Digital Transformation – what is it all about?

Those of us who have been evangelists for digital transformation for many years can find a silver lining from the economic impact of the pandemic. Namely, the pandemic has helped the whole C-suite to truly understand that digital transformation and innovation are not just fuzzy buzzwords. Many now get the joke that it has become a crucial requirement to ensure the business can thrive in the new competitive landscape and the realities of the world of flexible working which is now upon us.
If senior executives don’t take the opportunity to surf this innovation wave sweeping the market they will soon find it crashing over their heads! The laggards will find themselves with higher costs of doing business than their competitors coupled with the threat of losing the war for talent as retention and productivity fall behind the market leaders.
When it comes to digital transformation too often the top-down lens jumps to the crudest short-term metrics to measure success. Unfortunately, doing so can choke the life from the return on investment which is on offer. A classic example is only incentivizing programs targeting support departments with the sole carrot of achieving headcount reductions.
For too long digitisation in these areas has only been able to secure investment if it comes wedded to this poisoned chalice. The bottom-up reality of programs with such a mandate is that they almost never real-ise the gains targeted on the way in. The most obvious reason for this is that employees are far less motivated to collaborate or engage with the digitisation agenda if it’s a thin veneer for the axe man [...]