Digital transformation: business modernization requires a new mindset
Digital transformation is now more important than ever, but some organizations are more difficult to change than others.
Digital transformation: business modernization requires a new mindset
Digital transformation is now more important than ever, but some organizations are more difficult to change than others.
Karen Roby from TechRepublic talks to futurist Brian Solis about the obstacles companies must overcome during a digital transformation. The following is an edited transcript of their interview.
Brian Solis: Digital transformation means many different things for many different people. I have treated it for almost ten years now. Originally, digital transformation really migrated to the cloud and modernized many corporate infrastructure to make companies or organizations essentially more flexible and scalable as new technologies come and go. But I think this was limiting in itself, it was a first hurdle because it didn’t necessarily give a conscious sense of digital transformation. It just gave it a sense of a road map, essentially, of technologies to use and test and then scale.
SEE: Digital crafts: what it is, why your organization needs it and how CIOS can manage the costs (free PDF) (TechRepublic)
But I will tell you that, more often than not, one of the biggest challenges I hear are two things. One is that older infrastructure is very difficult to update and upgrade. Many of these systems are so old, but so integrated into the organization that trying to update them with a rip and replacing them will essentially cause havoc. And that is what many companies are concerned about, so they are trying to be slow, a bit more strategic.
The other is a mentality. This occurs in almost all cases of digital transformation. And by that I mean, what is possible with digital transformation if your perspective is rooted, still, not just in legacy systems, but also legacy ideals about what technology can do for the organization: what the market looks like, how an organization should run, what are operational models to support technology, and so on.
Karen Roby: Do companies really have a choice? Or do they really just have the mentality that they should be digitally focused?
Brian Solis: One of the challenges when I study things like innovation that I hear about is that culture is actually one of the biggest inhibitors of all things, all progress. Sometimes when I interview managers about culture or innovation or digital transformation, I sometimes feel that I am not an analyst, that I am a therapist. Many executives actually want to share their frustrations, and one of the frustrations, especially with more, say, legacy-oriented organizations, I will always hear about millennials. And then also the arrival of centennials. In the sense that they want to work differently, think differently, and infrastructures, and also models, do not necessarily support that way of thinking and working. The consumerization of technology, it has not only affected millennials or the younger staff, it has affected us all.
I think everyone who has a smartphone or uses social media, or has ordered an Uber or Lyft, or DoorDash or Postmates, you name it, we have, as people, radically transformed. Our brains are radically transformed as we use more of these technologies, we multitask, we do a million things. Employees receive around 200 notifications during their working day, only via their telephone and social and e-mail. So much of the way we think about work needs to change. We must think bigger than the millennial workforce. We must give technology that sense of how people should work. And that means we have to spend more time looking around the organization, beyond assessments and audits and 360 assessments, to get a better idea of how they want to work and how we can bring the staff, not just in a modern time, but modernization of the definition of work itself.
Karen Roby: I know you’ve just returned from Dreamforce, and of course that is one of the big concepts that people are just talking about here, Brian, is digital transformation. What were some of the things that you heard and some of what people are talking about while we face 2020?
Brian Solis: Salesforce was a great champion of the modernization of the total company, the total company. All their products, all their announcements, really looked not only at modernizing groups, but also at bringing groups together. Truth was therefore a very big pillar at Dreamforce.
For example, truth looked at customer truth. Who is the customer during the trip? Not just in a fragment of that journey. And voice and AI were also big, big, big topics at the event. And really try to help IT, but also business leaders, think differently about, not only, of course, integrating Salesforce into the organization, but reconsider, just as we were talking about, reconsider the opportunity for business modernization as a whole. That really matters.
And in fact, if I could just share a quick definition of digital transformation with you. In my research I try to help modernize this for people, that is, the evolving pursuit of innovative and flexible business and operational models, driven by evolving technologies, processes, analyzes and talent, to create new value for customers, employees and stakeholders. And I think, maybe, if you pause and play while you watch this, this really isn’t just Dreamforce, or Salesforce as an organization, that’s how every, I think, executive, whether you’re an IT or you are a CXO, CEO, or especially if you are a board member or shareholder, we need to help companies beyond the subject of digital transformation. We really have to see this as business modernization. We compete against digital natives, we compete against digital disruption, and that requires not only new technology or infrastructure, but also a new mindset.
Karen Roby: I think that’s a really good definition, Brian. And there are certainly so many balls in the air, and I think this makes this so confusing because there are so many different parts and things to consider. If you are talking about just a company and a company size, you are moving from a huge company to these small companies, especially small ones, it seems to be a real tough fight when it comes to making these kinds of changes. Do you think that?
Brian Solis: When we really started to look at the bigger picture, we are actually talking about change management, and that is not the sexiest conversation we have. The subject of change management per se probably needs change management because it is so large and so discouraging. But to be honest, I think the greatest stories I’ve ever seen, if you look at this, I published an article a few years ago with the title, The Six Stages of Digital Transformation, and if you look at the more progressive organizations, where innovation and dexterity become a kind of norm, which we essentially look at, these are cross-functional segments that come together, at least early as a stakeholder group, as a steering group, if you want. Because when you look at customer experience, that is often the number one within the organization, with the aim of giving digital transformation a goal.
For example, if we can look at the customer journey, we can see exactly how mobile and social and the app economy and all these different things come into view and we can see what’s broken. You can focus digital transformation, or at least the modernization of technology, on things that will have immediate ROI so that we can link some meaningful metrics to at least the early digital transformation initiatives. So that while you migrate things to the cloud, while you make larger, more infrastructure-oriented investments, we can also look at other investments during the journey, about features that will deliver immediate payouts and actually reduce their efforts.
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