New World Technologies

2020 and Beyond

Errol S. van Engelen

• Publisher: Business Expert Press
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781948976879
• Topic: Commerce
• Subtopic: Gestion de l'information

In today's high-pressured world, digital transformation is everywhere on the agendas of corporate boards and has risen to the top of CEOs' strategic plans. Artificial intelligence, blockchain, 3D printing, the Internet of Things, and drones are some of the emerging technologies that are already transforming our world. In this fast changing domain— predicted by few and now reality for all how can companies transform today's challenges into tomorrow's opportunities?

This book is targeted to help a broad audience such as students, professionals, business, and technology managers to transform an old-world brick and mortar organization to a new-world digital leader. The author addresses various questions including: what essential components does digital transformation include, and how does it impact the enterprise? How does convergence of emerging technologies benefit your organization? How can you start transformation and technology planning projects?

CHAPTER 1

Digital Transformation

Over the past several years, the term “digital transformation” has entered the realm of enterprise IT. Digital transformation is frequently misinterpreted and misunderstood. What does “digital transformation” really mean? What essential components does it include, and how does it impact the enterprise? Figure 1.1 illustrates that digital transformation should be regarded as business transformation.

The Global Center for Digital Business Transformation says that “organizational change is the foundation of digital business transformation.” That’s because changing the nature of an organization means changing the way people work, challenging their mindsets and the daily work processes and strategies that they rely upon. While these present the most difficult problems, they also yield the most worthwhile rewards, allowing a business to become more efficient, data-driven, and nimble, taking advantage of more business opportunities.

In my opinion, there are three essential components for businesses going through digital transformation efforts.

Figure 1.1 Digital transformation is business transformation

Engagement

Through content marketing, you can educate your customers about topics important to them and eventually your business offerings. It gives your brand a voice to engage with your target audience and establish a strong, trustworthy relationship with them. Setting up real good engagement with your audience is not as simple as it may look like. Sure, one of the main reasons for brilliant content creation is ultimately to create leads and increase revenue. But it shouldn’t come across that way. No one likes being pressurized into buying something without having the time to research or think about it first. Instead of trying to sell to your audience, try to help them. Your customer will be coming to you because they are looking for a product that you provide. So, producing content that answers their questions surrounding that product will build trust and leave a lasting impression.

Exposure

Going viral on social media is what every business wants to do. All the attention and all the respect can take your business to the next level. The problem is doing it. I’m a regular follower of social media and I’ve experimented with different strategies to garner more interactions. This is how you can improve exposure and reach:

• More content is better than less, but too much content is not the name of the game
• Client engagement is your goal, drive traffic to the best-­converting pages
• Connect with your customers—let them speak to their needs and drive trust and reach for your brand by ­leveraging their experiences as part of your Social Media and Content strategy
• Identify opportunities to repurpose your existing content to drive active visitor and audience participation

Technology

Without implementing the right technologies, it would be fairly impossible to successfully migrate from a traditional business to a digital company. The most important technologies to use are marketing automation, big data, and business intelligence. Big data empowers other emerging technologies such as blockchain, Internet of Things, augmented and ­virtual reality, 3D printing, artificial intelligence, drones and robotics.

Many of the discussions surrounding digital transformation have focused on the technology: mobile applications, cloud platforms, artificial intelligence, big data, and so on. However, having the technological foundation to support such innovations is only one piece of the digital transformation puzzle.

To fully embrace this growing trend and reap all the benefits it offers, corporations need to make a major change to their company culture. ­Digital transformation is about more than just adopting new technologies: It’s about reinventing your business to be driven by data—and that starts with your team.

Think Business Transformation, Not Technology

In the business world, everyone is talking about digital transformation—from AI to robots to the Internet of Things. But according to many top experts in the field, most people are missing the point.

Technology doesn’t provide value to a business. Instead, technology’s value comes from doing business differently because technology makes it possible. I would like to refer to George Westerman’s MIT Sloan ­Management Review article, “Your Company Doesn’t Need a Digital Strategy.” Creating a digital strategy can focus the organization in ways that don’t capture the true value of digital transformation. Westerman, who is a Principal Research Scientist with the MIT Sloan Initiative on the ­Digital Economy, suggests that the right focus is on a better strategy that is enabled by digital.

Focus on Strategic Transformation, Not Technology Adoption

According to Westerman, technology helps you do business differently, but the right strategy is not technology-focused. It incorporates the right technologies for the right jobs. Regardless of your industry, Westerman suggests keeping these four points in mind to avoid common pitfalls.

Get Away from Silo Thinking

Focusing on the technology can direct aspirations toward what technology can do (mobile, big data, virtual reality, and so on) rather than what a transformed business should look like. For example, a mobile strategy comes to a screeching halt when the company fails to consider opportunities that are not enabled by mobile. This kind of incremental thinking misses much bigger opportunities across silos.

Don’t Push the Envelope Too Far, Too Fast

Looking too far forward toward advanced digital innovations can make other technologies seem mundane. However, business leaders leave easy money on the table if they ignore incremental steps and pursue risky opportunities that may not be ready to pay off yet.

Don’t Ask Your Tech Leaders to Drive Transformation Alone

Even the best IT leaders won’t be able to transform a business if they don’t run that part of the business. “While I’ve seen many successful digital transformations led by great tech leaders, the transformation comes from working with them, not asking them to do it alone,” writes Westerman.

Build Essential Leadership Capabilities, Not Just Technical Ones

Think of digital transformation not as a project but as a capability. When you focus on transformation instead of digital, you shift the weight to creating real business value from technological innovations.

Digital Maturity Matters in Every Industry

Digital maturity (see Figure 1.2) is a combination of two separate but related dimensions. The first, digital intensity, is investment in technology-enabled initiatives to change how the company operates—its customer engagements, internal operations, and even business models. Companies in all industries are investing in interesting digital initiatives. However, in many firms, these investments are uncoordinated and sometimes duplicative. Firms maturing in the second dimension, transformation management intensity, are creating the leadership capabilities necessary to drive digital transformation in the organization. Transformation inte...

Table of contents

• Cover
• halftitle
• title
• Copyright
• Abstract
• Contents
• Preface
• Ack
• 01_Chapter 1
• 02_Chapter 2
• 03_Chapter 3
• 04_Chapter 4
• 05_Bios
• 06_Index
• 07_Adpage
• backcover