There’s no doubt that the last two years have drastically accelerated digital transformation efforts across industries and organizations. And while there have been successes, a lot of focus tends to veer toward failures — and what lessons can be gleaned from these.
McKinsey’s latest Global Survey looked at top-performing companies, and how they set themselves apart both economically and via sustained digital transformation success.
What are these top-performers doing? Here are three mandates that allowed these organizations to capture the full value of digital transformation.
1) A focus on customer engagement and innovation strategies
McKinsey asked respondents how they plan on differentiating their business strategy from their competitors’ over the next two years. Top economic performers are more likely to focus less on operational efficiency and more on customer engagement and innovation. Tech is what they’re turning to, to stand out from other organizations — and they’re more likely to be bolder and take bigger bets.
2) Building (and even monetizing) proprietary assets
Better customer engagement and innovation means having core tech capabilities in place, McKinsey explains. And these top performers are more likely to have invested in capabilities like adopting automated processes for testing and deploying new tech, and the adoption of the public cloud.
What’s surprising, McKinsey found, is that top performers are disproportionately building/monetizing proprietary assets (eg. software, AI, data). Their research shows that while two-thirds of respondents report that their companies have invested in these assets, top performers take it a step further.
3) Acquiring and managing top executive talent/tech-savvy leaders
No matter how you slice it, people are just as important as the technology with digital transformation. It’s no secret that organizational buy-in is fundamental. And finding/retaining tech talent is a huge issue that frequently pops up in think-pieces and research.
But what about the C-suite — a place where it’s all the more challenging to attract and reskill high-level executives? McKinsey found that the top economic performers did a better job at managing these tech-savvy leaders (and attracting them in the first place).
Get an in-depth look at these factors and McKinsey’s Global Survey here.
