Adopting a new mindset for digitalisation success

In today’s age of fast-moving connected markets and digital disruptors, the onus is on established organisations to improve and innovate, or risk being overtaken by nimbler upstarts. Indeed, the rationale behind this thinking can be found in the popular mantra of entrepreneurs: “Disrupt or be disrupted.”

The evidence of digital disruption is everywhere, and fast creeping into traditional niches that one may not immediately associate with digital. For instance, e-commerce platforms are gaining traction over brick and mortar stores, and ride-hailing apps are preferred by many over traditional flagging of taxis on the street.

One cannot afford to rest on their laurels in this age of digital disruptions, as competitors leverage digital to achieve dramatic improvements in quality, innovation, and speed-to-market. To stay abreast, businesses must leverage digitalisation to meet business needs and deliver better customer experiences. Crucially, they must react faster and endow their organisations with greater agility to meet perpetually changing customer demands and evolving business realities.

Ironically, the road to digital doesn’t necessarily begin with technology. According to experts, a successful digital transformation is less about technology and more about the people – and their mindsets.

Unfortunately, many organisations forget the crucial step of establishing the necessary cultural shift to succeed with digital technologies. According to IDC Intelligence Economy by Digitalisation Survey, 2018, 28% of organisations treat digital transformation as a special project or run it out of a special department, which limits digital transformation being perceived as part of everyone’s job.

To start with, business leaders must themselves be convinced of the overriding need to embrace digitalisation. The onus is on them to visualise and communicate an overarching digital vision to motivate employees. New metrics that reinforce this commitment must also be developed to measure the organisation's progress and tracked as core key performance indicators (KPIs) within the organisation. They must also prepare for unanticipated effects of these new metrics, and to tweak them midstream as necessary. 

With continuous encouragement towards digital innovation and by outlining the organisation’s digital vision, organisation can slowly but surely change the mindset of employees and fundamentally shift the way they work. With a new mindset, employees are hence able to effectively harness new digital tools towards success.

Obviously, technology does play a vital role in any digital transformation initiative. This is also where the right path forward becomes less clear-cut. Which technologies and IT systems should organisations turn to, and how should they be implemented? This is further complicated by the fact that technological standards change and evolve over time, and preferred tools today may no longer be popular a year down the road.

While there is no simple answer here, it is evident that traditional strategies of cultivating one’s own code base and proprietary systems must be replaced with an approach that offers greater agility and capability. Rather than focusing on singular programming languages or solutions, forward-looking organisations should instead leverage existing platforms or ecosystems to jumpstart their digital transformation initiatives.

Building on an existing ecosystem also offers greater defensibility against change, by allowing businesses to leverage available capabilities without reinventing the wheel. And unlike proprietary or custom deployments that are rendered obsolete over time, it is far likelier that an ecosystem maintained by an industry leader will be well-maintained and kept up-to-date.

Ultimately, relying on the right ecosystems mean that businesses can focus on their digital transformation and meeting the needs of customers, safe in the assurance that their technology stack is competitive and will stand the test of time. Interested to find out where you might be on a DX maturity roadmap? 

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