Turn Disruption into Differentiation via Digital Transformation (part 1 of 2)

Digital Transformation and Competitive Differentiation in a Modern Organization

Building a business and establishing a modern technological infrastructure is essential to running an organization in today’s landscape.

Technology offers opportunity to digitally hyperscale your business. Unfortunately, this opportunity exists for your competitors too. Therefore, it’s important to understand how you can best leverage digital strategy to differentiate yourself from your competition - and come out on top.

Digital Transformation Maturation and Market Disruption

While all businesses should bolster their digital strategy, companies in the early stages of digital transformation differ from those that have already adopted a formal digital transformation strategy.

Most organizations - polled in a May 2017, 451 Research survey - have created a formal digital transformation strategy and are actively digitizing.

Many additional organizations have begun a more individualized, segmented digital transformation strategy, while very few are not implementing any digital transformation strategy.

There’s one key statement that nearly all companies agree on: digital disruption is here. Approximately 32% of executives believe there’s already been a major digital disruption in their industry over the past three years. An additional 42% believe there will be a major digital disruption in their industry over the next three years.

Are you interested in learning more about digital disruption in the years to come? Check out Forbes’ article, “7 Emerging Truths of Digital Disruption”.

What to Assess When Looking into Digital Transformation

Whether you’re just now looking at optimizing your digital strategy and don’t know where to start - or you’re a business with a formal digital transformation strategy - there are four key goals you must address. Before deciding on any digital transformation, first ask yourself how a transformation will affect these goals:

1.    Improve customer experience. What is it about your digital enhancement that will make it easier for a consumer to purchase, find, or know how your product works? Is the digital solution going to convert more consumers into buyers? Brand advocates?

2.    Improve operational efficiency. Which business segments and operations will run more smoothly due to implementation of this digital strategy? Who benefits most from this transformation? How does this drive revenue for your company?

3.    Improve company agility. Quick, educated decisions and development give you an edge over competitors. How will implementation of your digital strategy move the needle faster than your competitors?

4.    Manage risk. How does this digital transformation make your operations more predictable, optimized to effectively accelerate revenue?

Of these four key goals, most executives believe that improving operational efficiency is most important, while improving customer experience came second. Agility improvement and risk management followed close behind.

Use Cases

One common digital transformation is the migration of your applications and/or data to the cloud. Cloud transformation offers numerous benefits to organizations of all shapes and sizes. If you’re curious about cloud migration, take a look at the “5 Critical Steps to Take when Crafting Your Cloud Migration Strategy”.

What digital transformation initiatives are you considering?  Please share your thoughts in the comments section below as I learn just as much from you as you do from me.

(All facts and information from May 2017, 451 Research article titled, “Enterprise Digital Transformation Strategies”.)

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Jim Barnish is a strategic change leader with over 15 years of global and integrated operations, sales, and marketing experience. Over the course of Jim’s career, he has successfully worked with companies undergoing accelerated business development, process improvement, change management and operational transformation initiatives.