What a digital business is not

Recently, Accenture surveyed nearly 2000 executives from nine industries across 15 countries around the world. Of the people interviewed, 7 out of 10 said, “digital technologies have greater potential for transformation when implemented together, rather than individually.” The technologies they were talking about included big data and analytics, social media, mobile technologies and cloud technologies.

Individually, we have been hearing these terms for many years now. But it is only in the last five years that we have seen the amalgamation of these technologies into a new digital animal called “digital business”.

Most enterprises know what a digital business is, thanks to these definitions provided by the biggies:

“Digital business is the creation of new business designs by blurring the digital and physical worlds. CIOs and IT leaders can use this framework to identify the current state of the business, determine the future state and gauge the change required to become a digital business.”
- Gartner

“A digital business is an organization that incorporates digital technology to create revenue and results via innovative strategies, products, processes and experiences.”
- Accenture

A digital business is an enterprise that embraces technological advances in a way that empowers customers, optimizes business operations, fuels innovation, capitalizes on new business models, and increases profits.
- Oracle

While these definitions are all correct, they have created some confusion in the minds of executives around the world because of the overlap with so many other technological terms being used today. For example, how is digital business different from a decision support system? Or what does digital business do that the existing IT function doesn’t?

We thought of breaking this down in multiple blog posts and articles – this being just one in the series. To understand what digital business is, you have to know what it is not.

It is not an extended IT solution
Digital business is not a product you can buy off the shelf to support your business. It’s not a service that analyzes larger chunks of data. It’s not a technology that makes your organization more accessible on the mobile. It is not an infrastructure component that increases throughput. In fact, it is a marriage of all of these and more. Digital business is a strategy that requires you to change the way you do business altogether. It’s not something that you can plug into your existing processes to bring efficiencies.

It is not a business enabler
Continuing from the last point, digital business is not a technology that allows you to make business processes more efficient. Therefore, it is not a business enabler. Implementing a digital business means that you change the way you run your business operations. This means:
•    outsourcing non-core competencies (e.g., using the cloud),
•    generating data from everywhere (e.g. IoT devices, social media, mobile data, etc.)
•    analyzing multi-source data (using big data analytics)
•    enhancing customer experiences (e.g. using social media and real-time decision making)
•    enabling systems to communicate with each other to reduce human dependence (e.g. OT/IT integration)

This means rethinking and re-engineering your operations from scratch, not merely implementing a business enabler.

It is not more social media presence
Having a social media team doesn’t cut it. Are you analyzing customer data from social media? Can you personalize products or services based on this data? Are you enhancing processes based on recurrent feedback themes witnessed on your social media page? Simply having more social media presence with quick replies to your customers is not enough. There is an enormous potential for data analysis on your channels that you must leverage upon.

Allerin’s assists enterprises with an Operational Effectiveness Assessment for their Digital Business initiatives. Based on the maturity of their existing initiatives, future goals and digital readiness of the organization, we advise and develop implementation plans for their Digital Business. Get in touch with us for more details.