The digital transformation or digital transition is today the subject “must have” of any corporate strategy. If it is absent, the credibility of the growth prospects will be mechanically reduced, when it is present what meaning the company must give it? The answer to this natural question is far from obvious. If it is up Read more about To be or not to be digital, this is not a question[…]
Business is changing, more and more computers are replacing humans at work, it is quicker in countries like France where heavier taxes and contributions weigh on salaries. This is a silent move which pushes people to part time jobs or disoccupation. The only spared workers are the high skilled one able to deal with technologies and business organisation1. Countries where consumption is a growth engine, are suffering as purchasing power is stalling or decreasing. Those turned toward exportation fare much better. But competition is hardening in a deflationary context.
CEO are struggling to maintain or reach an operating income level which is today less and less compatible with investors requiring more and more return on capital. They are also fighting for Revenue as customers are affected themselves by business environment changes. Crisis is a good scapegoat, it explains disoccupation and companies troubles. But now it is over and hangover is still there.
To hope to survive, companies need to transform themselves. Even so, not all will be able to proceed, only those which will get capital to finance the change and only those which will succeed into executing the change. Not much time will be left to start.
All of this would be new, unless consulting and editing companies have not rapped out Transformation for years.
What should be transformational directions ?
I already wrote in a previous post how the number of papers discussing IT alignement suprised me. Indeed, for me, priority should be given to deciding, to planning and to setting up Enterprise Change.
Formerly, 15 years ago, Enterprise Change was contemplated by planning and launching big projects which frequently crashed. Then, best practises of IT led to break down big projects into pieces managed locally. It results an higher rate of success, but with some pieces left behind. By this time, Enterprise was rather a collection of stovepipes with more or less communication in between.
Some of us attempted to glue stovepipes with EAI and business process automation. They get a pretty complicated system which never had the expected flexibility required to follow users business changes.