Every business has the opportunity to become a digital business. However,some are better equipped to do so than others. The digital transformation goes beyond systems of the ICT framework but rather incorporates its principles into its strategy, business model, operations, and culture. With this view, a transformation to the digital market would involve leading companies to limit change to establishing and unifying new channel technologies into the existing business strategy, model and operations.
Digital principles describe existing grounded truths created and accelerated by technology. Technology principles such as the use of package systems, data consistency or adopting agile techniques alone no longer create sustainable value. Digital principles, by contrast, recognize the implications and imperatives of a world that is increasingly information intensive and connected.
Digital principles redefine imperatives around customers, growth, efficiency, and innovation.
Digitally principled companies recognize the impact of information and connections on customers, growth, efficiency, and innovation. As they are essential, particularly when digital disruption changes the rules, reducing the effectiveness of past practices.
According to a report by Mc Kinsey and Company, below are seven traits that successful digital enterprises share as a reasonable guide to becoming the ultimate digital organization.
- Be unreasonably aspirational– Leadership teams must be prepared to think quite differently about how a digital business operates.
- Acquire capabilities-The skills required for digital transformation probably can’t be groomed entirely from within. Leadership teams must be realistic about the collective ability of their existing workforce. Leading companies frequently look to other industries to attract digital talent, because they understand that emphasizing skills over experience when hiring new talent is vital to success, at least in the early stages of transformation. The best people in digital product management or user-experience design may not work in your industry. Hire them anyway.
- ‘Ring fence’ and cultivate talent– Digital talent must be nurtured differently, with its own working patterns, sandbox, and tools.
- Challenge everything– The leaders of incumbent companies must aggressively challenge the status quo rather than accepting historical norms.
- Be quick and data driven– Rapid decision making is critical in a dynamic digital environment. Organizations need to move to a cycle of continuous delivery and improvement, adopting methods such as agile development and “live beta,” supported by big data analytics, to increase the pace of innovation. Continuous improvement requires continuous experimentation, along with a process for quickly responding to bits of information. Integrating data sources into a single system that is accessible to everyone in the organization will improve the “clock speed” for innovation.
- Follow the money– A digital transformation is more than just finding new revenue streams; it’s also about creating value by reducing the costs of doing business.
- Be obsessed with the customer– A healthy obsession with improving the customer experience is the foundation of any digital transformation. No enterprise is perfect, but leadership teams should aspire to fix every error or bad experience. Processes that enable companies to capture and learn from every customer interaction—positive or negative—help them to regularly test assumptions about how customers are using digital and constantly fine-tune the experience.
