The research we are seeing seems to have reached a tipping point. In the past the digital transformation articles were very "why" but nobody wrote about "how". We guess that might be because nobody was actually doing Digital Transformation.
Or the articles dived into a long list of technologies, which always made my eyes get heavy with boredom. After all, technology is "kind of" interesting but it's pointless going on a big technology spending spree if you don't have a strategy. In fact, it's pretty pointless unless you have a strategy, the Board (C-Suite) are totally behind it and you have a clear vision of the culture, people and the process direction. The change, will always be the highest costs, rather than the tech.
The tipping point is that there now seems to be a separation between those "doing" Digital Transformation and those that are "talking" about it. And the gap seems to be getting wider.
And the secret sauce? It's not about efficiency and cost reduction as some management consultants will have you believe it is. In facts it's about ... drum roll please ... customers and innovation.
Make a difference for your customers and they pay their bills, come back for more and recommend you. No surprises.
If we look at Digital Transformation, Uber wasn't developed by taxi firms, AirBnB was not developed by a hotel firm etc. Each company needs to look at innovation and often that can mean making some difficult decisions.
So where does social come in? If we look at your organisation, social is used in marketing, sales, research and development, Human Resources (HR), customer services it is in fact the glue that binds all of your internal and customer experiences. So now is the time to have a quick win and harness it for the good of your digital transformation. Creating incremental revenue and competitive advantage.
An unrelenting focus on the customer allows companies to be innovative while satisfying customer needs and meeting financial criteria such as increasing revenues and profitability, said Yang Shim, EY Americas advisory data and analytics leader for financial services. "The performance gap is huge between companies that take a more comprehensive and customer-centric approach to digital enterprise transformation and those that focus solely on cost reduction," Shim said. Digital transformation leaders use an adaptive approach to meeting changing customer, marketplace, and regulatory needs, the study said. It found that the most advanced digital organizations foster a symbiotic relationship between digital transformation and innovation. Companies at the forefront of transformation create defined, repeatable and scalable processes (83 percent), while laggards use a more fragmented approach with no formal coordination or mechanism to scale transformation.
