Digitalization Strategy for Business Transformation

All organizations across industries are being challenged by disruptions. Many are finding ways to align or reinvent their activities to respond — at the requisite speed. As organizations begin to shift from the recovery phase of COVID-19 (Reset Your Business Strategy in COVID-19 Recovery) to the renewal, many are focused on what comes next and capitalizing on the changes made to the business during COVID-19. The Gartner CIO Agenda 2021 highlighted that 69% of boards report accelerating digital business initiatives in response to COVID-19.

Organizations no longer have the option to continue on as they have — they have to adopt and accelerate digitalization. It has to be done to preserve the business and the future of the business. Digital business acceleration is more important than ever now for three reasons:

1. COVID-19: The pandemic demonstrated the value of digital initiatives in e-commerce, deliveries, supply chain virtualization, process automation and other activities, especially where physical activities were no longer possible.

2. Costs and operations: The recession has driven the need to overhaul costs and streamline operations.

3. Results: The rapid responses to the pandemic make accelerating digital business seem feasible and critical for a company’s survival.

Digital transformation is a top priority for CEOs and boards of directors in an effort to create a connected platform and new industry revenue streams. Executive leaders need to approach strategy in a manner that recognizes the differences between transformation and business optimization.

Digital transformation tends to span a mid- to long-term planning horizon and needs calibration and continuous learning. The three planning horizons of Gartner’s Strategic Planning Framework defines the three steps to complete transformation.

Define strategy: The first step is to consider the larger goals and initiatives that drive your business — and effectively use technology and information design patterns to improve them. 

Create strategic plans: Once you have an understanding of how you can leverage information and technology to achieve your enterprise’s long-term goals, start building a strategic plan that provides guidance to realize the long-term goals.

Execute with operational plans: Deal with the execution of specific projects and changes, as well as any operational tasks not contained in the strategic plan, such as regular software upgrades or hardware maintenance. Initiate, update or refresh the strategic plans, based on new business context or direction.

Also read: How Gartner helped the CIO at a global automotive supplier lead digital transformation and IT innovation to gain competitive advantage.

CEOs and boards want to accelerate digital business. Gartner recommends that leaders adopt three default behaviors to become more agile:

1. Speed up decision process: The key to accelerated product delivery, governance and other processes come from enabling faster decision making within the organization.

2. Simplify work: Processes can overtake the ability to make decisions because they’re unnecessarily complex. Remain vigilant, and find the fastest way to get work done.

3. Eliminate unnecessary tasks: To make your organization more agile, shift the focus to what the business outcome actually is, rather than how the task to achieve it is performed.