Digital Transformation Game Plan

Part I. Heightened Customer Expectations and Alignment to Customer Outcomes

To dramatically increase the quality of the customer experience using digitization…requires fairly radical organizational surgery.

—Peter Weill, chairman of MIT-CISR

Digital transformation is not just about a technology trend or a business trend, it is a redefinition of both. Not blurring the lines between IT and the business, but completely removing them until you emerge with technology at the core of your business. In this state, you operate comfortably when surrounded by ambiguity and use technology to redefine the value you deliver to customers and how you deliver it. To really thrive in the digital era, businesses need to commit to continuous evolution and strategic innovation, responding rapidly to market changes and opportunities. But not many organizations are actually built to do this.

Success will be determined by your courage to act. Can you simplify your business model—how work flows through the organization—in a way that allows you to identify and measure the value you are delivering to customers? Your organization needs to align itself to this value so that you can increase feedback loops and become more responsive and adaptable to change. Can you create the thin slice through your organization as a way to begin to execute the new model, to expose the antibodies that exist in the current operations that might constrain a sustainable digital transformation? The test will come when you are ...