Digital Transformation Payday

CHAPTER 5Demand‐Side and Overarching Catalysts: Customers and Workforces Have Changed; From You They Expect Nothing Less

On the demand‐side, three catalysts from very different directions can influence your digital transformation.

We see:

• Customer needs
• Workforce expectations
• Spending patterns

And remember, there is also one overarching element: blurring industry boundaries.

Demand‐Side Customer Needs

If one needs to single out the publicly most visible catalyst category driving the need for firms to digitally transform, it would be the apparent changes in business‐to‐consumer (B2C) and in business‐to‐business (B2B) demand (Schwab 2017). However, these catalytic changes in demand‐side customer needs, related workforce expectations and spending patterns are never isolated. They are closely intertwined with or even triggered by what the supply‐side technology capabilities, workforce capabilities, and abundant funding mechanisms have to offer.

Demand‐side customer needs are shifting. On the B2C side, new demographics are changing customer expectations (Gale and Aarons 2017; Osmundsen, Iden, and Bygstad 2018), and once‐successful approaches of segmentation are no longer relevant (Schwab 2017). Even though it is never advisable to work with over‐generalized segments in a more and more individualized world, new customers (first the Millennials or Generation Y, and now the so‐called Generation Z), best characterized as digital natives who grew up in a world of increasing digital ...