McKinsey & Company says companies “must stop experimenting with digital and commit to transforming themselves into full digital businesses.” They offer insights into the seven habits that successful digital enterprises share. I’ll summarize them here:
- Be unreasonably aspirational. Make someone accountable at the board level; create a stretch vision; measure digital value, not digital interactions.
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Acquire new capabilities. Buy scarce talent en-mass; hire for digital skills, not industry experience; move into adjacent markets.
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Ring-fence and cultivate talent. Protect digital talent from existing business operations, perhaps by locating them far away; don’t rely on existing HR models.
- Challenge everything. Don’t accept historical norms; question the status quo; create a plan covering every function, product, business unit, and location.
- Be quick and data driven. Continually evolve your value proposition; embrace live testing; create a data-based view of each customer.
- Follow the money. Create a zero-based tech budget aligned with value at stake; invest across the value chain; scale success rapidly.
- Be obsessed with the customer. Learn from every interaction; relentlessly evolve and improve the customer experience.
This is a great roadmap for any digital transformation initiative and although it does go beyond digital experience, or front-end technologies, it does not preclude them. What we are seeing with both user experience platforms and marketing automation technologies is deeper integration with both systems of record and systems of engagement, better and broader analytics, and a greater understanding of the customer through digital body language. These are enablers of a digital enterprise that should form part of a holistic enterprise strategy with board level sponsorship.
