DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION
We often hear about the need to digitally transform, but how exactly do we do that?
Below, we share a framework for the digital transformation journey, called the Digital Mastermind.
The basis of using technology and going digital is to increase competitiveness by reducing costs, improving efficiency and productivity, creating a positive experience for staff and customers and ultimately increase brand equity and profits. Basically, your business becomes better and grows faster to increase your net growth.
There are many thoughts and roadmaps for digital transformation, but we found one that explains and visualizes it well. The Digital Mastermind, is a framework that was created by The Open ROADS Community. ROADS stands for Real-time, On-demand, All-online, Do-It-Yourself, and Social. The community members include Huawei, Ogilvy Consulting, Roland Berger and ThoughtWorks and these members have leveraged their approach to digital transformation for their clients using this framework.
DIGITAL MASTERMIND FRAMEWORK
DIGITAL THINKING
The first step is in this framework is digital thinking. To become better, we must have a vision. If you already have a vision, then we must have a vision for growth. This vision should stem from understanding the market that we are serving. Using buyer personas will enable us to understand the customers’ journey. Understanding the customers’ journey enables us to create a brand that bonds with them emotionally by delivering an experience that is personalised and meaningful, so that they’d willingly share their experiences and advocate for the brand. Additionally, the product or service should also be compelling so that true value is felt as a part of the customers’ life that they can’t imagine not having it.
Using Lean Manufacturing practices, we need to build a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) through the Design Thinking process. This process adopts the modern marketing approach and looks at the customers or end users through their journey that leads them to needing the product or service and putting them into groups called personas. The ideation is done based on those personas and their journeys. The ideas are tested and conceived into experience maps.
DIGITAL BUSINESS
MIT CISR – The Next Generation Enterprise is a research on how future enterprises would look like. The main premise is that businesses have the opportunity to move from value chains to an ecosystem. A business ecosystem creates value from a network of enterprises, devices and consumers. This ecosystem consists of the drivers and the participants. An ecosystem that works on a network of shared information and feedback loops from the participants to the drivers enables the drivers to provide better products and services. Therefore, the real purpose of having an ecosystem is to truly understand the customers in a continuous and collaborative manner.
The Next Generation Enterprise 2×2 matrix is based on the business design on the horizontal axis, where your business is either in a value chain or ecosystem; and the level of knowledge of the end consumer on the vertical axis, where you have partial or complete knowledge.
MIT-CISR THE NEXT GENERATION ENTERPRISE
Suppliers have partial knowledge of their end consumer as they typically operate in a value chain of another company, usually bigger than theirs. Suppliers can be outside sales teams or sales agents, brokers and providers of parts of end user retail products.
Omnichannel businesses provide their customers with multiple products across multiple channels. Hence, they are able to provide bigger choices and better experiences, and owning the customer relationship.
Ecosystem drivers provide an open platform with interfaces that allow partners to integrate into the platform and increase value creation. They ensure a great customer experience and offer many plug and play third-party products and services. Like omni-channel businesses they also aspire to “own” the customer relationship by increasing their knowledge of their end consumers.
Modular producers provide plug and play products or services that can adapt to any number of ecosystems. To survive they have to be one of the best producers in the narrow definition of their modular activity (like payments). To thrive they have to constantly innovate their products and services to ensure they’re among the best options available.
DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION
Digital transformation can happen at any stage for any businesses. By using the Open Digital Maturity Model (ODMM), we can carry out a detailed quantitative measure of your business’ current digital maturity by measuring these areas:
Strategic Dynamism
Customer Centricity
Digital Culture, Talent & Skills
Innovation & Lean Delivery
Big Data & AI
Technology Leadership
Based on the insights of the current maturity and the desired future state, we can determine the best pathway for your company’s digital transformation. The pathway will differ depending on whether you need to increase operational efficiency or improve customer experience, and the maturity score in the areas mentioned above.
Upon determining the optimal pathway, change management has to be applied in order to ensure that the the key results are measured and objectives are met.
CHANGE MANAGEMENT FOCUS AREAS
The change management process focuses on four areas. They are – data & technology, the organisation and marketing – and these three are centered around the fourth area – customer value. Those areas are supported by developers, the employees and partners with an underlying mindset of eliminating waste, being customer-centric, data driven, and creating a culture of innovation and codifying it.
ARE YOU READY FOR A DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION?
Schedule an appointment with us so we can measure your company’s digital maturity.
