What it means to be a Digital Immigrant Enterprise?

Digital Native and Digital Immigrants are typically used to represent demographic segments of people with regard to their ability to leverage their digital mindset and usage. The segments are critical for targeted  digital marketing based on their demographic characteristics.

I thought of flipping this on Enterprises so we have Digital Natives Enterprises like the Amazon and Googles of the world who are basically Digital Born Companies where Digital Marketing is a way of life and their bread and butter.

Now moving on to Digital Immigrant Enterprises which are basically the traditional brick and motor enterprises are attempting to transform themselves to stay relevant in the face of  Digital Natives / Competition in their respective domains.

Digital  Transformation is the new buzz work and enterprises find it easy to fund projects as digital. The challenge for Digital Immigrant enterprises in to have a new thought process around Digital transformations and driving from the top which is not the case in many organizations.

The Tier-1 Customer have been jolted so they are at least forced to think strategically and have their  thought process  tuned. How ever  there are issues in terms of organization change management and Companies pushing as an IT transformation where as these are clearly  Business transformations.

In discussions with customers mostly Mid-Tier I find the thought process of Embracing Digital is more about a Digital website, a twitter and Facebook handle.

Digital Transformation involves having a clear cut strategy driven from the Office of the CEO which has the agility to adapt to the changes in the operating environment. Digital involves enterprises

Here are some of the Core Digital Tenants that comes to my mind:

1. Customer Aligned Processes: Enterprises should change their thought process of putting the Customer first and aligning the business processes around customers
2. Omni Channel Experience : Customer has access to multiple touch points including Digital & Physical and gets the same user experience
3. Data Based Decision Making: This is a very critical aspect which could provide strategic differentiation to companies. This may sound easy but is very tough and a challenge for IT to implement.
4. Monetizing Data : This is a marker tenant where IT not just plays the cost centre role but aligns with business to take a proactive role of getting new business for enterprises

Let me quote a few examples for the above tenents:

In a subsequent post I will dive deeper by taking a specific customer provide an  example of how to go about a digital transormation.