The truth behind digital transformation

(First published at www.affinitidigital.com.au ). Digital transformation can be a woolly concept. This is partly because digital transformation as a term is somewhat misleading. It places the focus on the technology instead of where it should be – on a genuine intent to transform and contemporise each aspect of a business’ operation.

Digital seems to make it suddenly (and maybe intentionally) complicated, and there is no shortage of vendors and services who stand to benefit from that confusion. To make matters worse, the increasing level of noise around digital transformation confuses things more, and makes it seem like something a digital dark art.

The fact is that it’s not. Australian companies have been successfully “pivoting” for decades – in fact some older ones for over a century. We are great at adapting our businesses to take advantage of new things.

This is just a new set of opportunities. But the involvement of technology and rate of change does require a subtle twist in the approach.

At its core though, “digital transformation” is really a strategic, enterprise-wide program aimed at improving the performance of a business by re-engineering processes and approach. While continual business improvement is hardly a new concept, digital transformation is a different flavour.

While it focuses on improving performance of all key aspects of a business’ operations, it is a specialised stream. It is specialised in that a digital transformation program looks for ways in which digital technology could solve those problems.

Importantly, it is organised, strategic, executive-endorsed and spans the entire enterprise. Read the whole article at www.affinitidigital.com.au