Why Digital Transformation is Misunderstood

As part of my job at Adobe, I meet a lot of agen­cies, con­sult­ing and client firms, from both the pri­vate and pub­lic sec­tors. Many of them talk to me about dig­i­tal transformation—that is, how the devel­op­ment of dig­i­tal tools (mobile, tablet, con­nect­ed bracelet, Inter­net of Things, etc.) trans­forms, “dis­rupts” even, what they are. Indeed, these tools are pro­found­ly alter­ing human rela­tion­ships and inter­ac­tions between indi­vid­u­als and organisations.

How­ev­er, when peo­ple use the term “dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion,” they’re often only refer­ring to the tech­nol­o­gy. In real­i­ty, as I observe every day, the trans­for­ma­tion often involves man­age­ment, the company’s organ­i­sa­tion, and inter­ac­tions. It’s a pro­found break­down of organ­i­sa­tion­al silos that should lead us to talk instead about a trans­for­ma­tion of mar­ket­ing and com­merce made pos­si­ble through digital.

This is why I say that the dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion doesn’t exist. To be more pre­cise, a dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion is only one facet of a more glob­al trans­for­ma­tion, in which the tech­nol­o­gy is only one pillar—an impor­tant pil­lar, a struc­tur­al one, but a pil­lar among others.

Two major con­se­quences of this transformation

This pro­found trans­for­ma­tion has two consequences:

1- The cus­tomers have the power.

A client can always change com­pa­nies or providers, where­as a com­pa­ny will always need its cus­tomers and can­not change them. This self-evi­dent fact, which the devel­op­ment of dig­i­tal has brought to the fore­front, means that the cus­tomer must be at the cen­ter of all busi­ness concerns.

2- Com­pa­nies must review and rethink how they’re organised.

Although com­pa­nies need to put cus­tomers at the cen­ter of their busi­ness con­cerns, few are organ­ised this way, due to the pres­ence of sig­nif­i­cant organ­i­sa­tion­al silos and bound­aries between depart­ments. But the com­plex­i­ty of an organ­i­sa­tion should not affect its cus­tomers. It is there­fore nec­es­sary to first adapt the busi­ness organ­i­sa­tion, which will involve the trans­for­ma­tion of tech­nol­o­gy, espe­cial­ly those tools need­ed to man­age dig­i­tal interactions.

I insist on this point, on pur­pose: putting the con­sumer at the cen­ter of a company’s oper­a­tion is not insignif­i­cant. We must under­stand all the impacts (tech­no­log­i­cal, human, organ­i­sa­tion­al, finan­cial, etc.) to engage in the path of busi­ness trans­for­ma­tion. Then, we must define the dif­fer­ent steps of said trans­for­ma­tion, includ­ing the tech­no­log­i­cal step.

This trans­for­ma­tion is a muta­tion of the client rela­tion­ship mod­el. Equip­ping all staff mem­bers with smart­phones or rede­vel­op­ing the company’s web plat­form, for exam­ple, can­not pro­vide sat­is­fac­to­ry answers to these issues. Although these ele­ments are some­times nec­es­sary, they are def­i­nite­ly not enough.

That’s why, to con­clude and wrap every­thing up, that I say that the dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion doesn’t exist; a tech­no­log­i­cal trans­for­ma­tion exists (and is even nec­es­sary), but the trans­for­ma­tion of man­age­ment, mar­ket­ing and human rela­tions depart­ments, and exter­nal and inter­nal inter­ac­tions are the real trans­for­ma­tions. And it will always be long and painful process.

What about you, what is your per­spec­tive on dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion? Feel free to share your opin­ion in the comments!