As we write the year 2018, the term “Digital Transformation” became indispensable. Like no other, the phenomenon Digitization has been intruding on every area of life driven by the fast pace of advancing technologies. From societies to industries and enterprises: The reality is shifting, and we are prompted to adapt.
As it seems, not everyone understands the urgency to adapt to the new reality nor taking proper action to keep up with it. Enterprises, for instance, see themselves confronted with several challenges making them unable to tap a digital transformation’s full potential or even to understand the concept in its entirety.
Digital Transformation in a nutshell
“Digital transformation is about re-imagining how you bring together people, data, and processes to create value for your customers and maintain a competitive advantage in a digital-first world.” — Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft.
Define Digital Transformation as a deep integration of technology into all possible areas of an Enterprise. It is continually evolving, innovating and challenging the status quo and embarking on new paths. The transformation goes beyond reinventing or optimizing existing processes. Rather, the whole economic universe is going through profound changes.
The Digital Mindset
Embracing Digital Transformation goes beyond any technical implementation of costly information technology infrastructure or piece of software that takes ages even to understand how to use it. It first requires the acceptance and radical rethinking that several practices, methods, and “old tricks” that somehow worked in the past are obsolete and no longer relevant. It also needs one to acknowledge that even the definition of success today has changed and that more than half Fortune 500 companies might disappear in less than a decade from now. It’s therefore essential to shift mindsets from classically doing things for years towards adopting new paths. It requires openness to novel ways of being, thinking and acting. Don’t get stuck in your old-school cage, forget about your comfort zone, leave your ego behind, and be humble.
Going Digital — Turning a commitment into an action
Moreover, without having in place a sound and documented strategy that sets digitization as a priority, and outlines detailed steps on how to get there, Enterprises end up failing. Going digital or embarking on the digitization process needs to be translated into actionable steps. Hence, before setting a vision for shaping the desired future state start with the process of defining the desired pathway for a technology’s deployment. Before blindly starting to invest heavily towards integrating new technologies into your organization, you will need to identify what you hope to achieve through such an endeavor. Think of how would such a Digital Transformation impact cost leadership, focus, or differentiation to give your Enterprise a competitive edge.