Digital transformations roadblocks and workarounds from Bain and Co.

Rapid decision making and agility in the creation of differentiated offerings form the key to establishing digital leadership, according to Bain and Co.

Authors James Anderson and Laura Polasek, of the article “Four Winning Patterns of Digital Transformation”, surveyed over 1200 business leaders globally to uncover the common methods for digital transformation success.

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To compete in a rapidly evolving digital landscape, businesses must toe the line between upgrading resources to foster a technology-enabled business environment and avoiding disrupting business operations in crucial moments.

“Many incumbent companies have done a remarkable job of mobilizing to fight back against these disrupters through rapid deployment of new digital services and tweaks to their operating models,” the authors say.

“But they can only go so far before they run into the old ways of doing things—namely, a spaghetti tangle of legacy enterprise systems; a complex, siloed bureaucracy that slows decision making; and a cultural divide between IT and business operations.”

In navigating this transformational period, Bain and Co. outlines four patterns of success that companies can utilise to compete and rebuild.

• Lay down the digital foundations For organisations under pressure to develop new capabilities, the implementation of new digital infrastructure, sensors, and analytics can cause massive logistical issues and poor outcomes if not properly executed.
• Integrate a fragmented digital landscape. Prioritising the most promising and important initiatives to an organisation, rather than integrating too many at once, is an important step to take in a digital transformation journey.
•  Digital transformation front to back. Many organisations have cluttered IT architecture, accumulated and built over each other as the business evolved In tackling poorly constructed legacy systems, a complete tear down to rebuild from the ground up can create a major disruption to business operations and halt productivity for far longer than the business can take.
• Launch a new digital attacker. The pace and impact of industry disruption can overwhelm many organisations, who cannot move quickly enough to be competitive. Launching new business to attack opportunities that the core business cannot, allows a business to enter a new market with a tailored solution while giving a fresh value proposition to its core entity.

“The companies that fall into our four patterns recognize that any successful digital transformation depends on a balancing act—namely, the ability to scale meaningful change without disrupting the core. Every company finds its own path, but all winning digital transformations share one thing in common: a willingness to be bold,” the authors say.

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