Online guide to digital business transformation

Digital transformation is the cultural, organisational and operational change of an organisation, industry or ecosystem through smart integration of digital technologies, processes and competencies across all levels and functions in a staged way. Digital transformation?leverages technologies to create value for various stakeholders?(customers in the broadest possible sense), innovate and acquire the capabilities to rapidly adapt to changing circumstances.

While digital transformation is predominantly used in a business context, it also impacts other organisations such as governments, public sector agencies and organisations which are involved in tackling societal challenges such as pollution and ageing populations by leveraging one or more of these existing and emerging technologies.

The development of new competencies revolves around the capacities to be more agile, people-oriented, innovative, customer-centric, streamlined, efficient and able to induce/leverage opportunities to change the status quo and tap into new data sources – and service-driven revenues. Digital transformation efforts and strategies are often more urgent and present in markets with a high degree of commoditisation.?

Present and future shifts and changes, leading to the necessity of faster deployment of a digital transformation strategy, can be induced by several causes, often at the same time, on the levels of customer behaviour and expectations, new economic realities, societal shifts?(e.g. ageing populations), ecosystem/industry disruption and?(the accelerating adoption and innovation regarding)?emerging or existing digital technologies.

Digital business transformation – a holistic approach

Digital technologies – and the ways we use them in our personal lives, work and society – have changed the face of business and will continue to do so. This has always been so but the pace at which it is happening is accelerating and faster than the pace of transformation in organisations.

Digital transformation is probably not the best term to describe the realities it covers. Some prefer to use the term digital business transformation, which is more in line with the business aspect. However, as an umbrella term, digital transformation is also used for changes in meanings that are not about business in the strict sense but about evolutions and changes in, for instance, government and society, regulations and economic conditions on top of the challenges posed by so-called disruptive newcomers. It’s clear that changes/shifts in society have an impact on organisations and can be highly disruptive as such when looking at transformations from a holistic perspective. No company, industry, economic actor/stakeholder or area of society stands on its own.

Digital transformation and hyper-connectedness: focus on the edges

Customer and customer experience, purpose and end goals, partners, stakeholders, the last mile of processes and disruption often sit and occur at these edges and are key for digital transformation. Sometimes the digital transformation is even narrowed down to customer experience alone but, strictly speaking, this is a mistake, leaving out several other aspects.

The end goals of the business, customers and stakeholders, however, do drive the agenda. The central role of the organisation is to connect the dots and overcome internal silos in all areas in order to reach these different goals as interconnection is the norm. In other words: although the focus shift towards the edges, the central capabilities are realised in order to work faster and better for and at the edges. This happens for instance at the organisational?(integrated, ecosystems), technological?(an ‘as-a-service approach’, cloud and agility enablers)?and at a cultural level.

Digital business transformation areas

Digital transformation in the integrated and connected sense which it requires can, among, others, touch upon the transformation of:

• Business activities/functions: marketing, operations, human resources, administration, customer service, etc.
• Business processes: one or more connected operations, activities and sets to achieve a specific business goal, whereby business process management, business process optimisation and business process automation come into the picture?(with new technologies such as?robotic process automation). Business process optimisation is essential in digital transformation strategies and in most industries and cases is a mix of customer-facing goals and internal goals today.
• Business models: how businesses function, from the go-to-market approach and value proposition to the ways it seeks to make money and effectively transform its core business, tapping into novel revenue sources and approaches, sometimes even dropping the traditional core business after a while.
• Business ecosystems: the networks of partners and stakeholders, as well as contextual factors affecting the business such as regulatory or economic priorities and evolutions. New ecosystems are built between companies with various backgrounds upon the fabric of digital transformation, and information, whereby data and actionable intelligence become innovation assets.
• Business asset management: whereby the focus lies on traditional assets but, increasingly, on less ‘tangible’ assets such as information and customers?(enhancing customer experience is a leading goal of many digital transformation “projects” and information is the lifeblood of business, technological evolutions and of any human relationship).?Both customers and information need to be treated as real assets from all perspectives.
• Organisational culture, whereby there must be a clear customer-centric, agile and hyper-aware goal which is achieved by acquiring core competencies across the board in areas such as digital maturity, leadership, knowledge worker silos and so forth that enables to be more future-proof. Culture also overlaps with processes, business activities, collaboration and the IT side of digital transformation. In order to bring applications faster to market changes are required. That’s the essence of DevOps: development and operations. In order to make IT and OT work together in businesses/processes/activities, change is required too?(it’s not just the information and operational technologies, it’s the processes, culture, and collaboration). Etc.
• Ecosystem and partnership models, with among others a rise of cooperative, collaborative, co-creating and, last but not lost, entirely new business ecosystem approaches, leading to new business models and revenue sources. Ecosystems will be key in the as-a-service-economy and in achieving digital transformation success.
• Customer, worker and partner approach.?Digital transformation puts people and strategy before technology. The changing behaviour, expectations and needs of any stakeholder are crucial. This is expressed in many change sub-projects whereby customer-centricity, user experience, worker empowerment, new workplace models, changing channel partner dynamics etc. (can) all come into the picture. It’s important to note that digital technologies never are the sole answer to tackle any of these human aspects, from worker satisfaction to customer experience enhancement. People involve, respect and empower other people in the first place, technology is an additional enabler and part of the equation of choice and fundamental needs.

This list is not exhaustive and de facto the several mentioned aspects are connected and overlap.?We do look at some less business-related ‘digital transformation’ phenomena and at so-called disruptions but the focus is on the business, which by definition means a holistic digital transformation view whereby aspects such as customer experience, technological evolutions and innovation with a clear purpose, instead of a buzzword, are crucial elements.

So, digital transformation is certainly not just about disruption or technology alone. It is even not just about transforming for a digital age. If it were the latter, one has to realise that this digital age exists for quite some time and is relatively vague.

The success of the integration and convergence of technologies and of technologies as such depends on collaboration in diversity and the empowerment and involvement of people across the board

Shane?is a certified Agile Coach who is also passionate about Diversity, Inclusion and Neurodiverse, a business coach and a talent mentor. For more insights, or to simply connect - click here: Shane Sale