Question

As investor, give 10 stategies and recommendation how to examine the value and performance implications of the growing trend of
non-technology companies adopting digital technologies

Answer 1

Digital Transformation:

Digital Transformation is the use of technology to improve performance or reach of corporation. Digital Transformation (enabled by emerging technologies) is a major trend impacting consumers and businesses alike. The impact will be huge as products, services, processes and business models are becoming more digital and digitally optimized. Digital shifts power to the consumer…as a result consumers expect personalized experiences and access anywhere and anytime. This power shift to consumers is accelerating with mobile and social media. Social impact on people’s shopping and buying/referral activity is rising fast. Digital Transformation is the focal point for corporate strategies everywhere. No sector or organization is immune from the digital phenomenon, which is now the focal point of the management agenda. The question is no longer when companies need to make digital a strategic priority – this tipping point is past – but how to embrace it and turn it to competitive advantage. Digital transformation (or digital disruptive forces) are a key concern for the CEO and C-Suite. However, digital transformation is not easy. Customers are fickle and hard to target. Emerging technology is moving fast. Transforming legacy technology is complicated. Business and technology silo’s make it difficult to align.

Execution of Digital Transformation:

Management’s primary challenge today is migrating from traditional to a hybrid (digital/physical) or traditional to pure digital models. Why is this critical?

• Business designs have a finite lifecycle
• Digital Value Migration is inevitable, no business design can stay fixed and survive
• Most companies see Digital Value Migration too late
• Value Migration to digital can be anticipated
• Incumbents are often best positioned to see it . . . if they know what to look for

A digital business uses technology to innovate, capture, and create new sources of growth and value. However, becoming a digital business requires digital transformation, a complex, multi-step process that requires many skillsets — technical, functional, and business skills — to align for success. Digital is more than cloud, mobile, social or Big Data. This not a technology play. It is about setting a strategy and executing it with emerging technologies, use cases, touchpoints, interactions and flow (basically a digital architecture). Companies need to create digital strategies and digital customer engagement models based on business case and solid justifications to become consistently successful in digital era. Digital Transformation is also a great opportunity for renewal and value creation. The best digital customer engagement strategies require superb execution which is why it’s imperative to be working with the right partners as you go to market.

Characteristics of a truly engaging Digital Customer Experience:

The truly engaging experiences have the following characteristics:

• Relevant…. An engaging digital experience is one that is contextually relevant. Delivering a one-size-fits-all digital customer experience is no longer acceptable or particularly effective. Instead, customers expect companies to know who they are and to understand their preferences, behavior and past relationship with the brand. And they expect companies to demonstrate this by delivering an online experience that is relevant and personalized to their needs.
• Mobile…. The ubiquity of mobile devices means that an engaging digital customer experience is also an increasingly mobile experience. This requires mobile enablement of the web presence, ideally reusing existing web content and sites, reformatted and optimized for delivery to thousands of different mobile smartphones and tablets for anytime, anywhere engagement.
• Connected… the engaging digital customer experience is a connected and consistent experience. Over the course of their relationship with any brand, customers may go online to browse, search, make purchases, or service their accounts and a number of different technologies may be involved in supporting these different types of interaction. The goal should be to create a connected, seamless and consistent customer journey, by integrating the different technologies involved in delivering the customer experience.
• Social…. Social networks like Facebook have changed customers’ expectations in favor of more interactive online experiences. Visitors to every web site expect to participate and contribute on the overall web presence and to also share aspects of that experience with their social networks. Whether through user-generated content like comments, reviews or ratings, the engaging digital customer experience now requires plenty of opportunities for social interaction.
• Solves a need. The digital customer is interacting with a brand to address their need…they don’t care about the channel. They are interested in ease of use, quick and accurate service, product selection, and does the firm know them and reward them. However, companies care about channels because that’s how they tend to be organized. The whole of the experience should be greater than sum of its parts (Easy to articulate this strategy but hard to execute in most large firms).