Digital transformation is not an end unto itself; it must be driven by business conditions to improve business outcomes. If CIOs do not think of digital transformation in business terms, it is risk to lose sight of the business value IT brings to the organization.
Before the pandemic, most companies viewed digital transformation as a way to drive costs out of their business–growing bottom line, update their processes, migrate their systems into the cloud, and take as many back-end costs out as possible. What we are seeing now around these technologies is the focus on growing market share and topline revenue in additional to increasing customer loyalty. These are much more competitive advantages, so it seems that companies writ large, while harnessing these newer more transformational technologies to generate new insights, improve data security and become a winner going forward. CIO’s should in turn make a plan to support the organization’s digital business strategy. If a business case for digital transformation can’t be made, digital transformation will fail.
Some key considerations for business leaders are to take advantage of the fact that digital transformation provides opportunities to enhance quality of service. Digital transformation gives CIOs the opportunity to enhance the quality of service to end users by implementing continuous delivery and deployment strategies, making it easier to get new services to users faster.
Digital transformation is not solely on enhancing external activities. Leaders should leverage these new technologies and seek use digital transformation to provide better support for the organization’s internal business goals–this includes addressing cost drivers. Digital transformation gives companies the opportunity to improve processes and use technology to provide better support for the organization’s business goals. Which ultimately will allow the business to focus on providing better services and products to their customers.
