Digital Transformation- The Art of Doing Tomorrow’s Business

“Our New Year Resolution is to make the beginning of the Digital Transformation of our business “  … the year 2020 has come to an end with this joint resolution. It has become the hot subject for most boardroom discussions ( on Zoom cal) or in the CEO’s one-to-one meetings with the CTO. The decision for digital transformation is the way forward to stay ahead in business. Productivity, competitiveness, sustainable growth and operational efficiency are the basic requirements. On top of it, the recent pandemic has also taught us a lesson in the hard way.

But for the average people working in the company, it is still a bit of puzzling or another big jargon.  A successful digital business transformation calls for redefining organizational mindsets, processes, and talents for the digital world. And the people are a vital part of the process. The blog post will attempt to explain the important aspects of the digital business transformation thoroughly.

Digital Transformation: What is it all about?

Digital technologies offer new ways to deliver value to consumers, impacting competitive landscapes. It is the process where we use digital technologies to create new — or re-engineer your current business processes, culture, and customer experiences to meet fast-changing business and market requirements. It is not merely a technology change but a much broader perspective. The initiative includes the transformation of the following aspects of the business.

• Business Process Transformation
• Organizational Transformation
• Business Model Transformation.
• Business Domain Transformation

Technologies are creating new opportunities continuously. Enterprises keen on taking up digital business transformation got to recognize and pursue the transformation not in isolation but more in a multidimensional way for a successful implementation. Let us take a look at these processes more objectively.

Business Process Transformation

The focus of every enterprise activity remains in its day-to-day business process to accomplish the business goals. New-age technologies and tools in the areas of Data, analytics, APIs, and machine learning offer valuable new ways to reinvent processes throughout the enterprise to lower costs, reduce cycle times, and better quality and customer experience. The success story of “ Dominos Pizzas” is a classic example of when the company introduced the “ Order from Anyware “ campaign. The campaign’s highlight is that you can order your favourite pizza on your favourite device.

Reengineering the “Pizza ordering process “aimed to deliver a better customer experience. The company achieved great success in terms of sales volume and outsmarted its competitors. So a well-planned business process transformation can create significant value, and adopting technology here can be the game-changer.

The tech-driven initiatives of any business process transformation always come from the company’s CTO but remember one thing: the implementation process involves a team game where everyone participates, from the CEO, operations team and delivery boys. The bottom line is that every digital initiative needs to be supported by every employee to make a success story.

Business Model Transformation

The enterprise’s top management always initiates the business model transformation process. The strategic vision includes redefining of their traditional functioning and the creation of a new digital business.

The “ Ola Story” in India is quite relevant in the given context. It has reinvented the taxi trade in India by delivering value to all the partners in the trade. Netflix – a traditional DVD distribution company, changed the future of home entertainment by providing streaming video produced to subscribers via the internet.

These are the brilliant real-time success story of business model transformation. It may motivate the company to even evolve the new boundaries.

Organizational Transformation

A Culture transformation is a process that takes place throughout an entire organization whereby, over time, people behave positively, resulting in organizational benefits. A typically perceived misconception is that digital transformation is done if a company upgrades its technology. However, it is not the case. Digital transformation isn’t about up-gradation software or technology but about organizational adaptability and agility to bring forth a new working culture that supports the digital transformation initiative.

If we look at the success story of FEDEX, who had brought in digital technology to better the service and its offerings like speedy delivery of the consignment, quality of tracking, pick up and delivery of documentation. it is a digital mechanism that adds convenience and better customer experience. “I call digital transformation a business change-management journey. It’s about adopting new technologies, but it’s also about adopting new ways of working and new mindsets to deliver new business value. This new business value creation differentiates the concept of digital transformation from what others may call digital optimization.” Says Nik Puri, senior vice president of international IT at FedEx.

 Business Domain Transformation

 Domain transformation happens when an enterprise successfully got into another new business area outside its traditional business identity or operations. A classic example is AMAZON, the famous e-commerce giant that added its streaming platform (Amazon Prime), and Amazon Web Services (AWS), now the largest cloud computing/infrastructure service.

Business domain transformation presents enormous opportunities by adding values blurring industry boundaries, and creating entirely new sets of non-traditional competitors. It unlocks wholly new businesses for their companies beyond currently served markets.

Conclusion

Digital transformation is a strategic move and helps companies come into the modern era by incorporating processes and systems – both internally and externally – that optimize user experiences and bring customers coming back for more. What is essential for your informed decision-making is to see and analyze what your consumers are doing, what competitors are doing, and what you should be doing next to be in the business. And that is the necessity and smart way of doing tomorrow’s business.