Most headline messages about digital transformation discuss the necessity of switch from legacy systems; avoiding siloed data; and focusing on developing the C-suite executives. In addition, there is talk about time to value and maintaining customer satisfaction.
What is often missing from the discussion is the need to develop a new culture. This is a culture of innovation, understanding and shared values in order to innovate in product and service development.
Changing mindsets
For example, analysis by MIT Sloan and Deloitte into busienss focused digital successes and failures concluded:
“The history of technological advance in business is littered with examples of companies focusing on technologies without investing in organizational capabilities that ensure their impact. In many companies, (failures are) classic examples of expectations falling short because organizations didn’t change mindsets and processes or build cultures that fostered change.”
The survey also found, as Sloan Review summarizes, that the ability to digitally reimagine the business is a factor of having a clear digital strategy supported by leaders who are capable of fostering an innovative, change-friendly culture. For this to happen, the workforce need to be willingly and determinedly taken on the digital transformation path.
Taking employees on the journey
This means every employee in the company understands and supports collaborative practices, innovation, open culture and adopting a digital-first mindset; plus, having the agility and flexibility, customer centricity to deliver change. Once this is in place a data-driven culture will start to form and new technologies can be steadily adopted.
This means companies need to implement systemic changes in how they organize and develop workforces. Organizations also need to seriously consider how they drive workplace innovation, and work collectively to cultivate digitally-minded cultures and experiences.
Coca Cola
As to how this might work in practice, one example is Coca Cola. The company acknowledges that culture change is one of the most difficult aspects of digital transformation to realize.
The soft drinks firm’s digital strategy officer, David Godsman notes that changing culture across the marketing team is the hardest thing Coca-Cola has to tackle as it undergoes the necessary transformation the enterprise for the digital age.
Coca Cola is also attempting to alter its customer focus, acknowledging the need to create personalized experiences for consumers and customers, to fit in with consumers seeking multi-channel experiences and fast mobile access, especially when receiving promotions.
Latitude financial services
A second example of digital transformation with a customer focus is with Latitude financial services. According to Caroline Ruddick, who is the company’s general manager of marketing, there needs to be a twin strategy of developing and improving the customer experience, together with ensuring that employees are responsive to the changes taking place within the organization so they can successful and emphatically offer high quality outfacing services.
Tied up with this is recognition that customers are increasingly more concerned about the experience, seeking an easier, multi-channel offering, and they are less concerned about the actual product, or at least with having any significant loyalty to one product over another.
Adobe
Adobe provides a third example of a company recognizing the value of a culture change. According to Vision Critical, when Adobe took the decision to transition from physical software to a cloud-based model, the company recognized that it was necessary to shift its employees’ focus towards the the customer.
This was undertaken by developing a staff Experience-a-thon. Adobe had employees role play testing and providing feedback on Adobe portfolio of products, pretending to be customers. This led to an employee engagement strategy and a shift in culture, paving the way for Adobe’s evolution into a cloud company.
These examples demonstrate that the ‘big moment’ for an organization is when it embraces the fact that digital transformation is not a a technical problem to be fixed, but instead it is a cultural change to be enacted through the enterprise.
