to ensure your organisation thrives.

According to the latest research from CEBR (Centre for Economics and Business Research) and Virgin Media Business, the UK is predicted to achieve a ￡232 billion boost to GDP thanks to COVID-driven digital change.

When I read statements like that, my initial reaction is to ask how businesses will achieve this massive expansion? I believe all UK businesses are on an upward trajectory but need to ensure they have a clearly defined digital transformation plan and the tools necessary to create next-generation digital enterprises.

The digital tools businesses use to innovate will influence and transform every customer touchpoint. Also, it’s vital to also embrace digital collaboration tools which connect teams and fosters creativity.

What is critical is that all these tools are seamlessly integrated together. Data siloes and legacy communications services are all replaced with dynamic systems that free a business to become a next-generation enterprise.

When I am speaking to clients, I am often surprised by the fact that they haven’t yet clearly defined how they will transition to the digital enterprise they know they must become to remain competitive across their marketplaces.

?I believe a mature digital enterprise is one that uses technology to define its competitive advantage and leverage the digital space to modernise, refine and enhance every business process.

Also, I am asked how I define digital transformation and how this leads to a digital enterprise that thrives. I describe?the three 'I's', which are:?

• Innovation
• Industrialisation
• Internationalisation

When integrated together, these components form the foundation upon which a successful digital enterprise can be built.

How businesses organise their processes and workforces has changed out of all recognition. Mass remote working is evolving into hybrid working. Organisational performance now relies upon a suite of digital tools to deliver the working environments digital enterprises need to operate.

The virtual has replaced the physical for many transactions, touchpoints and communications channels. To unlock the full potential within these fundamental changes,?I want enterprises to take a new approach to business. This new approach?embraces change and uses advanced digital tools to support all these virtual channels.

What is vital, however, is to ensure your business balances the technologies it uses to innovate with excellent customer (internal or external) experiences (CX). Of course, technology and CX are not mutually exclusive. For me, they are symbiotic and form an ecosystem that defines how digital enterprises connect with their marketplaces and deliver their services to customers.

Next-generation experiences

I remember reading in 2018 that by 2023, three-quarters of all the IT spending businesses make would be with third-party platforms, and over 90% of companies would build digital native IT environments. At the time, Frank Gens, former Senior Vice President and Chief Analyst at IDC, said:

"As industries – and the global economy – rapidly realign and consolidate around digital innovation, CXOs must race to reinvent their organisations for the fast-paced multiplied innovation world.” Frank succinctly summarised how all businesses would have to become digital enterprises to meet current and future challenges.

Microsoft observed that: "Digital transformation is helping organisations across every industry adjust to changing business and customer needs, while impacting corporate culture and benefiting society on a global scale.”

One of the three ‘I’s’ I often talk about is Internationalisation. Digital enterprises are not bound by any geography. The digital spaces they define for their customers and clients are constantly evolving as these enterprises innovate at speed.

Digital enterprises that benefit most from deploying digital tools have an opportunity to transform their businesses. Embracing international markets, expanding their domestic footprint, and reshaping their company processes to become enterprises fit to thrive in the post-pandemic business landscape.

Building new digital spaces

Many of the businesses I speak to ask what the future looks like for their enterprises and industries. My response is, as the saying goes, the best way to predict the future is to invent it.

In Accenture’s Technology Vision 2021 report, I remember nodding when I read: “In the last year enterprises were forced to confront deep-seated assumptions about how fast the organisation can pivot, where or how work gets done, even what they sell and to whom. While some froze, watching their old convictions crumble, others shattered the bureaucracies and assumptions holding them back, becoming the leaders that everyone will follow.”

These new leaders embrace the tools that will enable them to build robust, agile, innovative, and secure enterprises that speak to their customers directly using multiple channels and touchpoints.

For me and my team, personalised, bespoke service delivery is at the centre of every conversation we have with the businesses we work with. We always strive for customer first, collaborative relationships based upon aligning expectations with tangible outcomes that can be delivered.

I see the future of digital enterprises as bright and prosperous. To obtain this goal needs partners and not sellers. Your business is at a reflex point where the decisions you make today will lay the foundations of your digital enterprise.