Digital Transformation
Digital transformation is the process by which companies embed technologies across their businesses to drive fundamental change. It results in increased efficiency, greater business agility and, ultimately, the unlocking of new value and impact for employees, customers and shareholders.
Digital transformation is not a new imperative for business leaders, yet in many cases, companies have a long way to go. Many organisations have yet to apply digital technologies and ways of working at scale.
Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, digital transformation largely focused on customer experience. Then, everything changed—and accelerated. Now, digital transformation is at the core of operational efficiency and innovation across the organisation.
According to recent research, leading organisations in enterprise technology are growing two times faster than most companies, and by doubling down on their tech investments recently, they are now growing five times faster. Leaders harness key cloud technologies, including AI, to outpace their peers. They adopt innovative technology sooner and reinvest more frequently. And they direct their IT budgets toward innovation. The benefits are more revenue and more growth—and the ability to stay ahead of the curve.
Many different paths lead to digital transformation and each organisation’s journey will be unique. In every case, though, starting a digital transformation journey requires a new mindset. It is a chance to reimagine how companies do things, often from the ground up.
Only about 30% of organisations navigate a digital transformation successfully, as for most organisations, digital transformation requires a shift away from traditional thinking and toward a more collaborative, experimental approach.
Transformations succeed when they are incremental, cost-effective, and sustainable. That means focusing on specific outcomes and building the capabilities, skills, ways of working, culture and governance required to drive change in an agile way. It is critical to have a clear vision, break down the barriers to change and govern change effectively.
Our approach to digital transformation
Six core activities are critical to successful digital transformation:
Run a diagnostic - We start by assessing your organisation’s operating model, identifying opportunities and agreeing on targeted outcomes. We focus on identifying and prioritising use cases that will deliver the greatest impact on the organisation.
Implement use cases - We work with our clients to implement the selected use cases to create value quickly while demonstrating what digital technologies and ways of working can do for the organisation. The process entails three stages: innovate (build a proof of concept and validate the business case), incubate (launch a minimum viable product and test and learn with agile sprints), and industrialise (run the technology and business process at scale). After an initial wave of use cases, the process repeats with the next wave—and so on.
Build digital skills and review sourcing. Digital transformation is about improving human capabilities. We help our clients develop their digital talent plans in areas like data science and human-centred design through training, on-the-job learning, coaching, and upskilling. We also assist them to adapt their location strategies and strike the right balance between insourcing and outsourcing.
Transform ways of working. We help our clients adopt agile ways of working throughout their organisation so that they can respond quickly to change. We work with them to embed the behaviours and culture that foster cross-functional collaboration, iterative development, and a new approach to learning—one that enables people to adapt and innovate at digital speed. Finally, we align governance, processes, and organisational structure with a more platform-driven—and less siloed—operating model.
Drive technology transformation. We work with organisations to create the data and digital platforms capabilities (e.g. data lake, APIs, and microservices) to enable digital transformation. This allows companies to build applications in a modular, scalable way and to readily access the data they need. We also assess how new technologies, ecosystems, and partnerships can enhance transformation and spur new opportunities in areas such as AI and the Internet of Things.
Manage progress and performance. We help our clients develop the right governance model and performance dashboards to deliver their digital transformation successfully.