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Hype cycles are fun and exciting in today’s fast pace of modern age or ex-industrial revolution, if we may call today’s era. We know that the industrial revolution brought machines in and standardized processes of manufacturing in volume to create economies of scale. Now the focus has greatly and vastly shifted to a great degree and is toward, increasing the value proposition of each department, process, technology, and person amidst of shortening cycles of commercial enterprises from inception to success.
Regularly new hypes are introduced and often represent new concepts or technologies which are disruptive in the way we do business or the mindset of the leaders. Sometimes this hype can be dangerous by obfuscating an otherwise important subject. That’s the situation with the new hype called ‘digital enterprise’. Digital enterprise term is everywhere these days especially after COVID-19 came in. Although it has been getting popular during the last couple of years, however now consulting organizations are offering services around this, industry forums are being organized around this topic, solutions are being launched and the internet is full of this term.
Challenging Definition
As a human, we gravitate to define complex ideas with simpler definitions and it certainly helps to understand easily. For many people digital enterprise is a complex idea however for many it is simpler than connectivity with the internet. Some use the term to reflect process execution based on digitally powered machines and programs including connectivity with partners. At McKinsol we believe it is everything but much more than this. The bigger the organization the digital initiatives become tougher and complex.
Transformative Digital Era
As we transitioned out of the industrial revolution to the computer age, we had started marching toward the digital age. Now at the transient of it, digital transformation is an important milestone for organizations to transform companies into a fully digital enterprise. But the result of this transformation is a future organization that looks entirely different. Of course technologies such as 5G bring the completeness of some of such transformative effectiveness because it is not only the mindset but also supported by the right technology.
Let’s take a look at important phases or components of a digital enterprise.
What Is A Digital Enterprise
An digital enterprise
- Operates Digitally
- Entire business activities are enabled digitally within the organization eco-system including partners in it.
- Produces Digitally
- Utilizes digital technologies to produce products and services within the organization including through suppliers
- Generates Revenue Digitally
- Utilizes digital technologies as a key enabler to success in generating revenue
- Creates Competitive Advantage
- Key advantages are driven by leveraging digital technologies
- Creates Value Digitally
- Utilizes digital technologies to deliver key value drivers and critical success factors
Technology At The Core:
The technology-first mindset is helping organizations to focus on achieving speed, agility, and efficiency of the business activities and it has become the norm in today’s enterprise. The thought process to consider technology is changing to consider bringing an edge to institute technology at the core of the process thereby changing the entire modus operandi of doing business and offering value to its customers. As a result, the core functions, structure, and processes will also change, re-align, becoming flattered, automated, agile, and dynamic taking the best use of new-age technology. This mindset and institutionalization are helping companies to constantly evolve, also stronger against their competition.
The technology group inside the organization behaves like a start-up and tries to continue looking for ways to enable success in each area based on technology. At the core of enterprise business processes, technology
People At The Core
Although technology plays and continues to play a significant role in a digital enterprise, don’t you think that it is more to do with the belief and mindset of people including leaders or tasks doers finding innovation? At McKinsol we strongly believe that a digital enterprise is more to do with culture, attitude, values, and belief of people to jointly work with technology group to transform quickly toward organization which is an automated, dynamic, constantly learning organization, agile in adapting the changes in the environment and culture, identifying opportunities and challenges and efficiently serving its partners including customers.
Development Methodology & Security
As discussed, enabling an organization to make a digital enterprise, requires thought leadership, culture shift, and the right set of processes and practices. Companies are adopting more and more modern software development practices such as agile, DevOps, etc. to enable organizations to conceptualize, develop, test, and release new products and features rapidly and repetitively. On another note, often there is a discussion about conflicting areas of security and compliance. Although security and compliance are at the core of digital initiatives however companies are formally engraving security and compliance into the methodology. Read a good article about DevSecOps https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/mckinsey-digital/our-insights/agile-reliable-secure-compliant-it-fulfilling-the-promise-of-devsecops?cid=other-eml-alt-mip-mck&hdpid=21111003-c0c0-4711-9cb5-c888cc2d4003&hctky=2266140&hlkid=888dc7958a05424bb403c5ab5e1ba79c
Transformation Process & Roadmap
Orchestrating and choreographing the transformation process to becoming a digital enterprise will take a lot of effort in almost every area of the organization including organization structure, re-positioning the value proposition of products and services in most cases, business processes, operations, strategy across utilizing technology-first, technology itself. However, more than this McKinsol believes the journey begins from people, mindset, change management practices, adaptive thinking to embrace disruptive technologies positively at ground level, and culture change. Fundamental and core are to embrace the vision of becoming a Digital Enterprise, understand the magnitude of what that means, and march steadfastly into a new future with a leadership mindset. McKinsol believes that McKinsol can help you in such a vision of yours from soup to nuts ensuring results are delivered.
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