DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION

STRATERGIES

Business activities/functions:

marketing, operations, human resources, administration, customer service, etc.

Business processes:

one or more connected operations, activities and sets to achieve a specific business goal, whereby business process management, business process optimization and business process automation come into the picture . Business process optimization is essential in digital transformation strategies and in most industries and cases is a mix of customer-facing goals and internal goals today.

Business models:

how businesses function, from the go-to-market approach and value proposition to the ways it seeks to make money and effectively transforms its core business, tapping into novel revenue sources and approaches, sometimes even dropping the traditional core business after a while.

Business ecosystems:

the networks of partners and stakeholders, as well as contextual factors affecting the business such as regulatory or economic priorities and evolutions. New ecosystems are built between companies with various background upon the fabric of digital transformation, information, whereby data and actionable intelligence become innovation assets.

Business asset management:

whereby the focus lies on traditional assets but, increasingly, on less ‘tangible’ assets such as information and customers (enhancing customer experience is a leading goal of many digital transformation “projects” and information is the lifeblood of business, technological evolutions and of any human relationship). Both customers and information need to be treated as real assets in all perspectives.

Organizational culture:

whereby there must be a clear customer-centric, agile and hyper-aware goal which is achieved by acquiring core competencies across the board in areas such as digital maturity, leadership, knowledge worker silos and so forth that enables to be more future-proof. Culture also overlaps with processes, business activities, collaboration and the IT-side of digital transformation. In order to bring applications faster to market changes are required. That’s the essence of DevOps: development and operations. In order to make IT and OT work together in businesses/processes/activities, change is required too (it’s not just the information and operational technologies, it’s the processes, culture, collaboration). Etc.

Ecosystem and partnership models:

with among others a rise of co-opetive , collaborative, co-creating and, last but not lost, entirely new business ecosystem approaches, leading to new business models and revenue sources. Ecosystems will be key in the as-a-service-economy and in achieving digital transformation success.

Digital disruption

Digital disruption is mainly used in the sense that an industry, way of doing business or ecosystem (e.g. societal) is significantly challenged by existing (mostly tech) companies, newcomers or incumbents who have mastered digital business skillsets and came up with solutions, business models and approaches that cause a significant shift in customer behavior and market context, requiring existing players (which can include ‘digital businesses’) to change their strategies as well.

1Technological innovations (technology-induced)

which are more impactful than ever before. However, again, it’s not the technology that drives the disruption or transformation. It’s how it is used and adopted by customers, partners, competitors and various stakeholders. Technologies with clear disruption potential include IoT, artificial intelligence, edge computing, virtual and augmented reality and blockchain. However, the most disruptive potential occurs when they get combined and enable new applications as we see in the convergence of AI, IoT and big data analytics. In industrial transformation the convergence of IT and OT is also a game changer.

2Customer behavior and demands

This so-called customer-induced transformation and disruption is not necessarily related to technology. Technology often enables or, as just mentioned, causes it, when adopted and turned into business challenges. An example of a force that drives digital transformation and is not caused by technology but merely strengthened by it in combination with other factors: the demand of customers for ease of use and simplicity in dealing with businesses is far older than today. It goes back to times when even the Internet didn’t exist. In that sense, digital transformation can be simply catching up too because businesses don’t have another option anymore (it’s not as if they didn’t know the importance of making interactions and support for customers easy and frictionless decades ago). Customer behavior and needs can also be impacted by disruptions on a societal level.

3Innovation- and invention-induced. Entirely

Entirely novel approaches to human and business challenges, as well as innovations and inventions that create a new reality, whether it’s in science, business, technology or even a non-technological context of true innovation can be disruptive. The invention of medicines that change healthcare and society (as has happened several times in the past), the printing press, the train, what can be next? Your best bet is probably in life sciences and the application of technology within the human body and mind.

4Ecosystem-induced

Organizations are part of broader ecosystems: business ecosystems and the social and natural ecosystems in which they – and we – live. Economical changes, demands from partners who want you to adapt, evolutions towards collaborations in transformational business ecosystems, regulatory changes (consider the transformational impact of the General Data Protection Regulation or GDPR for example), geo-political changes, societal shifts, unexpected events such as natural disasters or even a pandemic as the impact of COVID on digital transformation and on society overall showed, they all can impact and drive the need for digital transformation as ample research on the acceleration of digital transformation in the new normal showed.