Digital has become a core engine for every business. It has become the driving force behind organization strategies and change management. The CEOs are embracing the digital agenda as a base of their transformational strategy. CEOs have come to a realization that the digital strategy and leading enterprise digital transformation change can no longer be an isolated project anymore. The cost and the stakes involved are simply very high.
Recent research done by the World Economic Forum shows that about 70% of the CEOs they had interviewed did not have a formal digital background or expertise. Yet they are at the helm of leading the digital business change. They believed, they needed to focus on a digital transformation roadmap by building their digital capabilities, learning new skills and find trusted digital transformation consulting firms to help shape their decisions. For example, at Sonata we help CEOs assess their current digital maturity with help of a digital maturity assessment that helps them understand where they are in their current digital journey and how they can set the correct priorities and expand.
Data has become the new oxygen for the enterprises and CEOs are well cognizant of that fact. Critical business decisions are now made based on the data modeling and analytics-driven approach. From a customer perspective, the CEO makes it a personal responsibility to protect customer’s data, because they are well aware of the potential consequence if there is a major data loss on their watch.
A study made by Gartner said that only 4% of the enterprises have no digital initiatives. This is a significant shift of digital agenda as an option to the mainstream component of enterprise digital strategy. 33% of enterprises have now either been scaling or refining their digital strategy up from about 17% last year.
Supporting this scale of change has led to some significant change in the business models of the organization. One of the key ingredients behind the success of the ‘born digital’ players like Uber, Amazon are their ability to create a platform business model. This radical shift from a traditional pipe based model to platform approach has accelerated the process of enterprise digital transformation. For example at Sonata about two years ago we have a unique proprietary model of the digital transformation of enterprises – Platformation™. This was based on understanding and applying how successful born digital companies have been able to create extremely scalable and rapidly growing digital businesses. The ideas which we have adopted for Platformation is that first one needs to conceptualize a business model that is platform based, then identify how to create open, scalable, connected and intelligent platforms to support these platform-based business models. The key is to identify platforms that need to be created to support these business models and conceptualize the digital transformation journey around the creation of these platforms. We have also evolved a 16 point technology framework that needs to be adopted to create these platforms and how technologies like micro-services, cloud, AI, ML, platform engineering can be applied to the creation of these platforms.
Change of the business model is inevitable. Gartner predicts 49% of the organizations will shift their business models for effective ways to capture, create and deliver value. CEOs who will lead these changes have a greater chance of adapting to the new business paradigm and lead a successful digital enterprise.