Why Digital Transformation is critical priority for enterprises to survive in the age of software?

Mik Kersten, CEO of Tasktop beautifully describes the impact of digital disruption in his recent book ‘Project to Product’. His narration of ‘No sector is safe’ from digital disruption - he calls out two big examples of Kodak and Blockbuster as initial victims of technology disruptions. Further in his book he also explains the Nokia’s fall in greater details that clearly makes the case for digital transformation for every company who wants to thrive in age of the software.

"Companies who will not master the art of using software based solutions to differentiate their offerings - irrespective of the sector they operate in will be exposed to significant risk of disruption and eventually be losing out to the competition. "

There is an explosion of well-funded startups posing significant threat to every sector of economy including Insurance, Finance, retail and Healthcare. Who would have thought of Cars being differentiated for anything other than the comfort and quality?  Now cars are software running on the road and differentiated from its digital experience. It’s interesting to see how software leverage in Car has risen over the past several years. Software in car already crossed one hundred million lines of code and its only to grow with autonomous cars. Car companies are to hire more software developers than ever before as digital transformation will require every company to operate like an IT company, if not - they are more than likely to open-up the door for the competition.

The book sets the stage in early section by calling out the Geoffrey Moore’s classification of three types of distributions. The first, Infrastructure model disruption which essentially impacts the way the product or service offering is marketed without changing the way of selling the product or offering. This type of disruption is considered easiest to address. Example specified in this category was product or offering required to be advertised on social media platform. The Second, Operating model disruption has to do with using the software to manage the relationship or interaction with customer. Example in this category is - first class mobile experience through their state of the art mobile applications is top most priority for majority of the businesses. The third and final type of disruption is Business model disruption that falls deeper in to the use of software to fundamentally change the way the product is sold to the customer. Example here is software innovation that cuts down the step of customer’s store visit altogether.                                                                                                                                     “Project to Product” is incredible read both from stand-point of understanding the disruption that industry is going through and to learn about strategy and framework to navigate it through successfully. Very apt for the leaders in the large organizations operating traditionally for decades and are in rush to modernize themselves to stay afloat amid the rising competition in digital economy.