Navigating the Digital Seas: A Journey through Future Ready
Introduction:
In the ever-evolving landscape of the digital economy, the quest for staying relevant and thriving is akin to navigating uncharted waters. In this exciting expedition, “Future Ready: The Four Pathways to Capturing Digital Value” by Stephanie L. Woerner and Peter Weill serves as our compass, leading us through four distinct pathways, four explosions to manage, and ten capabilities that promise to make organizations future-ready pioneers.
Charting the Pathways:
Embarking on a digital odyssey requires choosing the right course, and “Future Ready” lays out four enticing pathways. It’s a bit like choosing your adventure in a multi-dimensional chess game where each move has its own set of risks and rewards.
1. Industrialize — Building the Foundations:
Think of this as constructing a digital castle, brick by brick. Kaiser Permanente and Tetra Pak stand as shining examples, showcasing the slow and steady wins of building reusable digital services. It’s a platform mindset journey that promises value from operations and the thrill of rapid innovation.
2. Delight Customers First — The Fast Lane with a Twist:
In this pathway, the mantra is ‘customer first, complexity second.’ It’s like speed dating for businesses. Dive into the customer-centric culture at DBS and KPN, where innovation across silos creates an unparalleled customer experience, even if it means dancing with complexity in the long run.
3. Alternate the Focus, like Stair Steps — The Balanced Waltz:
Imagine climbing a digital staircase, shifting gracefully between customer experience and operational efficiency. This pathway, exemplified by DBS and KPN, requires a delicate balance, ensuring each step forward is coordinated and well-defined, avoiding the pitfalls of inertia and communication hiccups.
4. Create a New Unit — The Entrepreneurial Leap:
For the bold and daring, this pathway is like starting a new life on a distant digital island. Establishing a new firm or business unit unencumbered by legacy constraints, as seen in TradeLens and Domain, promises a future-ready adventure. Yet, it comes with the challenge of integrating this new entity into the existing landscape.
Managing Explosions:
Picture this digital transformation as a controlled fireworks display — four explosions, each requiring deft management to prevent chaos. Decision rights, platform mindset, organizational surgery, and new ways of working explode onto the scene, and leaders must masterfully handle these bursts to keep the transformation on track.
Ecosystems: Connecting Customer Domains:
The authors challenge the traditional industry-centric model by introducing the concept of customer domains. It’s like realizing that customers are like butterflies — diverse and fluttering across industries. Enter the ecosystem business model, where Schneider Electric, Fidelity, Shopify, and others have successfully stitched together offerings from different industries, creating a harmonious and effective solution for customer needs.
Creating a New Unit for Ecosystems:
Venturing into the realm of ecosystem business models is akin to establishing a new world, complete with its own rules. Leaders face decisions on branding, resourcing, management, and integration with the parent firm. Success might even lead to the new unit taking flight independently, running separately, or spinning off.
Future-Ready Capabilities:
As we sail through the digital seas, we must equip ourselves with the right tools. Future-ready capabilities, divided into customer, ecosystem, and foundational categories, become our arsenal. Like a trinity, these capabilities ensure a great multiproduct customer experience, active participation in ecosystems, and treating data as a strategic asset.
Navigating BBVA’s Digital Transformation:
A case study in excellence, BBVA, the global financial group, embarked on a four-pronged approach. Creating a data platform, fostering a data-driven culture, and leveraging data resulted in improved operational efficiency, soaring customer satisfaction, and impressive financial performance. It’s as if BBVA set sail, adjusting its course based on the wind of digital transformation.
Dashboarding for Success:
Schneider Electric’s case study illustrates the importance of a dashboard, a digital sextant in our journey. This tool helped align goals, measure progress, and communicate results. Like a navigator steering a ship, firms can use dashboards to ensure they stay on course in their digital value creation.
Assessing Value Creation:
Measuring the value derived from digital initiatives is paramount. The authors provide a framework for evaluating value creation in operations, customer experience, and ecosystems. This self-assessment tool acts as our compass, allowing us to gauge where we are, where we want to be, and how to get there.
Conclusion: Sailing Towards Digital Excellence:
As we conclude our journey through the pages of “Future Ready,” we’ve navigated the intricate waters of digital transformation. The compass, maps, and anecdotes from Kaiser Permanente to BBVA have armed us with insights and strategies. The digital seas might be unpredictable, but armed with the knowledge of future-ready pathways, explosions, and capabilities, we’re ready to steer our organizations towards success in the digital era. Bon voyage!
Reference: “Future Ready: The Four Pathways to Capturing Digital Value” by Stephanie L. Woerner and Peter Weill.
