As we embark on a new year, three awe-inspiring words are on many lips: Digital Business Transformation. Talking about digital is akin to describing large pachyderms by touching various parts of their bodies. Let’s admit. Digital is complicated.
Digital is complicated because we communicate in different wave lengths simultaneously. The technologists wax on about applications, data, converged and programmable infrastructure and fitting them in to a continuum from cloud to edge to mobile. They package it up in to hardware and software. The marketeers talk about cool products and services. The business people talk about transactional and subscription models of revenue; about core and context and how to leverage ecosystem for smarter buildout and smarter GTM.
Consequently we end up with this wheel with a spectrum of rainbow colors.
How are we supposed to navigate through this maze? Should we close our eyes and focus on multichannel digital customer experience, some process automation, and a bit of data analytics, hoping that the rest takes care of itself? Or do we declare artificial intelligence to be our salvation and live in a virtual reality?
Well, you know we won’t. Every business has three core areas of value creation: the portfolio (what we sell), the go-to-market (how we sell), and the development (how we build). Can we apply technologies to these core business areas? Can we apply technologies to change products and services in industries ranging from health, manufacturing, retail, energy and beyond to digitize them? Can we disrupt value chains and avoid being dis-intermediated? Can we improve our velocity and productivity in R&D? We can. It requires applying a business lens on digital.It requires us to work top-down from business to components of the business — technological and non-technological components. It requires us to think Business First with Digital Inside as shown below.
You’ll find more on these topics and how we can navigate safely through the biggest inflection of the 21st century at TheCerebrus.
Here is to us navigating our way down from the North Star and not getting lost in the Great Bear during 2017. Wishing everyone a happy new year.
[First published on LinkedIn on Jan 12, 2017]
