Digital

Every organization is now undergoing through some form of Digital change. Companies are placing their future bets on how quickly they can adopt digital to their core to accelerate their growth. Individuals are also constantly challenged to keep up with the new technologies that enterprises are looking to implement. This is a great shift to how enterprises used to operate just a few years back when digital was just a buzz word. We have seen traditional businesses build multi-billion dollar businesses over a very long period of time. The new age digital players are now able to build equally valued companies at much rapid scale and disrupting several traditional industries. To keep up enterprises need to invest in the right talent strategy to augment their digital vision.

Sonata’s CEO Mr. Srikar Reddy recent spoke about the same in an article by the World Economic Forum on “3 key talents for a successful digital transformation ”. He believed that the talent requirement can be classified into three essential categories – Leadership, Technical and Behavioral

Leadership

An organization’s digital agenda is set by the leadership. The leadership needs to willingly take new risks and evaluate new opportunities. Clarity is one of the key tenets of leadership behavior that leads to sharp strategies and plans. With the sense of perseverance and agility, the leadership can brace itself for fast changing situations and plan for the road ahead.

Technical

The very heart of digital transformation change is the technology that is associated with it and that technology is constantly evolving. The talent thus becomes a multidisciplinary requirement that has a grasp of the latest digital technologies and how best it can be applied for the enterprises. The secret of success behind born digital players is their ability to execute platform business model that can rapidly scale their enterprises. They have created an ecosystem approach to business that engages a wider network to create value. The platform thinking mindset redefines the traditional pipe based model of business thus creating nonlinear and accelerated value creation. This approach has led to the requirement of a new breed of architects that can create a connected ecosystem of customers, business, vendors, and partners. Enterprises also need to invest in training on the latest technology that will define digital for the coming years. For example, AI, ML, Blockchain, AR, VR all are new age technologies that will rule the sea of digital change.

Behavioral

To be able to handle digital disruption and change, behavioral patterns will play a pivotal role in how to address the modern age digital problems. Inclusive design thinking – an approach born out of the digital environment plays a key role in identifying customer empathy and design solutions to solve customer problems. Talent training will need to include certain traits like growth mindset, empathy, curiosity to enable individuals to surpass their limitation and expand their ability to tackle new kind of problems and create solutions.

In order to succeed in the digital transformation approach, it is clear that the old models of doing things are becoming obsolete. This requires a whole new generation of multidiscipline talent that ranges right from the top – a visionary leader who can steer the enterprise roadmap for digital to the technical skillsets to harness the power of digital technology in an optimal way. Enterprises should now invest and focus on hiring and training talent with these skillsets to foster organization digital change.

Read more on our Digital Transformation solution and check out other blog pieces in this space.

In this digital age, enterprises must change the way they interact with their customers, partners, and suppliers. Enterprises also must reimagine their existing business model to reap the benefit of digital. Customer expectation is changing rapidly due to the availability of a vast amount of information and dynamic demands. There is a value gap that is being created with what the customers want and what the enterprises are able to fulfill. Enterprises must work hard to close this value gap or its stands at risk for the entire business.

The born-digital players are already disrupting much of traditional business and they are very likely to reimagine some more and thereby putting the traditional enterprises on the defensive. These enterprises must start to think like them in order to stay relevant or competitive. If you look at the reason behind the underlying success of these born-digital players, it is their ability to imagine their business as a platform business model. A platform business model is a radical shift from the traditional pipe business model where the operation was linear. Here the platform business engages the larger ecosystem of the customer, partners and suppliers and able to leverage the underlying value of data by means of digital technologies.

The traditional enterprises must start to think like technology companies. Part of that has to be the imagination of the business by itself. It needs some critical questions to be answered such as –

1. Given the huge amount of experience, the enterprise had if it had to start all over what changes and improvements in the process must be done?

2. How can value be created with help of the ecosystem by involving customers, suppliers, and partners?

3. What are the current technology gaps that need to be addressed to accelerate the digital processes?

Enterprises must be able to distinguish between digital strategy and digital transformation. The two terms are often used interchangeably but it does carry a different meaning when comes to shaping your digital enterprise. A digital strategy per se could be a silo approach of using digital technologies in one particular group of business such a supply chain operation or sales management or e-commerce for that matter where the enterprises are just looking to add one more channel for their customer acquisition. This approach is limited in the sense that it only addresses a part of the bigger problem.

Digital transformation, on the other hand, demands an overhaul of the business and building new and better ways of doing businesses. This requires a much more concrete effort right from top management commitment to execution to the lowest of the organization pyramid. This approach leverages digital technologies, tools, processes, and people to reorganize the business. This collaborative effort is a multiyear approach and if enterprises are serious about staying competitive, they must invest this time and energy to fix their business navigation. The old ways are coming to an end and it giving way for the new ways of doing business. It has always been so, right from the first industrial revolution of organized manufacturing to steam, we are in the age of the fourth industrial revolution now where digital will lead the way of change.

At Sonata, we help customers reimagine their business with the help of Platformation™ which is Sonata’s unique approach to digital with the help of platforms. We help enterprises to think like a born-digital company with help of Sonata’s proprietary 16 point technology framework, digital maturity study and digital consulting. This helps enterprises to become what we call it as Open, Connected, Scalable and Intelligent. It embodies the platform development intricacy with its proven framework that helps enterprise accelerate the digital agenda.

It is quite evident that digital is here to stay and if your enterprise needs to stay competitive and have an edge over the competition, they must start to think like platform companies otherwise they stand the risk of losing the very business