itSMF Bulletin May 2023 | Page 5

Digital Strategies

The digitisation of most businesses and government organisations is well and truly underway with impressive success stories such as regional and national governments rapidly developing the ability to service an immediate need, for example with the recent COVID apps (and related analytics and intervention capabilities), or new businesses springing up and thriving like a myriad of ‘born digital’ organisations who emerged almost out of nowhere, rapidly captured market share and wiped out legacy businesses.

 

Digital Strategy and Digital Transformation – if genuinely designed to fundamentally enable a business in the digital age have to be congruent, embedded with the business strategy and purposefully rolled out, probably in a multi-year program that requires its own program management and governance.

With reference to ‘The Digital Transformation Playbook’ by Professor David L. Rogers of the Columbia Business School, some digital strategy best practices include:

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·        Digital Transformation is about updating strategic thinking for your business and truly integrating Digital Capability uplift within a Business Strategy.

·        Digital transformation is not just about upgrading your technology or automating some processes.

·        Traditional businesses need to rethink their underlying assumptions in five domains of digital strategy: customers, competition, data, innovation, and value (see the below figure for a high level overview; for further guidance pertaining to each domain, please refer to the playbook).

·        They need to integrate new ways of working accordingly into existing businesses and organisations.

 

Most enterprises, services providers and government organisations need to embed a purposeful and balanced digital strategy in their overall business strategy.