Accelerating Digital Transformation
Digital transformation isn’t a new imperative for business leaders, but COVID-19 has made it more urgent, with companies looking to enhance their agility, speed, and data-driven decision making. In a BCG survey of more than 5,000 managers and employees, over 80% said that digital was helping them get though the economic slowdown that the pandemic created.
By taking a bionic approach, blending human and technical capabilities, companies can kick their digital transformation into gear—and keep the momentum going.
Yet in most cases, digital transformation remains a work in progress—with a long way to go. More than a third of respondents felt that their organization lagged behind its competitors. Many companies have yet to apply digital technologies and ways of working at scale. Or to create a culture that embraces change, experimentation, and continual learning and improvement. Still other companies are planning end-to-end transformations but have yet to move beyond the drawing board.
So how can companies accelerate their digital transformation? The answer lies in creating a vision for the future and steadily building the capabilities—technological and human—that let you achieve it.
Drivers of a Successful Digital Transformation
Only about 30% of companies navigate a digital transformation successfully. And navigating it in the midst of uncertainty—the new reality—is especially difficult because new behaviors and expectations take shape and evolve at warp speed. Our approach is focused on building bionic companies: organizations that blend digital and human capabilities—and apply them to all aspects of their business.
It doesn’t happen in one fell swoop. Transformations succeed when they are incremental, cost-effective, and sustainable. That means focusing on outcomes: new products, improved processes, and other use cases that, one by one, let you build capabilities, business value, and buy-in for the transformation.