Conclusion

“Interactions – the searching, coordinating, and monitoring that people and firms do when they exchange goods, services, or ideas – pervade all economies, particularly those of modern developed nations.

They account for over a third of economic activity in the United States, for example. More than that, interactions exert a potent but little understood influence on how industries are structured, how firms are organised, and how customers behave. Any major change in their level or nature would trigger a new dynamic in economic activity.”[1]

Quoted verbatim from a relatively old, one might even say ‘pre-historic’ in digital era time frame, McKinsey Quarterly article titled ‘A revolution in interaction’ by Pat Butler et al., the above statements quite interestingly well summarise what digitalisation is doing to us and why it is so important for us to choose our response carefully so as to benefit from its effects. Of course, these statements were made at a time when digitalisation, as we recognise it today, was perhaps just beginning to emerge.

Some of the facts may therefore need retuning – for example, our understanding of the influence and impact of interaction is better today. However, the essence of these statements remains valid in the context of modern digitalisation where indeed interactions are what have changed the most, whether they are between humans, between businesses, between businesses and customers, among employees, or possibly between devices.

In other words, digitalisation has struck at the core of what drives us and our economies.

It is now a foregone conclusion that digitalisation is shaking up our lives and the business world in a monumental way. While new entrants, the digital start-ups, are born with most of the traits needed to succeed in the digital era, the incumbents, the established large organisations, often find themselves struggling to get the right foothold, the right strategy and the entry points to reinvent themselves as market leaders in the digital era. In a February 2017 McKinsey Quarterly article titled ‘The case for digital reinvention’, authors Bughin, LaBerge and Mellbye present a set of insightful research results indicating that a relatively low level of digitalisation continues in large enterprises.[2]

The same article also shows the tremendous downward pressure an average company is experiencing in their revenue and profits as a result of digitalisation, as well as the strong correlation between full alignment of corporate and digital strategies with high company performance in the digital era. Such conclusions revalidate what we have already demonstrated in this book in a variety of ways – that for an enterprise the digital transformation is comprehensive and all-encompassing.

Digitalisation is at the top of the agenda of most senior management teams; however, translating that concern into tangible results requires specific techniques and the aggregation of contributions from many. Given the remarkable breadth and depth of changes needed for an enterprise to conceive and execute a successful digital transformation journey, the strong commitment and effective involvement of company stakeholders at all levels, management and rank and file alike, are essential. Hence, this book, an essential guide to planning and realising digital transformation, is aimed at almost everybody who works in an enterprise, the CxOs, the middle and line managers and the workers in production and non-production units, even if their individual roles in the transformation would be somewhat different. In creating the content for this book, we therefore paid attention to these roles and provided motivation and practical guidance on how to set goals and articulate strategy and actions, together with the necessary behavioural changes.

As we have explained in this book, technological advancements are some of the key drivers of digitalisation – digital technologies are changing customer behaviour, the nature of products and services, B2B collaboration and competitive landscapes.

And the technologies that enable digitalisation are advancing rapidly – very rapidly.

This intensifies the urgency of digital transformation and adoption of applicable technologies. A 2014 survey and analysis report from Harvard Business Review Analytics Services, titled ‘The Digital Dividend: First-Mover Advantage’, put the surveyed companies into three categories with respect to adoption of digital technologies and changes to products, services and business model.[3] These categories are ‘Pioneers’, ‘Followers’ and ‘Cautious’, with Pioneers undertaking rapid changes and seeking first-mover advantage, the Followers watching the Pioneers for the demonstration of some success before adoption, and the Cautious waiting out the adoption until the new modus operandi is fully proven. The report observes and projects significant growth in revenue, profit and market share for the Pioneers and a near-certain doom for the Cautious, with the Followers mostly performing at survival level.

It is therefore imperative that an enterprise eager for successful digital transformation first creates a strong sense of urgency and uses it to firmly drive the transformation process, rapidly acquiring the required skills and capabilities and bulldozing the common roadblocks to change, such as organisational inertia and fear of uncertainty.

While technology is a key consideration, digitalisation, of course, is not only about the adoption of technologies.

Innovation in business models, product and service offering, and interaction with customers, partners and employees are all significantly affected by digitalisation. As we have described in the book, simply adding digital frills to the external façade of an enterprise or creating a few mobile apps cannot deliver the full benefit of digitalisation. Appropriate changes must be made right down to the core activities of the enterprise – in the way it creates strategies, makes investments, improves and automates both front-end and back-end business processes, produces and markets products and services, and manages customer relations. For most enterprises, digitalisation is not a small change but a major leap in organisational thinking, culture and behaviour. The task of digital transformation may seem daunting at first, but strong leadership commitment and the use of proven adoption frameworks can ease the transformation pain. For example, the ‘Digital Canvas’, as suggested by this book, can be used as a master template to plan and execute digital transformation ensuring proper scope and guiding the transformation progress.

For the believers of digitalisation, as we are, and, we suspect, as you are, this is an exciting era.

Fusion of the capabilities of humans, machines and software is resulting in products and services almost unimaginable just a few years ago becoming commonplace. High-speed innovation is becoming an everyday expectation, business models that may have seemed illogical or lacking benefit in the pre-digital era are aggressively capturing market share, revenue and profits. While its adoption currently has strong momentum behind it, digitalisation is not done with us and nor are we done with digitalisation – the horizon of possibilities continues to expand.

As we complete the endeavour of writing this guide on how to conduct digital transformation, we feel that its advice is even more relevant today than it was a few years ago. In conclusion, we would simply say: