A global car
rental company that does not own even one car. A global hospitality services
provider that does not own even a room. A food services provider without a
kitchen or even an oven. A leading manufacturer of Airplane engines that does
not intend to sell their product anymore but is seeing unprecedented revenue
growth. A leading Indian paint manufacturer who is no longer interested in
selling its paints but expanded globally and have earned profits of more than
15% year on year for nearly a decade.
All these businesses
mentioned above are today leaders in their own way because of a transformation
that has been brought about by digital technology – the business disruption that
has emerged because of the nexus of forces – Social, Mobile, Information flow
and the Cloud.
It is rare
to find an enterprise that can be called leader in digital transformation – where
the company uses digital technologies to transform the way they do business all
the while driving significantly higher levels of profit, productivity and
performance. There are very few such enterprises in India to date.
A business
enterprise that leads digitally will outperform its peers; according to a
survey they are at least 25% more profitable than their average industry competitors,
generate nearly 10% more revenue with their existing physical capacity and
drive more efficiency in their existing products and processes.
Becoming a
leader in Digital is not an impossible task. All it requires is time and a
courage to lead. Time – as it is a process and does not show results overnight.
Courage – as it involves taking risks and bold steps to explore, identify and
pursue the change.
There is a
torrent of data that is generated by the Internet of Things that the digital
leaders use to combine it with Artificial Intelligence, Machine learning and
visualization to help them make informed decisions. They can see the future
more clearly, drive out inefficiencies and better understand their customers.
Digital
leaders build digital capabilities by rethinking and improving their business
processes, their customer engagements and their business models. They also build
strong leadership capabilities to envision and drive transformation.
Digital
leaders go beyond websites and mobile apps to engage with customers. They also
break some of the paradoxes of traditional operational excellence and build capabilities
that improve efficiency and agility, power new customer engagements and enable
new business models. Delivery models are reconfigured, new products and
services are created and sometimes whole new industries are created.
Enterprises
who want to lead digitally take a top-down approach. Senior management shows the
direction and workers are engaged to make the change happen. Creating a
transformative vision is the first step, though. The onus of energizing the
employees to make the vision a reality is on the CXOs. Governance at every
level will keep the transformation engine on track. Technology is the fuel that
will power this transformation engine.
- some inputs gleaned from Leading Digital – HBR press.