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A Digital Strategy Playbook 1563614129

Digital transformation involves not only technology but also how people interact with it, significantly impacting businesses. Companies like Uber and Airbnb exemplify how consumer acceptance of digital services can drive success, while businesses face both threats and opportunities from digital disruption. A framework with four pillars for successful transformation has emerged, emphasizing the need for clear business objectives and collaboration between technologists and business leaders.

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6 views8 pages

A Digital Strategy Playbook 1563614129

Digital transformation involves not only technology but also how people interact with it, significantly impacting businesses. Companies like Uber and Airbnb exemplify how consumer acceptance of digital services can drive success, while businesses face both threats and opportunities from digital disruption. A framework with four pillars for successful transformation has emerged, emphasizing the need for clear business objectives and collaboration between technologists and business leaders.

Uploaded by

victor
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Digital Transformation: A Practical Playbook.

Do not be fooled by the term “digital transformation”. The data-


driven changes businesses are undergoing certainly begin with
digital technology, but just as important as the technology itself
are the surprising ways people react to and interact with it. That
combination has made digital technology so disruptive.

Digital technology made it possible for mobile transportation


platforms Uber and Didi Chuxing to efficiently match riders with
drivers, inexpensively and on a massive scale.

Equally critical were customers’ embrace of the service and their


willingness to jump into the cars of total strangers. Hospitality
platform Airbnb would not be worth $31 billion if customers had
not quickly become comfortable with the idea of sleeping in a
stranger’s bed.

The willingness of consumers to ask 1,000 online strangers if they


should buy a certain product, and to write paragraphs of detailed
reviews, has moved e-commerce beyond being a digital version of
the US retailer Sears’ catalogue to replacing the trusted shop
owner.

These are consumer businesses, but companies selling to other


businesses are seeing important shifts as well, sometimes
influenced by experiences in the consumer realm.

I can order a $1 million piece of equipment with months of lead


time, yet have almost no visibility as to its location in the
manufacturing process at any given moment. If I’d order a $10
pizza from Domino’s online, however, I’d know almost to the
moment when the anchovies are added. Such digitally enabled
experiences have created a new normal for all industries.

In this environment, executives understand that digital


technology is both a threat and an opportunity. The threat is the
potential disruption to a business or industry, starting with the
broad expansion of its competitive set. The digital opportunity is
the chance to spark innovation and lay the foundation for a
prosperous future.
Over the past decade, this digital duality of threat and opportunity
has created a new generation of corporate giants and killed off
others. A Bain & Company analysis shows that digital natives have
generated 80% of the growth in market capitalization of the top
companies over the past 10 years. In their pursuit of innovation,
most, if not all, incumbent companies have digital efforts under
way. They effectively think up ideas and test them.

The struggle begins with the next step, namely scaling the best
ideas. Specifically, it means integrating them across the
organization at a size big enough to make a true difference, and
then embracing the new ways of working required to maintain the
momentum.

Clear common themes are emerging: that experimentation is easy,


but transformation is hard; that digital disruption is not a
challenge technologists alone can solve and that business thinkers
must play a prominent role as well; and that digital
transformations must have clear business objectives.

Importantly, members of the group represented a mix of digitally


native firms and well-established incumbents. Their exchange of
ideas and experiences was eye-opening and instrumental in
identifying four pillars of successful transformation. These pillars
became the basis of a clear framework and questions to answer so
that companies can begin to build their transformation,
understanding what it takes to lead and deliver a digital enterprise

Digital transformation is a topic of rich and vital discussion in


boardrooms and among executive teams around the world. Bain
was selected by the World Economic Forum to convene a group of
companies engaged in the topic, and, working with more than 40
global executives, to create a new approach to digital
transformation.

The below materials, reflect the emerging insights on what it takes


to lead and deliver a digital transformation.
What role will your company play in the digital future?
What Business Model is best suited?
What Enablers Need to be Considered?
What Changes Need to be Anticipated?

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