What is Digital Transformation, why is it so important and why do so many transformation projects fail? More importantly, what can we do to make our transformation initiative succeed? These are a few of the profound questions that we seek to answer in this book.
The anomaly between the number of digital transformation being undertaken and the high failure rate may be due to not enough transformation initiatives taking a holistic approach that encompasses people, culture, organisations, processes, business strategy and objectives into the overall mix instead they are focusing largely on the technology. Therefore in this book we contemplate a holistic approach to digital transformation across the entire spectrum of the business from the perspective of an enterprise or manufacturer. Hence we start with people, culture and the need for agile business development when transforming processes, products and services or business models. We examine the how and why we align and tightly couple business objectives to transformation initiatives. Importantly, we examine the need for company-wide collaboration and integration of data, knowledge, processes and systems and the huge benefits initiatives such as data-democratization can deliver. Then we delve deeper into the specific drivers for successful transformation across a very broad range of business functions from the perspective of IT and Operations, Finance, HR, Sales & Marketing, Manufacturing, Inventory, Supply chain and Post-sales service. We also examine how technology and processes such as the IoT and advanced data analysis have brought about Industry 4.0 and the Smart Factory not through technology upgrades and point solutions but through a holistic approach to digital transformation.
A holistic approach to digital transformation, places people, culture, knowledge, capabilities, and decision-making as the pillars supporting the overall organisation's business strategy, objectives and mission values that are built upon a foundation of technology and processes. Successful digital transformation initiatives do not lose their focus on the overarching business strategy and company objectives being the goal, it's not about technology it is about creating new business value at the strategic level. And in this book we will show you how to do it.
