Digital Transformation Payday

CHAPTER 2Why Digital Transformation Advice Can Get You Off the Payback Track

I hope that you agree with me that achieving more certainty on digital transformation payback is an objective worth pursuing. But to do that properly and to judge the quality of any related digital transformation advice, one question must be solved first: What is digital transformation?

One would hope that the flood of publications available has converged toward a common definition and understanding. Ha! Among practitioners, clear definitions of digital transformation are not of much interest. The elements and frameworks used in this field are as diverse as their inventors' backgrounds. No wonder, since each one is typically affiliated with a professional services firm aiming to fuel—and thus benefit from—the management hype. To stand out and stake their claim, each consultant offers a seemingly unique framework built on different terminologies, elements, and definitions. As a result, there is no common structure, so the actual drivers, scope, and processes that drive transformation remain unclear. At this point, the only common ground seems to be that digital transformation is more than a technology implementation—rather, it is a business transformation triggered by substantial or even disruptive market drivers, and it affects the entire firm's scope of business in fundamental ways. In scientific research, the digital transformation theme turns out to be just as fragmented. Still, academics at least ...