Digital Transformation Game Plan

Part III. Building Technology at the Core: A Tech Perspective for Business Leaders

In a recent Forbes CIO Summit, Walmart’s CIO, Clay Johnson, talked about an inspiring moment during a 2017 Walmart leadership team meeting. When someone suggested that the technologists should make the technical terms in the IT strategy more accessible to business line managers, Walmart CEO Doug McMillon instead said, “Business people need to start speaking the language of technology.” We too believe that business leaders also need to become more technology savvy. After all, digital transformation is about how to better take advantage of the new information technology capabilities in executing your business strategy.

However, we did not want to start this book from the technology perspective. The most important lesson we have learned is that during the digital transformation, digital technology transformation is the means, and business transformation is the end. We want to highlight the importance of the changes needed on company alignment, business processes, organizational structure, and operational constraints because these are needed to be able to take advantage of your new technology capabilities.

In the first two sections, we explored some key concepts that will allow technology to create more value:

• A focus on customer outcomes

• Smaller and incremental work loads

• Measuring value end to end

• Frequent changes

• Capturing data and insights for decision making

• Creating visibility and transparency ...