Digital Outcomes Matter

Board-level conversations have turned towards digital maturity as a strategic imperative – demanding transparency into the CEO’s digital transformation agenda. As a leader, do you have a plan to reach digital maturity? How will you exceed competitor capabilities? Industries undergoing rapid change need to recognize that digital transformation is no longer just a boardroom buzzword – it is a strategic imperative. Many boards are pressuring their CXO teams to articulate and execute against an aggressive strategic transformation roadmap – requiring regular status updates on portfolio initiatives.  This is even more important if you are preparing your organization for a public offering. 

To establish an enterprise-wide plan, it is necessary to look across the entire organization to create a prioritized roadmap to optimize both market and operational opportunities. These opportunities break down into the following three categories: 

• Customer Facing
• Middle Office
• Back Office  

Digital Maturity

CEOs and CFOs are now on the hot seat to show transformational progress – all things digital have become essential to reaching the organization’s financial goals. But reaching digital maturity is more than just technology. Yes, it does require a new enterprise architecture, but harnessing the full power of digital also involves strategy, culture, and people. 

Also, knowing that 70% of transformations fall short of their desired outcomes – the entire C-Suite team needs to understand why these initiatives most often wither on the vine. The primary reasons include: 

1. Lack of Strategic Intention
2. Lack of Requirements
3. Wrong Organizational / Cultural Mindset
4. Insufficient Talent
5. Lack of familiarity with Leading Technical Solutions 

Establishing the right strategy and culture and engaging the right talent is a critical success factor. Hiring a team of transformation leaders familiar with digital design, change management, and technical architecture is essential.  

The fact remains that only digital companies will thrive over the next decade – the rest will experience near-certain decline or irrelevancy. The past three years have been exceedingly difficult for analog organizations, especially C-suite leaders in those organizations. Transformation attempts felt like changing the tires while driving over pot-holes at 100 mph (while wearing a mask). Concerns over COVID-19 may have significantly faded; however, concerns about digital acceleration and the need to transform have only grown. 

Any quest for digital maturity needs operational and financial performance as the primary objectives. Combining customer experience, new product and service initiatives, and operational data management achieves the best results. 

Closing The Gap

The first step towards progress is knowing where you are and assessing your digital maturity. Digital maturity translates into revenue growth and profit margin enhancement through customer experience improvements, operational efficiency insights, and back-office data quality. The ability to transform your business requires recognizing the current digital divide, closing the various gaps, and then leapfrogging the competition. The steps to digital maturity include:

1. Assess your organization’s digital maturity 
2. Create a clear digital vision and intention
3. Engage the organization in creating a strategic roadmap
4. Ensure data is at the center of the plan
5. Rethink your digital culture and who is to lead the organization’s transformation

While the entire CXO team plays a critical role, having an organizational champion to spearhead the initiative is a strategic imperative. Similarly, having senior leaders demonstrate support for the transformation team and IT involvement is critical. The magnitude of change during an attempt to summit the digital mountaintop is significant – it is not easy, and unfortunately, the window for summiting is rapidly closing. 

Change and evolution are inevitable; they force us to grow. As leaders, our ability to change and evolve ensures our continued relevancy and contribution to humanity. History is a struggle between change agents, laggards, and those who attempt to resist the tides of change, but we must remember that evolutionary change is unrelenting and eventually wins. Thus, we must not reject change but embrace it.

If you would like more information on how HBSC Strategic Services can help your organization reach a higher level of digital maturity, please email us at transform@hbsconsult.com or contact us at 800-970-7995.