Organizational transformation is more than introducing a few digital devices and becoming active on social media. The overall domain of digital transformation is broader and encompasses much of the organization and the broader ecosystem that its a part of. Specifically, digital transformation encompasses a change in organizational culture, products and services, and its business processes enabled by digital technology and people with a new mindset.
Advances in consumer technology is one of the primary factors driving this transformation. Today’s consumer requires advanced services on a mobile phone, wants interaction on social media, and develops perception about brands at different levels of the complex digital universe. Serving audiences in this complex universe of digital requires a new organization with new platforms, agile and technologically advanced delivery capabilities, innovative business processes, and overall a new organizational culture the likes of which didn’t exist earlier.
In general, organizations are becoming digital by taking on a number of initiatives. These include the following:
- Mobile – Organizations are porting their external facing systems and the products and services they offer on those systems to their audiences by making them mobile responsive.
- Social – Wherever applicable and value-added, organizations are turning to social media. This may include moving their customer service and marketing processes to social media and related channels.
- Analytics – Organizations introduce analytics and data driven feedback in all aspects of their operations.
- Digitization of business processes – This involves automating business processes by using mobile, social, cloud, and analytics as the primary drivers.
The move to digital, therefore, needs to be strategic and transformational in nature. Implementation of that strategy then requires a longer term road map with clearly defined goals. The road map should lead to a clear organizational digital maturity positioning the organization to handle the new consumer of today and tomorrow.