Is Digital Transformation just a nowadays buzzword?
Probably. However, for the time being it is crucial for companies to care about and ACT accordingly. Otherwise disruption can come from everywhere and threaten survival. And who would like to risk unhappy customers, sometimes caused by an unhappy workforce and leading to stagnating or even decreasing revenues.
Certainly, ending up with declining profits.
Hence, let us flip it around and take the proactive and positive view on Digital Transformation.
In my opinion it is obvious that the digital transformation carries four key attributes:
- Inevitability
- Irreversibility
- Tremendously high speed
- Uncertainty in Execution
Every company and every authority are affected by the racy evolution in the digital era!
Hence, we need to consider all six domains of digital transformation in a holistic and connected way.
Let us take a closer look into all the six domains of Digital Transformation with the considerations and conclusions from Germinio.
Customers must be put into the center!
Of course, that´s nothing new. However, ask yourself, is it really lived this way?
Customer – and to be more precise – user empathy must be lived on a global base and performed with all available technical and social capabilities. Every employee and everyone within your entire eco-system needs to carry this empathy and service attitude and act accordingly.
People doing business with people, also in the digital world!
Finally, in nowadays world the customers need to become an integral part of the value chain. Listening to and understanding a representative group of customers is not enough as this usually does not lead to an “unique” feeling of your customers in terms of product and service fit.
Workforce – Transform towards a digital, global, and fully user-centric company culture. Your company is no longer just represented by the CEO, the sales folks at the customer front or your portfolio but by everyone somehow associated to it and connected in the various networks. Consequently, new mindsets and skills are to be developed, which, in my opinion, means that leadership and people development should move towards WeQ – the network intelligence and design thinking abilities. An open innovation culture must carry all leaders and most of your employees into the new era of network thinking and acting. As well as the other way around.
Germinio sees workforce transformation three folded. It is not limited to your leaders and employees anymore and therefore needs to incorporate two further aspects:
- The global trend towards an incline of freelancing and
- the integration of your customers into a newly designed value chain.
The future becomes challenging as well as bright because of the incline of freelancing experts. The hiring of the right experts becomes even more tricky than the war for talent in which we are in already. The hired experts need to fit to the company culture, be effectively onboarded, involved and offboarded – these are the key challenges. The flip side however is the huge sourcing pool of experts on a global scale as well as an incredibly high performance and productivity in your projects.
Just think about your current employees! Are you looking to find projects for them, rather than the right experts for your projects?
Are they occupied according to their strengths and value or just to have a project?
Thanks to the internet and the virtual collaboration capabilities it is easy to connect with users all around the globe. Thus, collecting user-centric feedback and challenging your prototypes along iterative services and product development with many users becomes a mandatory need. Constant incorporation of customers along the entire value chain improves the “listening to customers” strategy.
Of course, this includes the entire eco-system, customers and partners.
Competition – Compete & cooperate
Coopetition is the magic word. You need to deal with your competitors. Good examples to learn from are Amazon and Alibaba who provide platforms that are so strong and highly populated, that their competitors have no other chance than joining.
A platform strategy is crucial, not only to participate in competition´s business but also to scale your business globally and reach new markets.
Value creation and delivery – the main distinction in nowadays competition is the service portfolio rather than product quality!
Hence, successful companies transform from product manufacturers to service providers. Internet and digitization establish the opportunity to deliver value on a global scale, e.g. supply chain, infrastructure services, 3D printing, any kind of knowledge transfer, etc.
Innovation is the vehicle to permanent, sustainable success. It’s a trap you can’t escape if you want to succeed in times where competitors are coming from various directions, e.g. via internet, industry disruption, etc. A creative innovation culture is key in the digital era we live in today. Its unique development has to contain collaboration mindsets and network thinking. To achieve the most effective results, all four intelligences are needed: IQ – functional and technical intelligence, EQ – emotional intelligence, CQ – cultural intelligence and WeQ – networked intelligence.
These can only be built by the people and sums up via their mindsets to a networked and innovative company culture.
Big Data – Every innovation, co-innovation as well as commercial and social key figures to juggle with the five domains above is carried by big data. Big data needs to be acquired, collected and aggregated by yourself. With the help of data science, you can turn this data into value. Useful but highly complex ways to leverage this data are intelligent analytics, predictive analytics, machine learning and artificial intelligence. Finally, this helps to address consumers of your services and products highly individualized and focused.
Only companies and authorities which holistically cover all six domains when executing their transformation will be sustainably successful in the future.
Again, please consider this transformation not only a technical act but foremost a social and human one.
Love the idea of six digital transformation domains. Too often, the most important one, workforce, is neglected as it is perceived as a natural aspect. Assuming that educational institutions will fully prepare the next generations for the demands of the digital transformation. They play a crucial role in there, but livelong learning is one key-aspect to this regard, which also needs to be applied after graduating. Being open to changes and new perspectives will be one significant differentiator within the workforce-market.
Most important phrasing of the Blog: People doing business with people, also in the digital world!
Hello Henning,
many thanks for the great feedback. Appreciate a lot.
How do you think that Leadership and Effectiveness should come into play?
Many thanks and best regards,
Matthias
Based on your long years of practical experience, you have enhanced a theoretical model with a very important aspect and with this it can be implemented successfully in practice.
I really like the focus on workforce, as we all know employees are the driving factor behind customer satisfaction.
Looking forward to read more from you Matthias.
Hello Sahar,
many thanks for your kind feedback.
Appreciate that we have the same people focus when it comes to successful transformations.
Thanks and best regards,
Matthias