Many people talk about innovation and digital transformation with a lot of enthusiasm, but only a small percentage of people are fully aware of what they really mean. In fact, one survey revealed that only 18% of the companies were satisfied with their digital strategies.
Installing a mere chatbot or upgrading a company’s website is not digital transformation. Digital transformation is a complete transformation of the company’s processes, systems, and business models via digital technologies. Business owners and executives must understand that. A recent forecast from IDC expects the spending on digital transformation technologies to reach $1.3 trillion in 2018. It may seem like business executives are now getting a grasp of digital transformation, but we are yet to see how things work out for them.
How innovation and digital transformation are interrelated?
You may have heard people talking about all sorts of fancy stuff like MVP, Lean Startups, Design Thinking and so on. After hearing their talks, you may have thought that is the solution.
Here are a few questions.
- Were the presenters discussing the resources needed to implement their innovative ideas and digital transformation?
- Were the presenters talking about the roles of different departments of the organisation to implement innovative ideas and digital transformation?
Unfortunately, people rarely discuss these important things, which is the reason why many companies fail to get a high return on investment on digital transformations.
Here is the crucial thing that many people do not understand. MVPs and Lean Startups are only effective if the organisation has a solid technology infrastructure to create and ship products quickly. What this means is that companies need a technology infrastructure with standardised API for creating, testing and launching MVPs without delay. There are numerous cases when MVPs are stuck in the middle due to slow traditional company’s processes. In some cases, the MVP takes a lot of time due to a conflict in the legal department. In some other cases, the MVP is stuck due to a misunderstanding of security testing teams and so on.
For a digital transformation to work an organisation needs to transform every single department so it is focused on the customer and relentless executing MVPs for them. Entrepreneurs and corporate executives need to ensure standardisation in every single department, such as legal, tech, security, compliance etc, not only for a quick launch of MVPs but also to minimise the risk of a failure.
Speed is a necessity for businesses to compete in today’s world. This applies to every single business from huge oil corporations to regional retailers.
Sources:
https://www.bbva.com/en/innovation-and-collaboration-go-hand-hand-digital-economy/
https://www.business.com/articles/digital-transformation-innovation/
https://www.hellosign.com/blog/digital-transformation-is-a-stepping-stone-to-innovation
https://enterprisersproject.com/article/2018/1/digital-transformation-4-growing-trends-2018
https://www.cio.com/article/3256045/digital-transformation/digital-transformation-trends.html
