Digital Business & Leadership In Successful Digital Business Transformation

Forget past mistakes. Forget failures. Forget everything except what you’re going to do now and do it.

William Durant.

To indulge in digital business world is not only a one-time event but is a continual process of digitalization, transformation & re-transformation of the business processes as well as the enterprise applications used to implement them. As stated in Gartner’s IT Glossary, “digitalization means the use of digital technologies to modify a digital business model and give a new revenue & value-producing opportunities, whereas “digitization is the process of changing from analog to digital form.”

Digital technologies have entered into every aspect of our lives, modifying the way we find & receive information. For instance, today, we look for products and services on search engines rather than in yellow page directories & other offline media. So, We communicate our experiences with other people through email, chats, blogs, or social media posts.

Every business today needs to be a digital business because boundaries between the physical & virtual worlds continue to blur.  Further, An effective digital business strategy grips technology in all aspects of the business to develop elementary new business models and end-user experiences.

What makes the digital business different from e-business is the existence & integration of things, connected and intelligent, with business & people. 

For example, The ability to reevaluate loan portfolio risk for a bank with real-time reporting straight from financed physical assets. This could happen, for example, in the course of a car crash. Systems on the car would not only inform first responders about the crash & the condition of the occupants and the car, but they would also tell the bank, so it can evaluate its risk portfolio in real-time.

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Let say the owner was in no condition to make payments if they were not directly working- that would say the bank requires to prepare for loan default

The Stability between Efficiency, Technology & Humanity

• Digital business is not a thing only about technology. Technology is not a holy dish. What matters is how digital technologies affect business in real life because they affect the attitudes & behavior of people across all their activities. So, Just consider how executives, organizations, people & teams use them to enhance the ways they serve their customers, collaborate and operate.
• Digital business transformation is business with a customer-centric view & supple processes, wherein digital technology is used to enable people (employees, customers, managers, etc.) to succeed, boost all business functions and make your business more pertinent and beneficial. So, It does this in the progressively connected ecosystem in which organizations & people live and work. Further, The CMO, CIO will require to learn from each other, and not understanding the role of digital and how it is used by employees, customers & other stakeholders is not an option for any C-level executives anymore. So, You won’t be able to “manage” a business without missing aggressive benefits if you don’t understand digital reality and its’ effect on customer experiences in the widest sense.

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What are the Pillars of Successful Digital Business?

• Digital business is a different mindset, manner & way of approaching how your organization provides services or products to a marketplace. The three main pillars of a successful digital business world are – market understanding, a joint leadership team, and one or more technology platforms. 
• This integration of market understanding & technology will be architected, driven, and guided from the starting to address the needs detected by a cross-functional team of business leaders & technology engineers. Whose main focus is on developing increased organizational value. And, once the digital business is developed, now to succeed it will require regular care & feeding.
• Digital market understanding presents your organization’s capability to find out market challenges driving to opportunities based on your capability to meet these needs by engaging technologies. The main key to successful digital market understanding is the capability to define a business success benchmark in a given opportunity. Your organization’s view of success provides milestones for both future digital business development. Make sure business development efforts do not become over-concentrated on technology but remain dedicated to building your business.
• To keep your digital business activities on track you should make a team capable of mixing business strategy with expertise in engineering technologies across all devices. Hence These leaders will begin by segmenting a clear & concise business vision to all business & engineering team members involved. Further, This collaboration allows engineers to be deeply involved in the development of business vision and digital platforms, and to fully understand the goals behind every technology decision. 

• The last pillar of success is the technologies that enable it to attain the business goals, vision, and objectives you originally identified when deciding to widen or develop a new digital business in digital transformation.

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How Leadership in the Digital Business Transformation works?

• In just a few months, COVID-19 has achieved something that top business leaders have struggled for decennium: The virus has set out as an unpredicted desire for the digital transformation of organizations. As we know, the physical contact between people is limited at best, the world is swiftly accepting a digital lifestyle in every perception of the world.
• However, the social shutdown has also caused a worldwide downturn. Unlike earlier recessions, this one has dealt a double whammy to organizations. Moreover, At one end, markets have turned frangible & customers are disappearing. On the other end, there are internal challenges with disrupted supply chains & a displaced workforce.
• Today, leadership focuses less on the art of leadership and more on the challenges leaders face. Further, Leadership in digital age today requires an active blend of new mindsets & behaviors, and digital knowledge and skills. Thus, The important skill for digital leaders is the capability to integrate strategy, business/ market, Information & Communication Technology (ICT) to bring profit to the business and its stakeholder.
• The digital period brings more than a technology change. So, today presents a lot of opportunities & challenges for CIOs. CIOs must mentor their organizations through business disturbance & appearing opportunities, and help their organizations modify business practices, cultures & models.
• To make it happen successfully, CIOs must become change representatives for their teams & the business, but first, they will need to change their mindset & behaviors.
• According to the 2019 Global Human Capital Trends survey, 80 % of respondents estimated leadership as a prime concern for their organizations. But only 41 % told us they think their organizations are ready or very ready to meet their leadership requirements.
• Create Transparency- People need insight into what is happening and a clear context for why something is happening to be fully engaged and embrace change. So, Leaders should be transparent & open with their strategy decision-making. And make sure clear communication channels & feedback curves are executed to strengthen wide understanding & arrangement of activities across their organizations.
• I’ve seen leaders who knowingly concentrate on promoting a digital culture as well as a technical transformation bring in exceptional benefits from their dual approach. I motivate each & every leader who examines a digital business transformation. To think not just about the technology change but also the culture change.

What are The New Skills needed in a Digital Leader?

• The notion of “leader as a champion” no longer works. Companies like MasterCard, Google, Lyft, look at digital leadership as a team effort & enlist leader who can work in conjunction, complement each other, and function as a team.
• Ninety% of companies are redesigning their organizations to be more energetic, team-centric & connected. So, these changes require not only new operating models but a different type of leadership to deploy & implement these models.
• Now, Leadership is understanding how to build & lead teams; keep people connected and engaged; and lead a custom of learning, innovation, as well as continuous improvement.
• The natural aftermath of this is that leaders need integrative skills. Companies like IBM, Nestlé, Xerox, and MasterCard now present leaders together for collective design & problem-solving exercises. Challenging them to understand how different business functions, technologies, industries come together to shape solutions. The days of a ruling leader reaching the executive level in a solitary function have ended. 

In the words of Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, “The biggest risk is not taking any risk. The only master plan that is promised to fail is not taking risks.” Risk-taking has now become one of the most essential operators of a high-performing digital leadership culture.

What is the Learn transformation’s Digital Leadership Framework?

1. Enable Attitude to Lead Digital Change

• Top CEOs find it necessary to first modify the internal dynamics: change people’s mindset.  That’s happening, slowly, but regularly.

What must CEOs do?

• Value mindset over skillset.
• Look beyond profitability for the more essential signal of success.
• Make use of technology to meet the needs of people, and their communities
• Create opportunities for co-operation among Governments & businesses on a regional and global scale.

2. Be an Innovation Leader, Build an Ecosystem

• Innovation is building on what you have today and creating new & interesting models that form the future. To remain competitive and seize emerging opportunities it is crucial to restoring innovation. Who would have thought a phone would be able to do payments at grocery stores?

What must CEOs do?

• Create a custom of innovation.
• Lineup innovation with business goals & strategies.
• Take a customer-first approach.
• Use proven techniques to stimulate innovation.

3. Prepare Future-ready Workforce

• Technology has completely led to change at work, from AI & automation to digital mobility, virtual alliance & business transformation. These new forces are making people anxious and worried about the future of work and how many jobs will go unautomated. 

What must CEOs do?

• Build a powerful narrative and put your story straight.
• Promote talent not replaceable by automation anytime soon.
• Create engaging people experience, beyond training.
• Use staff analytics.
• Utilize the potential of supple talent.

4. Modify Digital Disruption into Digital Transformation

• Digital transformation provides new ways of solving problems, creating unique consumer & employee experiences, and raising business performance. Transformational business growth is characterized by i) the speed with which it implements transformation, ii) the determination to bring about change in rapid steps, iii) adoption rate and people engagement, and iv) the trust it builds with digital initiatives.

What must the CEOs do?

• To become a digital transformation leader.
• Transform the organizational culture.
• Upgrade human-technology relationship.
• Develop digital faith.

FAQs

Key Takeaways

• Digital business transformation requires strong leadership, a clear vision, and a willingness to embrace change.
• Effective use of data, analytics and new technologies is essential to a successful digital transformation.
• Collaboration, agility and a customer-centric approach are essential to tackle the complexity of the digital business environment.