Welcome to the Digital Acceleration Newsletter. Click on Subscribe to be notified of new episodes.
In today’s episode, we will continue addressing an important topic: Where do I start?
During Episode 2, we discuss the benefits of Digital Acceleration: (1) Customer Loyalty and (2) Operational Efficiency.
This time, we will discuss the importance of building business resilience and also the importance of having an effective team.
Where do I start? What does the Journey look like?
I think this Digital Acceleration journey has some similarities to an epic-novel story, where the main character has lost his ground (a safe zone, where we were yesterday) to a new place (the promised land), going through a path full of uncertainties.
Our promised land is an updated technical blueprint that will allow the business to collaborate with customers and partners in real-time. Your company will use these interactions to learn from customer and partner preferences and improve the business in real-time.
Would you mind playing a game with me?
Imagine that you are the main character of that epic tale, the hero (the heroine), our CIO, and you are trained as the leader of a SWAT team (SWAT: Special Weapons and Tactics).
Imagine that you are so specialized and trained that you can only carry a backpack to load your special weapons.
Ask yourself, what would you load in the backpack for this journey?
Believed or not, several classic tales’ stories have the same restriction—certain limits of space, time, and resources.
This is a significant ingredient to the epic story to bring attention to the reader and fame and glory to the main character.
Typically, the hero (heroine) makes the initial choices based on a what-if scenario.
If I were asked to play the game, before making my choices, I would ask for some additional information:
1. Can anybody explain to me the game’s rules?
2. Can anybody explain to me some of the risks ahead?
Rules of the Game:
I already commented on one of the most important rules:
– You cannot stop the business. Everything is dynamic, like landing a fighter jet on an aircraft carrier.
Now I am going to give you another rule:
– The choices you made may work for you and not for other leaders in the game. The business transformation path you will take may only suit your organization, as these choices must be in sync with your organization’s values, beliefs, and branding.
Let’s say that two leaders (two companies) in the same industry segment have chosen the same priorities. This will allow similar digital capabilities, but how they interact with customers may be different: different customer segmentation and value proposition. This is critical because this is the way companies will continue competing by creating unique value for their customers.
Lessons learned and Risks
Lessons Learned
- This is not about copying other business models but using the same technology components to build something distinctive and unique that will create customer loyalty and long-term success for your business.
- A similar situation occurs between industry segments: due to the nature of each industry segment, the priorities may change between different industries: a typical approach in Retail is different from a Healthcare or Manufacturing organization.
- It is almost impossible to win the game with a big bang approach: it is too costly, risky, and unnecessary. By having a step approach, you have an additional benefit: The organization may have extra time to learn about the organization’s changes and embrace new business models quickly. Digital Acceleration is about driving innovation while supporting the business.
A significant risk
- There is a real possibility of business disruption, and you need to identify potential disruption scenarios and be capable of disabling risky events before impacting the business.
So, getting back to the main point. What would you put in your initial backpack load?
The first thing I would add would be tools to improve business resilience.
I. Business Resilience: Getting ready for unknown risk in a multi-step implementation approach
The criteria chosen by many epic tale leaders include loading their backpacks with tools and information needed to detect risky situations early.
I know you may say:
This is like boiling the ocean: too many factors and elements to monitor… any thought?
Well, partially in agreement. A couple of comments.
- IT leaders may implement changes in their current IT platform to avoid disruption or delay the effect of any disruptive event in their business capability to respond to market needs.
- Let me add: Any Business Transformation consists -at least- of people, technology, and processes. In this journey about to start, many business leaders put energy into double-checking that the business can operate even during external and internal impacting events.
Recently, this has been named Business Resilience, also VUCA (Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity), but in the past, it was also called Business Continuity or Business Redundancy.
Recent Lesson Learned from the Pandemic: Business Disruption
My point is: During the last 24 months, all business has learned vastly about dealing with business disruption. The Digital Acceleration initiatives about to start must capitalize on the new Lessons Learned.
I want to add a couple of observations that I think are pertinent.
What is unique about Business Resilience in this Journey?
From a technology point of view, I think it is proper to analyze the changes required to be disruption-free in three dimensions: HW, SW Application Quality Management, and IT Services availability.
Many organizations have already developed excellent HW redundancy to support the business, and others have built additional protection by migrating multiple IT services to private and hybrid clouds.
We will talk about the Cloud in another episode. 😊
But Application testing? Why is this important?
Do you remember we talked about a multiple-step approach?
As we are moving into the Journey, we will face many application challenges:
- We will discover that some siloed applications create data flow constraints from a “Digital World” point of view. In many cases, it will be more effective to consolidate multiple Siloed applications into one than to connect them with a plethora of API connections in a star-mesh approach.
- We will also find out that some Enterprise Applications will need crucial upgrades to exchange data effectively with the external world: Customers, social media, IoT, analytics, blockchain, mobile apps, and benefit from other technologies such as AI.
- Finally, the business will require implementing significant changes to map new business processes in existing and future applications.
How to tackle all that?
A lesson learned:
Any Project Manager will tell you that it is necessary to set a project baseline before starting the project. Doing this will give you a reference to measure progress and detect expected and unexpected issues.
It is a fact that we will face the impact of “unsolicited” events related to application changes during the transformation.
By having a good picture of all applications (Application Quality Testing and Regression Testing), many organizations will be capable of detecting and fixing errors introduced in the IT ecosystem before impacting production.
I don’t want to get too technical. Please remember that my goal is to share valuable information with IT and non-IT executives. Happy to continue talking further via the forum or direct messaging.
Any other considerations you want to share?
Yes, just one more, the other thing I would work on is having an effective team
II. Building an effective team:
I already mentioned that a significant transformation is comprised of at least people, technology, and process.
I want to add something about the people aspect of the transformation.
The hero (heroine) must decide if they want to play the transformation alone or with an extended team.
Suppose I run a survey to get your opinion on that. Probably the audience will concur about building an extended team. Still, if I ask the audience who should be part of the team, I will probably get multiple “valid choices.”
Who should be part of the extended team?
Initially, everybody should agree on building an internal interdisciplinary team. I concur with that.
But another team is also of essential value: a team comprised of business and operational leaders, including the CEO.
Why is it important to build an interdisciplinary Team?
This is about a business transformation journey, so all the business leaders should be part of the team.
The Role of the CIO
I will concur that the IT leader, the CIO, plays a critical role during the transformation: The CIO will manage and orchestrate resources and priorities during the journey.
Still, all business and operational leaders should be aware of the transformation status and be involved in significant decisions.
Let me stop there; we will have other opportunities to revisit this topic.
III. Ready, set, go!
Good to know that you are energized and ready to start the journey, are you?
Let’s say that you have already built your extended team, and you are aware of the need to protect the business from IT disruptions (HW, SW, and IT Services).
You are also aware of the potential risk of being impacted by “unspecified” but “expected” issues based on the nature of the challenge ahead. That means that you know the preparation work to be ready to identify and neutralize any “unsolicited” but expected business impacts due to the dynamic nature of the transformation.
I hope you find this information relevant, informative, and fun to read.
In the next episode, I would like to show you some of the business needs, challenges, and typical outcomes that many customers evaluate related to a vertical industry segment.
Good enough?
Any thoughts on the subjects raised in this edition of the Digital Acceleration Newsletter?
Please share your thoughts and feedback with the audience in the comments below.
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