Monday 27 March 2017

How < not > to do Digital Transformation

Digital Transformation is our current NEXT BIG THING.  Only it's not.

In most instances it is simply adding cost complexity and confusion to our already complex lives.  Here's an example.  This is a message I received.
It's obviously supposed to improve my customer experience and has been generated automatically probably via some sort of 'Internet Of Things' capability, where my parcel has informed the system of where it is!  

This would be amazing but for two things.  

Imagine phoning a friend to say, "Hello.  You may have won the lottery today."  and then hanging up!  That would be pretty pointless. So, one word in the message, "attempt."   The word also tells me that their system is not joined-up or predictable and repeatable.  




Secondly, the message is sent from a 'no reply account' which means I can't tell them that I will not be in or suggest a better time for me.  They will therefore waste time and money trying to deliver the parcel anyway, even though I could have saved them the expense of a wasted journey.  I therefore know that the person who wrote the message, the one who signed it off and the one who set it up in a jumble of multiple fonts have not shifted their mindsets to our World After Midnight customer-centricity and interdependence.  I also know that they have not altered their behaviour in any way, probably just doing digitally what they may once have done with a card through the door or phone call.

This type of attempt to 'do Digital Transformation', I have fondly categorised as 'Accesorising' in my model MetaMorph(TM) in my upcoming book.  It misunderstands that Digital Transformation is Human Transformation enabled by digital opportunities and gets swept up by the technologies themselves or device fetishes

Unpublished studies show that many companies have seen a 8-10% increase in the costs of information and communications technology (ICT) and a significant increase in complexity, but without any positive impact on productivity. Published work by Forrester Research indicates that on average less than ~6% of organisations are gaining differentiation from their attempts at digital transformation.


Take a look at your organisation.  If you see lots of new scarves, ties bangles and excitingly coloured socks beware you are not Digitally Transforming




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METAMORPHOSIS - Transforming your incumbent/legacy organisation to outperform digital disruptors.
AGILITY - Successful and fast delivery of 'foggy' change in a turbulent business environment.
PERSUASION - Innovative Leadership in Complex Times - A master class in how to get just about anyone to follow you doing something new.

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2 comments:

Erick rowan said...

Digital transformation for business is creating a new business strategy and including the technologies into the sections of the business process to boost efficiency. To know more click the link given. https://www.impigertech.com/

Maryśka said...

In my opinion, digital transformation is something really interesting. I'm thinking about getting it from ax-dynamics (also known as Anegis) and combining it with some other solutions, eg. Machine Learning. :)