How do you look for digital transformation opportunities?
George Westerman[1] is a recognised expert on corporate digital transformation and the author of numerous articles and books on the subject (Leading Digital, The Real Business of IT, IT Risk, among others), which has made him a serious point of reference. In one of his articles he proposed that companies apply a set of elements in order to carry out the long-sought digital transformation. He arrived at that proposal after interviewing 157 executives at 50 companies across 15 different countries.
In his article[2] Westerman notes that the companies interviewed are advancing at different rates and experiencing different levels of success in adopting digital models, running into a range of internal organisational problems that make transforming successfully harder. From that we can deduce a first element, tied to how quickly the process starts and to identifying the internal characteristics that make it possible to keep that pace.
Another element the author considers fundamental is companies' maturity in applying digital models — a maturity tied to what companies learn from technological change in implementation projects applied to the business. The level of maturity is associated with management's ability to develop a clear vision of how the company will work in the digital world.
Any digital transformation effort requires strong leadership to drive the change that accompanies a vision oriented towards end-to-end digitisation. Remember that change can bring resistance, which is why the presence of a change leader matters, along with the vision they share with every area of the company.
The research also indicates that companies are transforming three fundamental activities:
The customer experience
The processes that run the operation
The adoption of digital business models.
On transforming the customer experience, the aim is to reach a better understanding of the customer and to identify what keeps them enthusiastic about and satisfied with the product or service they receive. In this area digital transformation models use social networks, geo-referenced information systems and techniques for exploiting analytical capabilities in order to build deep customer knowledge.
The author recommends that companies use digital technologies to transform the sales experience, integrating different customer data in order to promote more personalised sales as well as improvements in the processes that connect the customer to the company. That makes it easier for customers to reach information about products and services. He also emphasises working on customer touchpoints — for example, answering customer complaints quickly using specific technologies (chatbots, robots, social listening).
Finally, companies can provide an integrated view through tools with richer visualisation and deployment across different mobile platforms.
Digital transformation offers a great many opportunities, but the study equally indicates that none of the companies examined is transforming every area at once — so it matters to prioritise, decide and identify where to begin.
[1] Principal Research Scientist at MIT, whose research is based on the digital economy. [2] “The Nine Elements of Digital Transformation”, MIT Sloan Management Review, January 2014.
