One term I’ve seen recently is Digital Transformation. The first time I encountered the term the first thing I thought of was small businesses integrating more software and processes in to their brick and mortar presences. I know one shop that still hand-writes their sales tickets, and adding some technology to their shop and processes would be a perfect transformation. That’s close, but not quite right.
Digital Transformation has been around for decades, each time infusing organizations with more technology, more processes, more ways to potentially deliver faster. However, with each new infusion comes new challenges. Challenges which are not necessarily related to the technology itself, but how the organization handles it. You see, as wonderful as new technology is, without changing the processes you manage, all you’re doing is the same thing, but faster. That’s great, but eventually you have to change your processes and even your organization to continue to succeed. If you’re in the music business, it doesn’t matter how much faster you can produce CDs if you haven’t leveraged your technologies to deliver digitally as well as change your overall strategy to make digital delivery your main product with CDs being secondary. I know I’m over generalizing here with the music industry, but bear with me…
This isn’t about products, or even specific technologies. What Digital Transformation is about is organizational cultures and how well they are able to adapt and change. It is about how easily can they take the technology they have, or are about to implement, and deliver faster that their competitors. Remember my music example? Which organization can take their technology (digitized music) and deliver it faster to the consumer? The organization that uses digital files to produce CDs for distribution (because that’s what we’ve always done) or the organization that offers the same digital music files for immediate download and consumption? Obviously the one who offers it for immediate consumption will succeed in getting the immediate advantage over their competitor.
Technology changing how organizations do business is what Digital Transformation is about. It changes the expectations of the organization, it’s partners, and ultimately the customers.
Don’t expect this to happen overnight. It takes small steps, with each department buying in to the change, for the transformation to succeed. You can’t just hire in a new executive and expect to be transformed. They can help, but without the rest of the organization’s willingness to change the only thing that will happen is a large investment in new technologies to do the exact same thing that you’ve been doing. The entire organization needs to be ready to adapt, and the processes need to reflect that. As the culture changes, so does the organization, ultimately leading to greater value to the customer.
Digital Transformation is the ability for your organization to adapt and change using the technology available to you.
Further Reading
Digital transformation: The three steps to success
What digital transformation really means
Digital transformation: online guide to digital business transformation
‘Digital Transformation’ Is a Misnomer