DailyPost 1074
DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION
Digital transformation is the art of navigating your way in the Digital Era. Totally different from what it sounds – a simple navigation – it is messy and it turning messier by the day. Business enterprises, governments, consultancy, banking, insurance, NGOs et all, all need to transform, unless they are not averse to be wiped out in the not so long foreseeable future. Of these both for the business enterprises and in governance too, differently, it would be a battle for relevance if not an existential crisis.
We are at an Inflection Point in human history of the merging of business with technology or vice versa. The ones who survive or rather do well should have found the key to this merger in areas from consumer experience to the business model. Not that only the Apples and Googles have got it right, such big companies share around 6% of the world economic pie, another 94% has number of companies who have done exceedingly well to crack this formula; from government owned Codelco in Chile to Asian Paints of India.
Few and far between are these companies from Nike to Starbucks who can termed as the Digital Masters. They have cracked the magical formula averaging out at a growth of 26%. The causality cannot be established but the pattern is very clear. The pattern is of creating a compulsive consumer experience which is a solid value add for the customers, transform operations and bring about a reasonably good change in the business model. The digital transformation quadrant has beginners, fashionistas and conservatives besides the Digital Masters.
The fashionistas put all the jazz tech into use, one multinational bank has 70 Apps doing similar things and Apps don’t talk to each together. The conservatives do try on a limited scale, few succeed and then transform into Digital Masters too. The change in the business model is the most difficult. Even the new ones like Facebook don’t change. Whatever millennials might think, the transformation is and can only be driven by the leader – top down. Some still try to do sans technology. That cannot happen now. The emerging / disruptive technologies will tear you apart by its sheer pace. This is just a prelude.
DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION IS THE BUSINESS OF TOMORROW.
Sanjay Sahay