Much has been written about the impact of COVID-19 upon healthcare, the economy and society. A relatively large degree of research has been dedicated to the effect of the pandemic upon the corporate world and the need to rethink the traditional paradigm that has long governed the interaction between businesses and their respective clients.
The isolating nature of the pandemic, as well as the persistence of the virus, underscores the need to address and adopt innovative strategies and resilient business models to counter any inevitable negative impact, whilst exploiting all emerging opportunities.
Global management consultancy McKinsey & Company recently described how the pandemic "is changing how consumers behave across every aspect of their lives. As consumers sheltered at home, adoption of new digital services took place at a blistering pace. In addition to growing health and hygiene concerns, economic recession, and the related decline in consumption, the scope of the change to people’s lives is staggering."
Just as many are calling the current pre-vaccine era as ‘the new normal,’ McKinsey have similarly adopted the term ‘the next-normal consumer’ to designate the evolving traits and preferences of the emerging consumer.
"Seemingly every consumer behaviour has been altered by the crisis; companies need to adapt to big changes in how [consumers] get their information, what and where they buy, and how they experience shopping."
In the face of such an unforeseen and critical need to adapt to the urgent exigencies of this global crisis, it is no wonder that most business organisations have turned their focus towards digital transformation. Salesforce, the American cloud-based software giant, defines digital transformation as "…the process of using digital technologies to create new - or modify existing - business processes, corporate culture, and customer experiences to meet changing business and market requirements."
Achieving digital transformation is a journey rather than a one-off process and involves understanding and improving the overall customer experience in order to go to market with an enhanced and flexible business model tailored to address changing economic realities.
Most business organisations have turned their focus towards digital transformation
Contrary to widespread thinking, the heart of digital transformation is not technology, but rather the customer and the mutually beneficial business engagement with this customer that can make or break any business organisation.
In his recent article entitled ‘Going digital,’ Lawrence Zammit aptly described how ‘In the new post pandemic normal, e-commerce would become the main method of serving customers. Despite this, a number of businesses are still wary of going digital when interfacing with their customers.”
Zammit lists three main reasons why businesses may be apprehensive about embarking upon digital transformation, citing product/service feasibility, business disruption and the perceived investment as three possible reservations that may hamper digital transformation.
However, from experience, I perceive a fourth potential apprehension, one that often reminds me of the fictional encounter, somewhere in Wonderland, between Lewis Carroll’s Alice and the Cheshire Cat:
Alice: Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?
Cheshire Cat: That depends a good deal on where you want to get to.
Alice: I don't much care where…
Cheshire Cat: Then it doesn't much matter which way you go.
Alice: ...so long as I get somewhere.
Cheshire Cat: Oh, you’re sure to do that, if you only walk long enough.
Too often, I encounter organisations who are not quite aware where they stand across the broad, corporate, digital maturity curve. Understanding where a business organisation lies along this digital maturity curve helps to recognise and acknowledge the level and ability of the entity to respond and take advantage of technological developments in order to transform core business operations and drive growth.
It is therefore not surprising to note that the Digital Transformation 2020 Survey by Deloitte, published just last May, concluded that ‘A company’s level of digital maturity is one of the most significant indicators of growth and financial success.’ Although digital maturity is not the same as digital transformation, the two are closely related concepts and dependent upon each other. In order to undertake a serious digital transformation initiative, a company will need to understand how digitally mature it truly is.
A successful digital transformation initiative, in fact, can be said to consist of a set of digital maturity stages that build up and evolve from the preceding stage. Just like Alice, a company will need to know where it stands today in order to be able to chart how far it wishes or still needs to go in its digital transformation drive.
In other words, understanding the prevailing ‘As-Is’ with respect to digital maturity will facilitate the digital transformation roadmap towards a future ‘To-Be’ state. Unfortunately, quite a few business entities misinterpret digital maturity to denote the total quantity of investment spent on acquiring and implementing IT solutions, including how cutting-edge these solutions may be. Such a deceptive viewpoint often fails to take into consideration the fundamental fact that cutting-edge solutions are only as effective as the take-up by all stakeholders (e.g. employees and clients) as well as the bottom-line value transformation, brought to bear through technology, upon processes and corporate culture.
There are various methodologies through which to carry out a digital maturity assessment, however all of them share a set of common factors that include:
1. Management, vision and strategy
2. Application of technology as a key support tool
3. Technology-enabled processes
4. Customer-centricity vs. product-centricity, and
5. A shared and unifying corporate culture.
Within the local context, two leading factors tend to stand out when assessing digital maturity; a common uncertainty as to the true degree of senior management being fully ‘data-driven’ when making critical business decisions, as well as an ever-present level of doubt whether employees enjoy the right skills and technology tools to be genuinely ‘customer-centric.’
Understanding where a company lies within the digital maturity curve, allows the entity to recognise gaps and shortcomings, identify opportunities and determine the key steps and roadmap stages which must be achieved in order to attain genuine digital transformation.
In a way, the objective is for Alice to someday reply: "I want to mature and get to a stage where I provide a superior customer experience and drive tangible value to my business." Now that should wipe that grin right off the cat’s face.
Hadrian J Sammut is the Chief Officer, Advisory and Projects with the local firm of iMovo. He can be contacted on hadrian.sammut@imovo.com.mt.