They used to be ‘mobile phones’… not just phones.
I even remember when it used to be ‘color TV’. Now it’s just TV. In fact, now we have to explicitly call out the ‘old thing’ — referring to black-and-white TV — to tell our kids what TV was like when we were kids.
You should follow Benedict. He states things simply and clearly.
The industry keeps talking about ‘digital transformation’ and ‘digital business’ but in neither case is the word ‘digital’ the meaningful word.
It’s just transformation, because it’s just business.
The reason that’s a hard pivot is because not everyone knows how to think about the technology in such a way that it fades to the background.
Technology is still this thing that the specialists know.
It reminds me of a conversation I had with Continental Airlines about 15 years ago. I had a problem with a ticket. When I called for help, the moment I said “I’m on your website, and…” they cut me off and transferred me to tech support (where they couldn’t help me because the problem was with my ticket, not their website).
I still can’t understand why it wasn’t obvious that the way the airline executed against their various distribution channels shouldn’t have changed how I got help for a ticket.
It’s obviously hard to retrain people, so maybe this is a generational change. As soon as enough digital natives enter the workforce we’ll have enough people who don’t think of technology as something separate from the business.
Until then, I think the best thing to do is involved people who can apply technology to the business discussion as early in the process as possible. In this way you’re infusing your business with the possibilities that technology enables, instead of thinking of it as a tool that you apply once the strategy is decided.
I’ll be writing more on this idea of identifying the possibilities as a way to create great experiences, I’ve written a great piece about wealth management that you’ll see on Axway’s blog soon.
In the meantime, if your company wants to catalyze the potential locked up in your “systems” check out the Axway Catalysts and drop us a line.
Addendum 4/22/2020
The CEO of Box agrees. It looks like the virus is helping people realize that just adding some digital capabilities is not actually digital transformation.
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