Fundamentally, a business enterprise would exist in a ‘going concern’ to make profits and maximize the shareholders’ value. To be able to deliver business results consistently then becomes most important objective. There could be a number of strategies, programs and policies that an enterprise would practice to deliver business results. Digital transformation is one such innovative strategy that an enterprise could look to practice in a structured and time bound manner.

Digital transformation would bridge the gap that always existed when digital (in business parlance this would mean Information and Communication Technologies) became necessity for efficiency, but remained a huge cost center and avenue of change inertia for a majority of times. It is all about getting closer to transforming this cost center to a revenue center, by consistently and selectively applying digital to get closer to customers and stakeholders alike to make difference to the way they live, or do business, or collaborate.

For global enterprises what this means is that when its digital interests are driven by keeping its customers at large in focus they can be construed as making significant strides in their digital transformation strategy. Depending on what stage of technology adoption they are into (1st, 2nd or 3rd generation) the Digital Transformation intensity would vary.

A majority of new age business enterprises would have made substantial investments in implementation of most grass root enterprise systems. That is a whole reasons why from the technology provider ecosystem do we get to hear about mobile, analytics, social and cloud most of the times when it comes to digital transformation, which is a contemporary articulation. The fact remains that it is up to the CIO and other CxO executive team members to figure out what would be a right beginning of their digital transformation program and what would its life cycle look like in their company. In other words, an enterprise could really be ready for digital even if they aren’t talking about social, analytics and mobility, similarly, even if a relatively new enterprise (such as a start-up) can still be talking of massive investments into DT even if they do not use large enterprise systems, for instance an ERP.

The key to remember, and hence to derive most benefits of amazing digital transformation program, is to know how and if digital investments made by an enterprise are taking it closer to a customer to make difference to the way they live, or do business, or collaborate.