Digital Transformation 2 Requires a CIO v2.x

CIOs are studying, typically painfully, that digital transformation is an in depth area, requiring a multi-faceted strategy that goes past the appliance of rising applied sciences.  CIOs responded to the burning platform crises of the COVID Pandemic by accelerating their expertise modernisation – particularly via shifting important platform providers to the Cloud and enabling new digital capabilities with Seas.  The subsequent step, Digital transformation 2.x nevertheless now turns into extra about course of innovation, shopper expertise, enterprise mannequin transformation, and organizational tradition transformation. 

Today’s theme, subsequently, is that digital transformation 2 calls for a brand new function for the CIO, as a result of digital transformation not solely disrupts enterprise, but it surely should equally rework management.  Hence the CIO v2 is now not a standard technologist, however relatively an architect of an enterprise transformation, whose contribution to worth progress and competitiveness contains the design of digital enterprise fashions.  This means seeing digitalization as a enterprise mannequin innovation alternative, extra than simply technology-driven change.  Digital transformation disrupts each the way in which individuals work – the power and ambition of staff to work digitally – and the merchandise, providers, and buyer worth an trade presents.  A key factor is buyer centricity – continuous enhancements to buyer worth propositions and customer-focused outcomes.

Firstly, construct a Business Architecture 2.0 competency, utilizing the jargon-free language of Business Capabilities and Value Streams for an actionable, light-weight strategic canvas. CIO v2s don’t waste sources creating voluminous blueprints that concentrate on governance relatively than enterprise outcomes, nor want the summary, unwieldy methodologies of conventional Enterprise Architecture.  Business Architecture v2 importantly provides ecosystem fashions, to handle new market attain alternatives.  Customer journey mapping takes precedence as a crucial requirement to design improved interactions, perceive the issues to resolve, and the best way to take away friction and add worth.  Customer-driven worth streams present the place worth is genuinely created, validating the Roe of investing within the enabling expertise capabilities to assist every worth occasion.

To orchestrate this journey, mud off your copy of the Business Model Canvas: use this famed mannequin by Osterwalder to create a transparent alignment and visibility of the 9 key components on the coronary heart of each enterprise mannequin.  It stays particularly related to right this moment’s digital ambitions as a result of at its coronary heart is the client worth proposition, the pains you goal to resolve from the angle of focused buyer segments utilizing v2 digital channels.  This canvas articulates What you might be remodeling into, and Why?  Our v2 contains the “platform economy” – the interaction of key companions, alliances, and trade ecosystem choices.  The canvas will spotlight the inevitable ripple results and interdependencies which complicate all digital transformation initiatives.  More than simply investing in the proper applied sciences, the problem is orchestrating the operational modifications wanted to allow these to be adopted successfully. 

  ​ The subsequent step, Digital transformation 2.x nevertheless now turns into extra about course of innovation, shopper expertise, enterprise mannequin transformation, and organizational tradition transformation   

Digital transformation offers contemporary relevance to IT’s established stalwarts: Agile and Lean.  There has by no means been a greater time for CIOs to evangelise Agile Business, and have Agile practices transfer past software program improvement to take centre stage throughout your entire enterprise.  To stop transformation stalling, decision-making should turn out to be extra responsive and decentralised, the place empowered fusion groups should make choices rapidly, with a robust deal with enterprise outcomes and delivering measurable worth, not undertaking outputs.  An Agile mindset encourages the supply of worth in a steady move. Transformation v2 isn’t a discrete undertaking, the shifting components, each technological and organisational, shall be aligned in Agile’s iterative, incremental, and adaptive style. 

Re-read your copy of The Lean Start-Up (Eric Ries).  Where established companies have been beforehand dismissive of the MVP “hacks” of start-up cultures, right this moment’s want for speedy digital experimentation, studying and innovation suggests that each one corporations ought to recognise the worth of start-up classes, for the brand new components being added to their enterprise.  Adopt the “Build – Measure – Learn” mantra for new digital enterprise fashions.  These v2 frameworks are rooted in accepting that any new mannequin isn’t good on Day 1, however evolves from iterative refinements, beginning with MVPs and pushed by real-world buyer testing to enhance the worth proposition.  An MVP ought to be designed to start a studying course of.  Borrowing from Lean v2, keep away from wasted effort: take away any characteristic that doesn’t contribute on to a “validated learning” objective. 

My recommendation, subsequently, is that CIOs revisit core frameworks that may present guiding ideas for an in depth journey.  Whilst these are instruments we beforehand used extensively, our CIO v2 ought to now refresh them to efficiently align the organisation for a number of aims.  These instruments, plus a pragmatic mixture of each Systems Thinking and Design Thinking, can craft the holistic course of for a customer-centric digital technique (fixing actual buyer wants); shared knowledge and platforms for brand spanking new partnerships and ecosystems; articulating a management imaginative and prescient to vary the corporate tradition (“where are we going, and why does it matter?”); and creating “future business capabilities” via the modernisation of legacy platforms.  These transformation instruments supply an up to date roadmap to elucidate your vacation spot and supply navigation via a set of waypoints alongside the (lengthy) street.