Digital business transformation. A buzz word heavily used now a days, however it means different things for different organizations. Many organizations are either in the middle of a digital transformation, are planning a digital transformation or are struggling with a digital transformation. Digital Transformation can be defined as:
- “Digital transformation marks a radical rethinking of how an organization uses technology, people and processes to fundamentally change business performance” says George Westerman, MIT principal research scientist and author of Leading Digital: Turning Technology into Business Transformation. – cio.com
- “Digital transformation is the process of using digital technologies to create new — or modify existing — business processes, culture, and customer experiences to meet changing business and market requirements. This reimagining of business in the digital age is digital transformation.” – Salesforce.com
- “Digital transformation can refer to anything from IT modernization (for example, cloud computing), to digital optimization, to the invention of new digital business models. “ – gartner.com
- “Digital transformation involves using digital technologies to remake a process to become more efficient or effective. The idea is to use technology not just to replicate an existing service in a digital form, but to use technology to transform that service into something significantly better.” as per Mark Samuels – zdnet.com
Digital business transformation is a must, not an option for any organization, especially with the recent changes around the world. Many industry experts are saying Digital Business Transformation and Customer Experience go hand-in-hand. However, personally, I would say that Customer Experience drives any organization to take up transformation initiatives.
Digital Transformation is a phenomena triggered by Customer Experience, demanding to leverage the technology advancements, to innovate new business models by taking into consideration the new social norms and regulatory standards, and a journey from inflexibility to a “permanently agile”.
Customer Experience, from an industry study, shows that 80% of customers crave personalized, rapid, convenience, frictionless, knowledgeable, consistent, and friendly experience across all touchpoints with the organization. Looking at the initiatives and the spending organizations are doing today under the flag of Digital Transformation, most of those initiatives are related to Customer Experience. And all business leaders across all industries accept that Customer Experience is their organization’s top priority to compete in the industry.
Customer and Customer Experience are at the center of the Digital Transformation. And customer expectations are ever-changing, a moving target, and these changes could be triggered by many factors for instance: technology advancements, social media, regulations, new opportunities, and lifestyle changes. Unless the organizations can adapt to the “permanently agile” operating model, they wouldn’t be able to meet customer expectations.
Transformations are hard, and Digital Business Transformations are harder. Years of research on transformations has shown that the success rate for these efforts is consistently low. From an industry study:
DBT Success = Transformation Mindset + Learning Culture + Digital Savvy Workforce + Empowerment + Collaboration + Communication
With organizations investing in the right mix, the outcome can be multiplicative in delivering great Customer experience and business results. If any one element is lacking or stalled, then it cancels out the positive efforts in other areas of the transformation.
Digital business transformation is a journey, not a destination, and organizations continuously investing in improving Customer experience to deliver value, will lead this journey successfully.
Very informative.. thanks for publishing..
Awesome writeup. I couldn’t believe DBT success rates are that low. It would be interesting to understand why.
Thanks for sharing this.