MITSloan
MANAGEMENT

DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION: A ROADMAP
FOR BILLION-DOLLAR ORGANIZATIONS
FINDINGS FROM PHASE 1 OF THE DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION
STUDY CONDUCTED BY THE MIT CENTER FOR DIGITAL
BUSINESS AND CAPGEMINI CONSULTING
Contents

2

© 2011 MIT Center for Digital Business and Capgemini Consulting
1 The Study 	

06

2 Common pressures; different results 	

08

3 The shape of digital transformation	

16

4 Digital technology usage 	

28

5 Challenges on the road to transformation 	

34

6 How can you make your digital journey successful? 	

46

7 What is digital transformation maturity?	

58

8 Conclusion	

65

••Common pressures to begin digital transformation
••Different digital transformation speeds and different results
Case Study: Finding new opportunities for digital transformation
across a hospitality company
Case Study: Digital transformation in India

••Transforming customer experience
••Transforming operational processes
••Transforming business models
••Digital capabilities
Case Study: Digital transformation in an international banking group
Case Study: Moving from separate to integrated digital initiatives in
an apparel manufacturer

••Initiation challenges
••Execution challenges
••Governance challenges
Case Study: Evolving as a value chain orchestrator in mortgages
Case Study: Digital transformation in an international airport

••Envision the digital future for your firm
••Invest in digital initiatives and skills
••Lead the change from the top
Case Study: Driving digital transformation across a global media company

••The What and the How
••Digital Maturity Matrix
••How to assess your digital maturity
Case Study: Capitalizing on digital opportunities for a business directory

© 2011 MIT Center for Digital Business and Capgemini Consulting

3
EXECUTIVE

SUMMARY

4

© 2011 MIT Center for Digital Business and Capgemini Consulting
Digital transformation (DT) – the use of technology to radically
improve performance or reach of enterprises – is becoming
a hot topic for companies across the globe. Executives in
all industries are using digital advances such as analytics,
mobility, social media and smart embedded devices – and
improving their use of traditional technologies such as ERP
– to change customer relationships, internal processes, and
value propositions. Other executives, seeing how fast digital
technology disrupted media industries in the past decade,
know they need to pay attention to changes in their industries
now.
How can senior executives successfully lead digital transformation?
While many experts urge companies to get started on the digital
transformation journey, few tell how to do it. In this report we
share the findings from a global study of how 157 executives in
50 large traditional companies are managing – and benefiting
from – digital transformation. We will describe the elements of
successful digital transformation and show how to assess your
firm’s digital maturity.
Our research shows that, although large traditional firms
are truly different from digital entrants, many are starting
to transform their businesses successfully through digital
technology. Specifically,
• Companies face common pressures from customers,
employees and competitors to begin or speed up their
digital transformation. However they are transforming at
different paces with different results.
• Successful digital transformation comes not from
implementing new technologies but from transforming
your organization to take advantage of the possibilities

that new technologies provide. Major digital
transformation initiatives are centered on re-envisioning
customer experience, operational processes and
business models. Companies are changing how
functions work, redefining how functions interact, and
even evolving the boundaries of the firm.
• Successful DT does not happen bottom up. It must be
driven from the top.
• Focus on the “how” more than the “what.” The most
successful transformations we have seen focus as much
(or more) on how to drive change as on the detailed
content of the change. A compelling transformative
vision, with related engagement, governance and KPIs
will allow people throughout the enterprise to identify
new “whats” to meet or extend the vision.
• Successful DT comes not from creating a new
organization, but from reshaping the organization to take
advantage of valuable existing strategic assets in new
ways.
• Companies can do much more to gain value from
investments they have already made, even as they
envision radically new ways of working.
Despite the hype around innovative digital technologies, most
companies still have a long way to go in their digital transformation
journeys. Leadership is essential. Whether using new or
traditional technologies, the key to digital transformation
is re-envisioning and driving change in how the company
operates. That’s a management and people challenge, not just
a technology one.

© 2011 MIT Center for Digital Business and Capgemini Consulting

5
1
THE STUDY
6

© 2011 MIT Center for Digital Business and Capgemini Consulting
Many popular stories of digital
transformation involve digital startups or high-tech firms such as
Amazon, Apple, or Google. Executives
in traditional companies often find
these examples hollow. Big traditional
companies, with decades of history
and legacy, are simply different from
these newer digital entrants. Other
stories focus on exciting initiatives
by traditional companies, but are
anecdotal and do not show how those
companies implemented the change.
These examples may be good triggers
for other companies to take action, but
they give no advice on how or whether
to do so.

– and benefiting from – Digital
Transformation. We are working to
understand how digital technology is
changing the business of large leading
firms.
Phase 1 of this multi-year study is an
exploratory investigation involving
157 executive-level interviews in
50 companies in 15 countries (see
Figure 1). These companies are large,
with typically $1 billion or more in
annual sales. We conducted in-depth
interviews to qualitatively explore the
nature of the digital transformation
phenomenon with real executives in
real companies. To provide balanced
perspectives, approximately half of
the interviewees are business leaders
such as CEOs, line of business
managers, marketing heads, or
COOs, while the other half are IT and
technology leaders.

With that in mind, MIT Center for
Digital Business and Capgemini
Consulting set out investigate the ways
in which large traditional companies
around the world are managing

Figure 1: Interviews cover a broad range of countries and industries

Transport
Americas
& Canada

30%

Telecom,
Media, and
Entertainment
Services

6%

Retail &
Food services

12%

Energy, Utilities
and Chemical

12%

20%

22%

54%
16%

Europe

Asia Pacifi c

8%

Pharmaceuticals
& Medical

12%

Manufacturing
& distribution

8%

Government

Financial
Services

© 2011 MIT Center for Digital Business and Capgemini Consulting

7
2
COMMON PRESSURES; DIFFERENT RESULTS
8

© 2011 MIT Center for Digital Business and Capgemini Consulting
2.1 Common pressures to
begin digital transformation

Executives rated
the pace of business
compared to five
years ago as
5.6 out of 7*
*Scale: 1=very much slower than 5 years
ago, 7=very much faster than 5 years ago

Customers, too, are becoming more
demanding. An airport executive
described an “ever-rising tide of
customer expectations” for service and
convenience. For a manufacturer/
retailer, “People’s expectations have
changed. They want to be more in charge.
They expect that we know them more...
their online behavior is developing
expectations and behaviors that they apply
in other contexts as well.”

The executives we interviewed
report feeling pressure to transform
from forces inside and outside the
company. Figure 2 shows that most
executives expressed at least moderate
pressure to change. Employees are
asking why they cannot collaborate
with coworkers the way they can
with friends. One executive quoted
younger employees as saying “Come
on. I know the company’s more than
100 years old, but our IT capabilities
don’t have to match the age of the
company.” Other employees are
incorporating their personal practices
into their work lives without waiting
for corporate practices to catch up.
According to one CIO, “Officially iPads
are prohibited by our policies. Yet 50
percent of our employees are using them
at work.”

Nearly every executive (72 percent)
cited competitive pressures to change.
This relates closely to increases in the
pace of business. Respondents rated
the current pace of business relative
to five years ago as 5.6 on a scale from
1=very much slower to 7=very much
faster. Most indicated the pace will
continue to increase, leading to further
pressure to transform their businesses.
While several executives indicated
this was “the new normal” for their

Figure 2: Pressures for change*
High

70%

M

Medium

72%

M
32%

H

H

M
H

Customers

Competitors

Employees

* Percentage of companies experiencing moderate or high pressure to transform from customers, competition,
or employees as mentioned by their executives. Some firms mentioned more than one pressure.

© 2011 MIT Center for Digital Business and Capgemini Consulting

9
industries, others expressed concern
that the acceleration would not be
sustainable.
Executives on average rated their
innovation culture at only 4.2 on a
7-point scale. Although few companies
strive to be as high as seven on the
scale, none of the executives felt their
innovation culture was as strong as it
should be.

Executives rated
their innovation
culture as 4.2 on a
7-point scale.

Some executives expressed other, less
common, pressures. Globalization
is a driver for seven firms. These
companies have a strategic need
to expand globally or are facing
pressures to generate information and
process synergies across their global
enterprises. Executives in three firms
mentioned M&A as a pressure to
transform.

2.2 Different digital
transformation speeds and
different results
A few companies in our study are using
digital technologies, old and new, to truly
transform their businesses. However,
these companies are in the minority.
Despite internal and external pressures,
very few businesses are gaining the full
value of technologically-enabled change,
even with technologies they already
own. Many companies we interviewed
took on the significant effort and
expense of implementing ERP, CRM

10 © 2011 MIT Center for Digital Business and Capgemini Consulting

or other technology-enabled changes,
but obtained only basic levels of value
from the investments. They can obtain
much more value by continuing the
effort – envisioning new capabilities and
process changes to reap larger returns
from their foundational investments.
Manufacturers’ ERP systems have
improved process efficiency and are
providing better financial data for
strategic decisions, but companies have
not yet retrained buyers in how to use
the information in negotiating with
suppliers. Retailers and other service
firms are gathering detailed information
on buyer behavior, but lack the analytics
capabilities to truly understand the
power of the data. A hospitality
company is conducting experiments
in mobile marketing in two different
business units, and building digitallyenhanced customer service apps in
another, but is not conducting a unified
digital transformation of the customer
experience.
These companies are gaining some
value from transforming parts of their
businesses, but are only part of the way
toward achieving the potential of digital
transformation. Still others have not
yet begun their digital transformation
journeys.
In the following sections, we will
describe how firms are digitally
transforming, the challenges they are
facing, and the levers executives can use
to drive digital transformation.
Case Study

HOTELCO: FINDING NEW OPPORTUNITIES
FOR DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION
ACROSS THE ENTERPRISE

H

otelCo is one of the world’s ten largest hospitality
companies. The firm constantly strives to improve
operational efficiencies and customer service both within
and across properties. The firm’s loyalty program is the
centerpiece of the company’s approach to understanding,
serving, and selling to customers.

HotelCo executives, who have always believed in
the power of technology to improve processes and
increase customer intimacy, see further opportunity for digital transformation.
Opportunities exist not only in new technologies such as social media and
mobile, but also in the firm’s more traditional areas like transactional IT and
analytics. HotelCo is actively pursuing digital transformation in many areas and
is working to innovate further. Because HotelCo experiences organizational and
IT challenges common to many large global enterprises, it seeks to take a rational,
well-defined approach to its digital transformation initiatives wherever possible.
HotelCo has created opportunities for digital transformation in three areas: online
presence, mobile customer engagement, and internal operational processes.
Online: HotelCo continually evolves its online presence. It has integrated the
website presence of all its properties on a common platform, enabling marketing
across properties within a market. It also added new capabilities. For example,
property managers using the firm’s corporate digital marketing tools can control
their property content, e.g., events, independently of other properties, while not
having to build and maintain their own online capabilities. Further extending
online capabilities, HotelCo has begun to implement social media and mobile
marketing capabilities. Employees actively monitor social media for negative
information and can respond. However, organizational questions remain about
how to improve the response capability as volumes continue to grow: “Who
handles it? Marketing? Product support? Customer support?”
In addition, HotelCo is integrating social media information onto its websites.
The website allows user comments on select pages, and the firm is working to
extend comments to additional pages. HotelCo is also incorporating third-party
social media onto the site. For example, tripadvisor.com ratings feed directly into
property web pages, despite the initial hesitation of some property managers.
“First off, this conversation is happening and most of the customers are now
savvy enough they’re going to tripadvisor anyway. Let’s bring the content right
to our site, positive or negative. Customers see that and they say ‘OK, well this

© 2011 MIT Center for Digital Business and Capgemini Consulting 11
is an honest assessment from people like myself….” The marketing people have
found that such content is much more compelling than internally generated
information.
Mobile: Realizing that most customers now carry cell phones, HotelCo has
made mobile a key part of its marketing strategy. The company offers multiple
smartphone apps and is making preparations for a future in which more people
access sites via mobile than from a personal computer.
HotelCo actively engages in mobile marketing. The company realizes the
customer intimacy it can achieve through mobile because customers react
to messages almost instantly. SMS and WAP sites are a core part of mobile
marketing because of their ubiquity. The different properties are in charge of
their own mobile marketing messages, but the messages are delivered through a
unified corporate-level system.
The company is also experimenting with location-based services. Innovation
activities that initially focused on embedded devices and RFID have been
facilitated by mobile phones. For example, customers arriving at some properties
can receive mobile coupons for restaurants, shows, and other services in the
hotel. Customers can also receive personalized service and information from
digital displays located around the properties using phones or their loyalty cards.
While mobile and location-based services show promise, they have challenges.
The firm is trying to balance a tradeoff between the capabilities of location-based
devices and their potential intrusiveness. For example, when building a digital
customer service display, HotelCo opted to ask customers to place their loyalty
cards on the device rather than have the device automatically read who they are.
Additional challenges are technological and organizational. The firm wants to
“support experimentation by all parties, but also clearly delineate their roles
and scopes.” For example, multiple groups conducting mobile experiments meet
regularly to coordinate activities. And the company is starting to examine how
it coordinates its use of vendors so that knowledge is not fragmented across
multiple digital transformation initiatives.
Internal operations: HotelCo is investigating how to incorporate emerging
technologies into internal processes. Compared with the device-agnostic policy
for customers, HotelCo aims to use standard devices for internal processes and
to make them available only to those employees who need mobile capability for
their jobs.
The firm is trying to take the same measured process to implementing social
media in internal processes as it does in other areas. One obstacle stems from
security and cost: free platforms are not seen as secure, and the firm wants to be
careful about investing large amounts of money to in license a secure platform
for an uncertain goal. Another challenge is organizational: who would own
the internal collaboration process? Until there is a clear internal owner and a

12 © 2011 MIT Center for Digital Business and Capgemini Consulting
well-defined purpose, the firm is taking a slow approach to widespread internal
use of social media instead of targeted efforts.
The firm is midway through a set of initiatives aimed at rationalizing processes
across the enterprise. When complete, HotelCo will have a set of shared services
that are available to all properties, but which can be tailored by properties for
their own use, much as the online platform is today. IT, while a significant
enabler of the firm’s capabilities, remains a challenge as the company changes.
For example, the loyalty database is not optimized for multi-channel interactions,
making it difficult to integrate information that arrives from, or is sent via,
multiple media. Another challenge is integrating information and processes from
acquired companies into the firm’s core IT backbone.
At HotelCo, analytics is “something we do a ton of.” Executives are proud of
the firm’s ability to understand drivers of customer and operational metrics.
HotelCo is now investigating how to move analytics capability further out to the
edges of the company. However, executives expressed the desire to make good
choices about where to apply analytics. Analytics is “absolutely a different way
of thinking… we don’t need every role to do it, but we definitely want the skills
in certain places. “ For example, analytics may enable the firm’s customer-facing
employees to further personalize the customer experience, but executives are
aiming to do it in a way that doesn’t disempower those workers.

© 2011 MIT Center for Digital Business and Capgemini Consulting 13
Case Study

ASIAN PAINTS: DIGITAL
TRANSFORMATION IN INDIA

A

sian Paints, India’s leading manufacturer of coatings,
has digitally transformed its business step by step. The
firm has been able to maintain fast growth and globalize
while increasing efficiency and reducing its impact on the
environment.

In the early 2000s, as part of an effort to reduce debt
and increase internal efficiencies, the firm implemented
an enterprise-wide ERP and advanced Supply Chain
Management system. This helped to create an enterprise-wide platform that was
the basis for further improvements in sales and customer processes. The change
also liberated working capital that helped fund acquisitions in emerging markets.
Asian Paints gained further efficiencies by linking subcontractors and suppliers on
a B2B portal. In 2003, the firm invested in a CRM system.
In 2010, Asian Paints centralized its order taking process into a single corporate
call center. This change helped the company further improve operational
efficiencies and sustain its growth. In customer-facing processes, the move entailed
much more than just creating the call center. Retailers were encouraged to place
orders through the call center, where they could receive a more consistent service
level than they could through the firm’s 100 local depots. Centralized data also
enabled delivery of products to large institutional customer job sites, giving the
company a capability that competitors could not provide.
The biggest change resulting from centralizing order taking was in the way
salespeople interacted with retailers. Liberated from routine order collection,
the sales team could focus on building stronger relationships. To enable a more
meaningful dialogue between the sales team and each retailer, the company
provided salespeople with vital customer data in the field using mobile devices. A
rollout of tablet devices, which is currently underway, will further mobile-enable
the sales staff.
Asian Paints’ digital transformation also extended to internal production processes.
High growth in paint demand creates the need to set up new manufacturing
plants every three years. Given the scale and size of these plants, the firm has
begun to focus on creating highly automated plants. Automation has led to greater
scalability, better quality and stronger safety and environmental protections. The
new plants are fully integrated from an information management perspective. Data
from shop floor control systems and automated warehouses are linked seamlessly
to the ERP. This has helped to further sustain the firm’s operational efficiencies.

14 © 2011 MIT Center for Digital Business and Capgemini Consulting
In India, Asian Paints has begun to sell services (such as a painted wall) instead of
products (a can of paint). The services strategy has benefits beyond new revenues.
Selling services helps to ensure that high-end products are applied properly,
thereby improving customer satisfaction. Services also help the firm to get closer
to the end-consumer, understand core consumer choices, and launch highend texture finishes. Additionally, having a contractor in a client’s house yields
information that marketing staff can use to understand both customer preferences
and potential demand. Gaining better knowledge of end-customer preferences is a
high priority for the company, since its business model – operating largely through
retailers – means that customer involvement has been traditionally very low.
The relationship between IT and business executives has traditionally been very
strong. The IT team consists of business graduates with a deep understanding
of the underlying business processes. They act as internal process consultants.
Governance is centralized and top down, with a strong executive-level
understanding about the importance of standardization and coordination.
Although business executives suggest many digital investments, IT executives
originate others such as the firm’s new analytics initiative.
Corporate growth and new technology demands have increased the challenges of
digital governance. The firm is in the first year of a new portfolio planning process.
“We have enjoyed great equity with the business because we have delivered solutions. But
seeing so many projects coming at us, we felt that now we need to establish processes to
match expectations and resources whilst taking on innovative projects,” says Mr. Manish
Choksi, CIO and Chief of Strategy.
Asian Paints’ investment in strong IT capabilities, combined with organizational
and process changes intended to leverage those investments, will serve as a
foundation upon which the organization can continuously envision and implement
new forms of digital transformation.

© 2011 MIT Center for Digital Business and Capgemini Consulting 15
3
THE SHAPE OF DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION
16 © 2011 MIT Center for Digital Business and Capgemini Consulting
The companies interviewed are moving
forward with digital transformation
at varying paces and experiencing
varying levels of success. Some are
transforming many parts of their
organizations while others are still
doing only the basics. Others are
encountering organizational issues or
other challenges that prevent them
from transforming successfully.
Analysis of the interviews shows clear
patterns. Executives are digitally
transforming three key areas of their
enterprises: customer experience,
operational processes and business
models (see Figure 3). Within each
of the three pillars, different elements

are changing. These nine elements
form a set of building blocks for digital
transformation. Currently, no company
in our sample has fully transformed
all nine elements. Rather, executives
are selecting among these building
blocks to move forward in the manner
that they believe is right for their
organizations. The tenth element–
digital capabilities – is an essential
enabler for transformations in all areas.
In this section, we explore how
companies in our study are
implementing each transformational
building block. Subsequent sections
examine adoption of four key
technologies and then common

Figure 3: Building blocks of the digital transformation

Customer
Experience

Customer understanding
• Analytics-based segmentation
• Socially-informed knowledge

Top line growth
• Digitally-enhanced selling
• Predictive marketing
• Streamlined customer processes

Customer touch points
• Customer service
• Cross-channel coherence
• Self service

Operational
Process

Business Model

Process digitization

Digitally-modified businesses

• Performance improvement
• New features

• Product/service augmentation
• Transitioning physical to digital
• Digital wrappers

Worker enablement

New digital businesses

• Working anywhere anytime
• Broader and faster communication
• Community knowledge sharing

Performance management
• Operational transparency
• Data-driven decision-making

• Digital products
• Reshaping organizational
boundaries

Digital globalization
• Enterprise integration
• Redistributing decision authority
• Shared digital services

Digital Capabilities
• Unified Data & Processes
• Analytics Capability

• Business & IT Integration
• Solution Delivery

© 2011 MIT Center for Digital Business and Capgemini Consulting 17
challenges that interfere with digital
transformation. The paper concludes
with a set of key levers senior
executives can use to successfully
transform their organizations.

digital tools aimed at helping clients
invest more safely. These tools,
while not selling the firm’s products
directly, aligned closely with the firm’s
reputation for conservatism and safety.

3.1 Transforming customer
experience

Companies are also building new
online communities to advise and
build loyalty with clients in medical,
real estate or financial services
products. Others are building products
that improve branding in lifestyle
communities. A consumer sports
equipment manufacturer enables
individuals to publish their sport
performance to communities and stay
connected with other customers who
have similar interests.

Marketing and customer
understanding
Companies are starting to take
advantage of previous investment
in systems to gain an in-depth
understanding of specific geographies
and market segments.
Other firms are exploring social media
to understand customer satisfiers and
dis-satisfiers. A mortgage executive
noted “We launched a non-profit real
estate community to help our customers.
As an unplanned benefit this helps us to
understand them better. We launched
special products, such as a special loan
offering for divorced people, following
several customer questions.”
In addition, companies are learning to
promote their brands more effectively
through digital media:
•	A medical device firm is launching
a social media campaign to promote
a radically new class of products in
an online community of medical
specialists. Executives expect
awareness to grow in weeks rather
than years.
•	A media company has teamed with
product manufacturers for social
media-based brand enhancement
tied to in-person events.
•	 After the 2009 economic downturn, a
financial firm built a set of educational

18 © 2011 MIT Center for Digital Business and Capgemini Consulting

Many firms are building analytics
capability to understand customers in
more detail. Some insurance firms, for
example, are improving their portfolios
and cost structures through analyticsbased underwriting and pricing. Other
companies are conducting analyticsbased experiments to drive customer
behavior. In one case, a restaurant firm
is actively conducting experiments
in pricing and promotion across a set
of franchised stores. The experiment
dynamically adjusts product prices
in response to demand, weather,
inventory levels, and proximity to
closing time.
Top-line growth
Companies are using technology
to enhance in-person sales
conversations. Financial services
firms are using tablet-based
presentations instead of paper-based
slide decks to make sales pitches.
Some are going beyond. Insurance
firms are introducing mobile tools
to help sales people and customers
engage in analytics-based planning.
A medical device salesforce is
replacing in-person interactions with
digital interactions. When visiting
a doctor’s office, a salesperson
leaves an iPad with video and other
information on new products. The
aim is to get the doctor’s attention
and gain a 10 minute conversation
when the salesperson returns to
retrieve the iPad.
Better understanding helps firms
to transform the sales experience.
Companies are integrating customer
purchasing data to provide more
personalized sales and customer
service or even to offer customized
product packages. One executive
commented “Analytics help us to segment
our clients and to connect SME offerings
and clients in a predictive way.” A
hospitality firm engaged in locationbased marketing uses analytics to
send personalized mobile coupons
to customers as they near a facility
and can track uptake in real time. A
mortgage firm is setting up a CRM
strategy to link customers to local real
estate references. This system proposes
new offers in real time via the internet.
Other firms are using concept stores
as flagships for their digital selling
innovations. A mortgage company
offers investors an integrated process
combining real estate and bank
services with external services, and
showcases the overall process in a
concept megastore. A bank created
a concept store in a major city to
innovate customer relationships and
offer a different experience. Customers
could connect their experiences in
concept stores to social community
initiatives like Facebook.
Some firms try to make the life of
the customer easier, simplifying
their processes through a digital

plug-in. A retailer automatically loads
a customer’s last online shopping
list into its e-commerce site. This
streamlines the shopping process,
allowing customers extra time to
look at other products. Customers
can then decide whether to use home
delivery or a drive-through service
with a specific pick-up time. A
mortgage company also developed an
integrated multi-channel experience
to help investors set their realistic
expectations quickly. Then, processes
can cross-sell or up-sell products.
Customer touch points
Customer service can be enhanced
significantly by digital initiatives. Fast
and transparent problem resolution
builds trust for customers. A bank
established a twitter account to answer
client complaints quickly, helping
customers avoid going physically to
a branch. This digital initiative also
leveraged an expert community,
allowing crowd sourcing with several
employees and other customers.
Companies with multiple channels to
the customer are experiencing pressure
to provide an integrated experience.
A hospitality executive commented “I
think consumers still respond in the same
way, but consumers are now looking in so
many different places that’s it’s now hard
to get that message across efficiently.”
Many firms, especially in retail and
financial services, are making strong
inroads in integrated multichannel
activity. However, multichannel
services require envisioning and
implementing change across customer
experience and internal operational
processes. Many retailers now offer
home shopping with the option to
receive products by mail or in a store.
However, problems remain as,

© 2011 MIT Center for Digital Business and Capgemini Consulting 19
for example, one retail executive
described customers being angry that
customer service representatives in
a store could not access online order
history.
Some firms are moving beyond simple
multi-channel models to enable new
forms of digital strategy. A mortgage
company, for example, is offering
B2C offerings in one channel to
complement its existing B2B offerings
in another. It supplements the
multichannel experience through a
new type of storefront.
Several companies are offering selfservice via digital tools. These tools
allow the customer to save time, while
saving the company money. Classic
mobile apps allow bank customers to
access account information or media
customers to have electronic rather
than paper subscriptions. Many firms
are now offering customer apps to
enhance customer touch points. In
a hospitality firm, smart phone apps
are linked to the customer’s profile,
enabling integration across SMS, app,
and social media efforts. A media
company offers apps with geolocalization and augmented reality to
help customers find interesting places
to visit and provide special offers via
vouchers and e-couponing.

3.2 Transforming
operational processes
Although transformed customer
experiences are the most visible – and
arguably the most exciting – aspects
of transformation, firms are also
realizing very strong benefits from
transforming internal processes.

20 © 2011 MIT Center for Digital Business and Capgemini Consulting

Digitizing operational processes
Companies historically have used
automation to make processes more
efficient and scalable. ERP for example
has enabled significant efficiency and
quality gains in core transactional,
financial, and supply chain processes.
An insurance firm has created a central
digital platform for core claim processes
and deployed the model across several
countries. Employee self-service systems,
especially in areas like HR, are also
becoming widespread.
Some firms are going beyond simple
automation to gain additional benefits.
Automation can enable companies to
refocus their people on more strategic
tasks. A manufacturer has begun to
centralize the HR function, allowing
economies of scale through self-service
while freeing HR people to “focus on
enlarging manager skills, rather than counting
days off.” A specialty materials company
has automated many R&D processes.
Automation allows researchers to focus
on innovation and creativity rather than
repetitive efforts. It also creates streams
of data that can be useful in later data
mining efforts.
New technologies are extending this trend
of gaining benefits beyond efficiency. A
paint manufacturer has created fullyautomated plants that significantly reduce
labor requirements, improve product
quality and enhance environmental,
health, and safety performance. An
apparel company has moved to digital
design processes when collaborating with
manufacturing partners. Going digital
eliminates most need to ship physical
prototypes back and forth, reducing the
product development lifecycle by 30
percent. It allows the firm to be much
more agile, changing designs quickly in
response to market changes.
Enhancing individual work
Once-novel technologies such as
mobile e-mail, collaboration tools,
and video conferencing have now
become the norm in many companies.
Employees routinely collaborate
with people whom they have never
met in person, in regions they have
never visited. Mobile devices allow
employees to stay connected with the
office at all hours and to work from
home when not able to be in the office.
Individual level work has, in essence,
been virtualized – separating the work
process from the location of the work.
Some companies are starting to
examine new possibilities for
virtualizing individual work processes.
A financial services firm rearranged
its headquarters so that nobody had
an assigned desk, even the CEO.
Employees now work from home
one or two days per week and, when

they are in the office, sit near people
with whom they are temporarily
collaborating. Meanwhile, the firm’s
collaboration and networking tools
allow employees to talk with anyone
in the company from wherever
they are sitting. This is setting the
stage for further changes related to
globalization.
In a broader sense, digital
transformation replaces limited oneway vertical communication with
broad communication channels that
are both vertical and horizontal. CxOs
can engage in 2-way communication
quickly at scale. Employees can
collaborate in ways that were
previously not possible. The tools
that virtualize individual work,
while implemented for cost reasons,
have become powerful enablers for
knowledge sharing. Salespeople and
front line employees, for example, are
beginning to benefit from collaborative

Figure 4: Digital transformation creates a virtuous cycle of knowledge sharing

dge sharin
owle
g
Kn
CxOs
Communication
at scale

Virtualization of work

Remote working, Collaborative tools, Knowledge platforms, Cloud Computing

Internal
Crowdsourcing

Employees

edge sharing
owl
Kn
© 2011 MIT Center for Digital Business and Capgemini Consulting 21
tools in which they can identify
experts and get questions answered in
real time. They are also increasingly
gaining access to a single global view
of the company’s interactions with a
customer.
Better strategic performance
management
Performance transparency was
a key highlight mentioned by
several executives. Executives in
most companies say they are more
informed when making decisions.
Transactional systems give executives
deeper insights into products, regions,
and customers, allowing decisions
to be made on real data and not
on assumptions. “Instead of simply
revising last year’s plan, we can use data
to make better decisions about how we
prioritize.” This is happening in both
internal processes and customerfacing processes. The level of detail
is also increasing, allowing managers
to compare status across sites or
reallocate product manufacturing
capacity in ways they could not do
before. It is also prompting additional
data gathering and integration as
managers start to see the value of
being better informed.
Beyond being better informed,
digital transformation is actually
changing the process of strategic
decision-making. Top executives in
a medical device manufacturer used
the company’s existing collaboration
tools to extend strategic planning
sessions from 12 people to more than
300 of the firm’s top managers. This
enabled better input into the process
and better uptake of the vision after
decisions were made.

22 © 2011 MIT Center for Digital Business and Capgemini Consulting

3.3 Transforming business
models
Digitally-modified businesses
A media executive said: “We’ve
realized that if we don’t transform the
way we do business, we’re going to die.
It’s not about changing the way we do
technology but changing the way we do
business.” It is finding ways to augment
physical with digital offerings and
to use digital to share content across
organizational silos. A grocery firm is
staying true to its traditional business,
but using digital to transform a new
growth business. “After two years,
our e-commerce platform is bringing us
20 percent of our new clients and our
traditional clients are consuming 13
percent more on average.”
Other firms are building digital or
service wrappers around traditional
products. A national post office is
creating a free digital mailbox attached
to each physical mail address that
companies can use as a substitute for a
person’s physical mailbox. A business
credit firm is developing a digital
business for some credit products that
requires less involvement than their
traditional high-touch offerings.
New digital businesses
Companies are introducing
digital products that complement
traditional products. A sports apparel
manufacturer started selling GPS and
other digital devices that can track
and report on a customer’s workout.
Other companies are changing
business models by reshaping
their boundaries through digital. A
mortgage company is moving from
being a link in the value chain to
being a global assembler of investment
products. An airport authority is
aiming to become the owner of a
traveler’s end to end process. It will
enable for travelers an integrated
multichannel experience including
information on airplane traffic and
reservations, duty-free shopping
promotions and other benefits.
Digital globalization
Firms are increasingly transforming
from multi-national to truly global
operations. Digital technology
coupled with integrated information
is allowing firms to gain global
synergies while remaining locally
responsive. They are, in the words
of many executives, “becoming more
centralized and decentralized at the same
time.” These companies benefit from
global shared services for finance,
HR, and even core capabilities like
manufacturing and design. Global
shared services promote efficiency and
reduce risk. They even promote global
flexibility. One manufacturer can shift
production around the globe with
only a few days’ notice in response to
interruptions or excess demand.
For local managers, the pain of
centralization is balanced by
efficiency benefits and ability to
focus on more strategic activities.
Local managers, empowered to
make decisions autonomously, also
gain a broader view of the business
through centralized data. They have
the freedom to tailor business to their
local needs, but the responsibility
to act in the interests of the larger
enterprise. Globalization also entails
a different approach to policy: “fewer
mandates from headquarters, but more
guidelines.”

3.4 Digital capabilities
Digital capabilities cut across all three
pillars. They are a fundamental building
block for transformation in customer
experience, operational processes, and
business models. Although CIOs and
existing IT departments are leading
digital initiatives across companies,
they hire extra skills or implement
separate units to coordinate digital
transformation.
Unified Data and Processes
The most fundamental technology
need for digital transformation is a
digital platform of integrated data and
processes. Large successful companies
often operate in silos, each with their
own systems, data definitions, and
business processes. Generating a
common view of customers or products
can be very difficult. Without the
common view, advanced approaches
to customer engagement or process
optimization cannot occur.
The difficulty of operating without a
platform becomes greater as companies
engage in multi-channel operations.
Many companies, for example, cannot
link customers’ activity in stores or
bank branches to their activity on the
web or mobile. An executive in one
company, echoing statements by many
others, said “data integration is the biggest
challenge in setting up our digital services:
self-services, web-strategy and running
partnerships.”
Unified data and process is one reason
that web-based companies are able
to gain advantage through analytics
and personalization much more
readily than traditional firms. For many
traditional companies, the first step in
preparing for digital transformation

© 2011 MIT Center for Digital Business and Capgemini Consulting 23
Figure 5: Digital platform implementation*

Single integrated
digital platform

No platform

39%

47%
14%

Multiple digital platforms
* Percentage of companies in each digital platform state among the 50 interviewed for the study

to invest – sometimes heavily – in
integrating data and processes across
the enterprise. In this respect, firms that
have already implemented ERP and CRM
systems are a step ahead of others.
Unified platforms can also help
to manage the centralization/
decentralization challenge in
globalization. Hospitality firm properties
can use centralized platforms to deliver
locally-customized information while
not having to support the technology.
A media company common technology
platform allows the firm to share content
at worldwide level, offering media content
developed in one part of the world to
be used easily in other markets and
publishing formats.
Solution delivery
Companies also need the capabilities
to modify their processes or build new
methods onto the data and process
platform. Solution delivery requires
effective methods and strong skills. Most
IT departments have solid development
methods in place. However, those
methods are often geared to well-defined
requirements and mature technologies

24 © 2011 MIT Center for Digital Business and Capgemini Consulting

but not to emerging digital technologies
and practices. Mobile and social media,
for example, often require iterative
approaches to learn about what will work
in the market or workplace. They also use
technology that is not commonly available
in enterprises. Analytics activities
often require specific knowledge and
temperaments that typical IT developers
do not possess.
Some IT departments have established
special units to build emerging
technology skills and methods. Others
have innovation units to identify how new
technologies and practices might change
the business. Still others look outside the
firm for help. 78 percent of the companies
interviewed hire vendors to address large
projects or those that require advanced
technologies. Vendor partners can be very
effective, but some executives expressed
concern about over-reliance on vendors.
A hospitality executive firm said that
knowledge of key emerging technologies
is spread across silos of external vendors,
making integration difficult. Several
executives described knowledge gaps
that existed after they ended a vendor
relationship.
Analytics capabilities
Information management and analytics
were highlighted as major goals by
executives across industries. Several firms
echoed the statement of an executive
who stated “It’s time to harvest the data and
turn it into insights.” Combining integrated
data with powerful analysis tools is seen
as a way to gain strategic advantage over
competitors.
Companies are engaging in analytics
at varying levels of intensity. Some are
just beginning to make better use of
the data available from transactional
systems. They are making more-informed
and better decisions and reacting more
quickly to changes in their operations.
Companies with integrated data are able
to engage in more powerful analytics
strategies. An Insurance company is able
to do predictive sales, helping salespeople
to target products that a specific type of
customer is likely to buy. A hospitality
company and a restaurant firm are
using analytics to target promotions
and conduct pricing experiments. A
media company is using web analytics
to provide real-time KPIs to customers
in order to demonstrate the added-value
of the firm’s products. Several insurance
firms are using analytics to underwrite
policies, enabling better pricing and
reshaping the firms’ risk portfolios.
However, all executives also mentioned
that building analytics capability was
difficult, requiring skills and culture
change in addition to investments in
information technology.
Business and IT integration
Digital Transformation, more than
other business changes, requires strong
integration between technology and
business executives. Companies with
a history of strained IT and business
relationships are handicapped when

trying to conduct digital transformation.
These companies often have issues
common to those that do not govern IT
well, namely complex IT architectures,
unintegrated data, and processes that are
not well-enabled through technology.
In contrast, companies with a solid IT/
business relationship are in a solid
position to begin digital transformation.
A bank executive stated: “IT has been
brought closer to business during the last five
years. It is very important to success because
many of the important transformations
in our business enabled by technology.”
With trust and shared understanding,
IT executives can help business
executives meet their goals, and business
executives listen when IT people suggest
innovations. Where strong relationships
exist, executives on both sides of the
relationship are willing to be flexible in
creating new governance mechanisms or
digital units without feeling threatened.
In most firms, digital transformation
is being led by CIOs. Where the
relationship is strong, this approach can
be very effective. At a manufacturer,
the CIO is also head of strategy. He led
aggressive investments in technology
that generated tremendous benefits for
the firm (see case study). The CIO of a
global services firm also manages the
firm’s e-commerce operations and its
innovation activities. Other companies
place responsibility for digital in another
unit or executive who works closely with
the CIO. An apparel firm established a
new digital division that works closely
with the existing IT department. A
business directory company hired a
CIO to focus on transformation-related
activities, working in concert with the
CIO who focused on keeping the firms’
existing platform functional.

© 2011 MIT Center for Digital Business and Capgemini Consulting 25
Case Study

BNP PARIBAS: DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION
IN AN INTERNATIONAL BANKING GROUP

I

nternational banking group BNP Paribas grew rapidly in the past decade by
acquiring banks in several countries. The firm is now aiming to solidify its
international position, aligning processes at global scale. The group strategy is
defined around three key points: internationalization, process rationalization
and maintaining trust with the customer.

Crisis, regulation and technology adoption by customers and employees are
pushing BNP Paribas to consider digital transformation. Executives envision
digital as a way to reshape boundaries, focus on profitable business areas and
streamline middle and back office processes, but BNP Paribas is only part-way through
its transformation journey. The first step of the transformation has focused on reach:
creating a multichannel strategy that includes the web as well as emerging technologies
such as mobile and social media. BNP Paribas is today in a transition phase to reach the
second step of the transformation: integrating transactions across channels and building
a conversation with clients via an external CRM and analytics-based tools. BNP Paribas
is currently developing a new digital platform leveraging the firms various distribution
assets into multichannel processes and tools.
To improve customer experience, the firm launched multiple initiatives. Mobile apps
provide a substitute to using the internet website. The firm increased customer touch
points via social media, providing customer service on twitter and advertising on
Facebook. In 2010, BNP Paribas launched a new branch model. This Concept Store
will help develop new ways of interacting and selling products to the customer via new
technologies and self-service areas. The firm’s next step is to start a conversation with
customers on social media. This will require building social-customer knowledge, via
an external CRM, and increasing analytics capability. In 2011, BNP Paribas launched
new mobile bank services in partnership with a telecom operator. This was more than a
simple website substitution. It was a switch from traditional business model to a digital
one, with a different cost and revenue structure.
From an operational process point of view, BNP Paribas is still at the beginning of its
transformation journey. The firm is focusing on security improvements and cloud
solutions, which executives see as key differentiators in the industry. The objective of
process rationalization will be to have end-to-end digitized processes in an integrated
platform, which could generate international economies of scale.
A group digital committee sponsored by general management elaborates the group digital
strategy and encourages digital best practice sharing.
BNP Paribas’ next digital objectives are to move into mobility, reach the next level of
customer intimacy and develop a strong analytics strategy. Challenges on this road are to
strengthen digital coordination at the group level and to balance digital and physical in
the front-office perspective

26 © 2011 MIT Center for Digital Business and Capgemini Consulting
Case Study

MOVING FROM SEPARATE TO
INTEGRATED DIGITAL INITIATIVES IN AN
APPAREL MANUFACTURER

A

n apparel company has built its successful business by
combining good products with compelling branding and a set
of high-profile celebrity relationships. Its entrepreneurial spirit
has led to growth in product silos. The firm spent the past
ten years improving internal processes and its connections to
manufacturing partners.

The firm’s entry into digital occurred in three successful
but disconnected areas. In customer experience, the firm
developed a customized products offering. Customers can go online or work with an
advisor in a store to configure products in exactly the color schemes they wish, and
then receive the products by mail. This process modified existing customer-facing
and manufacturing capabilities to deliver a new customer experience. Separately,
the company made forays into social media. It built communities around different
categories of product, allowing customers to communicate with the company and
each other via Facebook and Twitter. It also launched a few digital products meant
to augment the lifestyle needs of customers, such as GPS devices for athletes.
In internal operations, the product design area moved from paper-based design
processes to a fully digital process. Although some designers initially experienced
trouble in the transition, the process has yielded important benefits. Shipping
digital designs instead of physical prototypes between headquater and suppliers has
cut the product development cycle time by months. It also allows the company to
adjust designs much more easily in response to manufacturing issues or changes
in customer demand. In addition, the firm can use digital designs to promote new
products to retailers differently, gaining attention and orders much earlier and
making retailer promotion easier than was possible with a physical design process.
The company has recently recognized the need to begin coordinating its digital
efforts. It has created a digital division to deliver all digital efforts for the firm.
This included recruiting key senior executives with experience in different
aspects of digital business management, and building an innovation unit charged
with identifying new customer and process approaches that cut across the firm’s
traditional silos. The digital division does more than enable and capture synergies
between initiatives. It also opens up new possibilities for taking the firm from a
product-focused to a customer-centric approach.

© 2011 MIT Center for Digital Business and Capgemini Consulting 27
4
DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY USAGE
28 © 2011 MIT Center for Digital Business and Capgemini Consulting
The interviews asked how four digital
technologies – analytics, mobile,
social media, and embedded devices
– are being used in the enterprise.
All of the executives we interviewed
were aware of these technologies,
although few considered themselves
experts. Most could describe how the
company used the technology, or how
it might or might not be important in
the future.
Figure 6 shows how often firms
in the study used each digital
technology to improve customer
experience and operational
processes. Analytics, Mobile and
Social Media are widespread in these
large organizations, despite their
relative newness to most industries.

Customer-experience applications of
social media are more common than
internal uses, reflecting awareness of
the fact that consumers are rapidly
adopting these technologies, and
well as some skepticism about how
effective they will be for internal
collaboration. Analytics, too, is more
common in customer experience
applications, reflecting organizations’
increasing efforts to target marketing
activities and personalize customer
experience better than in the past.
Mobile is used widely in both
domains.
Embedded devices are still an
emerging technology. Less than onefourth of companies are using these

Figure 6: Applications of digital technology in customer experience and operational process

Customer experience
Operational process

72%
66%

62%

66%

62%
52%

24%
14%

Analytics

Mobile

Social Media

Embedded Devices

Note: Percentage of firms using digital technologies in their customer experience and operational processes.

© 2011 MIT Center for Digital Business and Capgemini Consulting 29
devices. Most executives commented
that they did not yet see applications
for the technologies. In the case of
RFID, they mentioned the cost of the
RFID tags or the difficulty of using
them in busy, machine-filled spaces.
Many executives did express interest
in using embedded devices in the
future.
Companies varied greatly in the ways
they used the four technologies. We
identified three levels of usage:
•	Substitution is using new
technology as an alternative or
replacement for substantially
the same function that the
enterprise already performed

with a different technology and
process. Blackberries and iphones
substitute for PCs in both internal
operations (email) and customer
experience (web access). Many
employees use both methods
depending on their needs at a point
in time. Analytics, in the form of
basic business intelligence tools
and detailed reporting, substitutes
for similar information sources
available through other methods.
Substitution is useful when it
improves performance over, or is
more convenient than, traditional
methods.
•	 Extension is significantly improving
performance or functionality of

Figure 7: Applications of digital technologies in the enterprises we studied

Transformation

Extension

Substitution

• Predictive promotion
• Location-based marketing
• Social lead generation
• Smart grid devices

• Insurance underwriting transformation
• Remote-control mining operations
• Social-enabled product development
• Automated factories

• Deeper customer segmentation
• M-Commerce
• Pharma / medical device firm
physician communities
• Phones as payment devices

• Production/Supply chain optimization
• Mobile salesforce enhancements
• Internal collaboration communities
• Consolidated status monitoring for
medical devices

• Basic reporting or BI
• Simple apps
• Facebook pages and ads
• Cards replace passwords

• Basic reporting or BI
• Working anytime, anywhere, anyplace
• Employee blogging, internal Facebook
• Building access control

Customer
Experience

30 © 2011 MIT Center for Digital Business and Capgemini Consulting

Operational
Process
a process through technology.
A power company and a paint
company provide full information
to field workers on mobile devices,
eliminating the need for workers
to spend time in the office at the
start and end of shifts. A pharma
company’s social media physician
community enables the company to
learn about issues and opportunities
by allowing doctors to talk with one
another.

analytics to engage in location-based
marketing with its customers.
Figure 7 shows examples of how
companies are using the four digital
technologies. Figures 8 and 9 show
the extent to which each is being
used to improve customer experience
or internal operations. The most
common usage of each technology
is in substitution -- Mobile email
replaces desktop email, Facebook
pages and ads substitute for web.
However, companies are making
inroads in each technology. Roughly
30 percent of firms are engaging in
extension or transformation with
Mobile, Social, or Analytics. Although
usage of embedded devices lags the
other technologies, some companies
are already extending or transforming
their processes through these devices.

•	Transformation is fundamentally
redefining a process or function
through technology. A paint
company uses a combination of
embedded devices and analytics to
create fully-automated factories that
deliver higher efficiency, quality
and environmental protections
than manually-tended factories.
A hospitality firm uses predictive

Figure 8: Use of digital technologies to transform customer experience

2%
8%
14%
16%

18%
4%

28%
40%

36%

4%

22%

6%
Analytics

Substitution

Mobile

Social
Media

Extension

Embedded
Devices

Transformation

Note: Chart plots extent of transformation each firm is attaining in customer experience using a particular digital technology.
Many companies had multiple applications of a technology. For each firm, only the most transformative usage is counted.

© 2011 MIT Center for Digital Business and Capgemini Consulting 31
Figure 9: Use of digital technologies to transform operational processes

4%
18%
18%
36%

14%
22%

4%

36%

12%

20%
28%

8%

Analytics

Substitution

Mobile

Extension

Social
Media

Embedded
Devices

Transformation

Note: Chart plots extent of transformation each firm is attaining in operational processes using a particular technology.
Many companies had multiple applications of a technology. For each firm, only the most transformative usage is counted.

The interviews show an interesting
trend toward identifying
transformative opportunities that
combine multiple technologies with
new management practices.
•	Remote-control mining equipment
and automated paint factories
include both mobile and analytics
technologies to improve production
significantly.
•	Mobile phones are increasingly
becoming seen as embedded devices

32 © 2011 MIT Center for Digital Business and Capgemini Consulting

for customer-facing applications.
•	An apparel company aims to
integrate its social and web-based
marketing approaches with its
digital product design capabilities
and embedded devices in products
to be more responsive to emerging
consumer preferences.
•	Concept stores combine multiple
technologies to test or deliver a new
buying experience.
These types of multi-technology
solution are signs of a maturing
approach to digital transformation in
enterprises. Executives are beginning
to envision possibilities that cross
organizational and technological
silos – letting the possibilities drive
technology and organization rather
than the reverse.

© 2011 MIT Center for Digital Business and Capgemini Consulting 33
5
CHALLENGES ON THE ROAD TO
TRANSFORMATION

34 © 2011 MIT Center for Digital Business and Capgemini Consulting
What is causing firms to have difficulty
starting or benefiting from digital
transformation? Challenges occur in all
three elements of the transformation
process: Initiation, Execution, and
Coordination.

was astonished that none of the senior
executives were aware of TripAdvisor.”
Executives need not be aware of all
changes in industries outside their
own, but knowing major digital
consumer services products such as
Tripadvisor, Facebook, or eBay can be
very useful fodder for envisioning how
executives might change their own
businesses.

5.1 Initiation challenges
Lack of impetus

Regulation and reputation

Impetus often starts at the very top
of the firm. Executives are justifiably
skeptical of the benefits of emerging
technologies. The experience of
e-commerce taught many executives
that a fast follower approach can
sometimes be lower risk than a
pioneering approach. However, this
skepticism can result in bureaucratic
investment processes that prevent the
firm from engaging in useful digitallyenabled experiments and business
changes. A manufacturing executive
stated: “We’ve always been fairly slow in
adopting technology because we more or
less have the ambition of not being first
...but we have become even slower at the
same time that technology development
has been speeding up. So, the gap has
increased.”
Company performance can also slow
the move to transformation. If the
company is not experiencing pain, the
perceived risk of change may outweigh
the potential benefits in the minds of
many executives. A manufacturer said
“At the end of the day, we don’t want to
stay on the edge of the latest trend. It’s not
really our business.”
An other concern issue can be lack
of awareness of the opportunities or
threats of digital transformation. An
executive in one of the world’s largest
financial companies said “When I
made a presentation to the board, I

Many executives, especially in
healthcare and financial services, are
being careful about mobile and social
technologies because of security and
privacy concerns. In our sample, 47
percent of companies stated a high
or medium concern over regulatory
impacts on their potential digital
initiatives. A lost or hacked mobile
device can give outsiders access
to confidential data on patients or
customers. This has reputational
repercussions well beyond any
regulatory penalties. A financial
services executive said “The last thing
that any of us want to do is put the
reputation that we built for more than
100 years on the line because someone lost
a device.” A medical executive had a
similar concern: “We’ve done a good job
of becoming a trusted partner to a lot of
governments and customers. If we violate
that trust, if we have one bad apple, you
can throw the whole thing out the window
very quickly.”
Companies, especially in financial
services, are taking a slow approach
to social media for fear of regulatory
sanction. For example, blogs, tweets
and other messages are typically
not reviewed as carefully as other
corporate communications, but may
be construed as advice by readers. A
financial company executive said “We

© 2011 MIT Center for Digital Business and Capgemini Consulting 35
jumped into going ahead with Twitter and
YouTube and Facebook without knowing
what people are actually saying about us.
Now we have started to monitor it.”
While these regulatory concerns are
real, they need not prevent companies
from moving forward. Two financial
services firms and one medical
device firm are already successfully
selling products and services with
tablets instead of paper. Several
firms have implemented tools to
protect confidential information on
phones and tablets or to wipe the
devices in case they are lost. Nearly
all of the regulated companies we
interviewed are establishing policies
for employee use of personally owned
or mobile devices and for using social
media. Many firms we interviewed
are using Facebook and Twitter
for brand building. Meanwhile, an
insurance firm is helping agents build
their presence on LinkedIn, and a
medical device company plans to
use Facebook as a radically new way
to reach the specialists who use its
products.
Unclear business case
Healthy skepticism or regulatory
concerns are legitimate reasons
to be careful when investigating
new technologies. Certainly not all
digital initiatives make sense for all
companies (or for all employees in
the company). One CIO, discussing
mobile-enabled process changes,
said “At the end of the day, we’re still
looking at value and cost. For some folks,
the most cost-effective technology is still
the desktop.” However, these reasons
should not prevent companies from
investing in potentially valuable
experiments or transformations.

36 © 2011 MIT Center for Digital Business and Capgemini Consulting

Executives in our sample used a
set of four methods (see Figure
10) to justify investment in digital
transformation initiatives. Some
initiatives can be justified in the
traditional way, through quantified
economic business cases. Audio and
videoconferencing technologies, for
example, can be justified on travel
cost savings or other efficiencies,
as could a financial firm’s move to
a transformed office environment.
Larger process transformations also
can cite clear returns, such as when an
apparel firm justified its move to digital
design processes through cost savings
and significantly shortened product
development cycles.
However, other investments are
truly bet-your-company, do-or-die
propositions, in which the financial
case is one of survival. Firms facing
a burning platform often make large
changes without a strict financial
business case. A business directory
service, realizing their paper-based
model was declining rapidly, brought
in a new CEO to lead a radical
digital transformation. An airport
authority invested heavily in digital
transformation when governments
stated that they would withdraw 60
percent of public funding within 5
years.
However, as with many innovations,
digital transformation investments
often have less clear business cases
than these examples. Many companies
considered their initial forays into
Facebook or Twitter as simple
experiments built with limited funding
and risk to investigate the potential of
the new media. Similarly, initial mobile
apps or pilot experiments with mobile
marketing have been scoped to limit
cost and risk. These experiments are
Figure 10: How companies justify their digital transformation investments

ECONOMIC:

BURNING PLATFORM:

Traditional capital
budgeting processes
emphasizing measurable
cost or revenue
improvements.

“bet the business”
investments made in
response to rapidly
declining performance
in the existing
businesses

STRATEGIC FOUNDATION
INVESTMENT:

LOW-RISK EXPERIMENT:

initiatives undertaken to
provide important
organizational
capabilities, usually
without a quantified
financial business case

often funded “below the radar”, using
the spending authority available to a
senior executive.
Other initiatives are funded as
strategic foundation investments that
build infrastructure and capabilities to
be used elsewhere. These investments
rarely go through the rigor of
developing a quantified business case,
but rather are undertaken as strategic
bets. Collaboration tools and internal
knowledge bases, for example, were
often justified as relatively low cost/
low risk infrastructure investments
to smooth cooperation and synergies
among a distributed workforce.
However, some foundation investments
are larger. A manufacturing firm
invested in building a shared digital
division to provide capabilities and
support to digital initiatives across
the firm. Each new digital initiative

investments structured
with limited size and risk
to learn about
technologies,
customers, or potential
capabilities.

would be funded on its own merits,
but the initial investment to set up the
shared service was seen as a strategic
foundation investment. Similarly,
several firms hired senior executives
or content experts to get started in the
analytics and social media spaces. The
new leaders must financially justify
their existence in the future, but the
initial investment was considered as
capability-building.
When enabling larger transformations,
executives often use a combination of
approaches over time. Analytics is an
interesting example. Specific customer
segmentation or predictive analytics
efforts can often show a business
case. Marketing experiments either
generate higher sales or they don’t.
Insurance analytics either generate
a better risk/return profile or they
don’t. However, firms often require

© 2011 MIT Center for Digital Business and Capgemini Consulting 37
an investment in infrastructure –
integrating data, buying tools or hiring
expertise – before they can start to
conduct more measurable analyticbased experiments. For a restaurant
firm considering analytics, the return
for hiring new skills and conducting
initiatives was initially unclear, but
senior executives believed it was a
bet worth making to understand
better sales trends and start to
engage in dynamic localized pricing
experiments.

Missing skills

Regardless of how an initial investment
is justified, the interviews highlighted
an important point. The real value
of digital transformation comes not
from the initial investment, but from
continuously re-envisioning how
capabilities can be extended with
digital technology to increase revenue,
cut costs or gain other benefits. Initial
investments, made with or without
a financial business case, become
foundational capabilities on which
additional investments can be made.
When it first centralized order taking
and implemented an ERP system,
executives at the home improvement
products company did not envision
the many successful business model
changes they would be able to add in
the future. But, to their credit, they
continuously envisioned what else they
could do with their digitally-enhanced
foundation, and earned higher and
higher returns as a result.

Firms are filling gaps by hiring experts
or working with vendors. Skills that
are in short supply in one industry
can sometimes be found in others. A
restaurant executive said “We have been
hiring analytics experts from other firms.
We give them a chance to play a more
senior role than they could in their previous
employers, where their skills are more
plentiful.” A medical company executive
said “We missed the boat on social media.
We just hired a global CMO to take care
of our social media strategy.” Meanwhile,
although the executive recognizes
that smart embedded devices will be
essential to the firm’s future product
strategy “We have nobody to look into
that.” A hospitality firm, aiming to
limit long-term HR investment while
experimenting with new technologies,
is working with vendors who have the
right skills and are willing to work for
reduced rates to get a foot in the door.
However, it is encountering knowledge
integration issues as key skills are
located in different vendors.

5.2 Execution challenges
While a top-level impetus for
transformation is important, it is often
not enough. Interviewees cited three
missing elements that threatened to
prevent them from moving forward
successfully (see Figure 11).

38 © 2011 MIT Center for Digital Business and Capgemini Consulting

Analytic-based decision-making does
not always come naturally to people
accustomed to using “professional
judgment” or other methods to make
decisions. A grocery CFO lamented
“We have all of the information in place,
but we can’t get those guys to change the
way they work.” Emerging technologies
are another area where skills may be
scarce internally, especially in areas
such as mobility and social media.

Culture issues
Cultural issues can also become a
bottleneck for digital transformation.
A major cultural issue is related to
changes in jobs due to automation
or information empowerment. A
Figure 11: Organizational gaps in digital transformation

77%
Missing
Skills
55%
Culture
Issues
50%
Ineffective
IT

Note: Percentage of firms encountering gaps in skills, IT or culture as mentioned by their executives. Some firms are encountering more than one gap.

grocery executive mentioned that the
firm’s information-based benefits are
reduced by managers who cannot
think differently about how they make
decisions. Other executives find that
they must work to change the culture
when empowering front-line workers.
Executives shared that these workers,
accustomed to taking orders from
headquarters, needed help to adopt
the idea of using new information
capabilities to make autonomous
decisions. Meanwhile, previouslyautonomous country managers in
globalizing firms often require coaching
to grow comfortable working in an
environment of centralized shared
services and standardized processes.
One lever for change is to hire new
leaders. These people, while bringing
new skills, also bring new vision that
helps change the culture in their areas.
A business directory company, apparel
company, and restaurant firm have all
benefited from this approach. However,
whether leaders come from inside or
outside, senior executives cite a strong

vision and frequent communication as
essential for driving culture change.
Labor relations issues are a stickier
source of culture change issues.
A business directory company,
even in the midst of a successful
digital transformation, continues to
experience resistance from unions.
In an airline firm, flight employees
embrace digitally-enabled changes, but
ground employees, fearing job cuts,
are strongly resistant. These laborrelated culture issues can be overcome.
Consider two airport operators from
different countries. Both feel pressure
to change from governments, airlines
and customers. One company feels
“stuck” in their environment, unable to
move because of a culture that resists
changes. The other operator overcame
these cultural issues. It is now starting
to partner with airlines to develop
initiatives such as self-service drop-off,
common check-in desk, and selling
online airport-related (as opposed to
airline-related) products to customers.

© 2011 MIT Center for Digital Business and Capgemini Consulting 39
IT Difficulties
Digital initiatives are built on a solid
foundation of technology-enabled
processes and data, as well as the
analytics, solution delivery and
relationship capabilities to create
and extend that platform (see Figure
5). Information technology is a
fundamental part of the firm’s digital
capabilities. However, many companies
find their information technology
infrastructures and capabilities
severely lacking. According to the
head of the disability business for a
major insurer, “We have through the
last 50 years proliferated our IT systems
and applications. We don’t retire systems.
We just add on top of them, which
creates a tremendous amount of expense
and complexity.” Data issues are felt
especially keenly in marketing. One
marketing executive, echoing the
sentiment from many we interviewed,
said “It is very difficult to get a good
understanding of the customer when
customer data is spread across so many
systems.”
Beyond technical issues in IT,
relationship issues can be difficult.
A history of poor business / IT
relations is a difficult foundation for
the collaborative work required in
digital transformation. One business
executive said “IT is a mess. Their costs
are not acceptable. They propose things in
9-10 months where external firms could do
them in 3-9 weeks. We started offshoring
our IT, and now our IT guys are trying
to change.” A CIO described how he
communicates about the possibilities of
digital transformation, but none of his
business executive peers (interviewed
separately) seemed to find the
discussions credible.

40 © 2011 MIT Center for Digital Business and Capgemini Consulting

A strong IT/business relationship can
be very helpful in transformation.
The CIOs in a hospitality and
medical devices firm have very
strong relationships with other
senior executives, enabling them to
suggest and deliver important digital
initiatives. A financial services firm has
consolidated operations and IT under
a single senior executive, enabling the
firm to envision and execute process
and technology changes in sync.

5.3. Governance challenges
Benefiting from transformation
typically requires changes in processes
or decision-making that span
traditional organizational or functional
structures. Transformation, like any
major organizational change, requires
top-down effort to help employees
envision a different reality, and
coordination to ensure the firm moves
in the right direction.

40 percent of the
companies envision
a radical digital
transformation
Incremental vision
While incremental investments can
be effective starting places to build
digital capability, the largest benefits of
digital transformation come from truly
transforming activities. This requires
a more radical vision – one that offers
a view of a different way of working,
not just a faster or more efficient one.
Unless senior executives establish a
transformative vision of the future,
managers in the rest of the firm will
tend to locally optimize within their
own spheres of authority.

establish a picture of what is legitimate
and help to delegitimize local behavior
that detracts from a more global
approach.

An overarching vision can span
organizational boundaries. Firms
undergoing globalization are
envisioning themselves as a single
entity with local offices, rather than a
collection of independent units. The
restaurant firm has a vision in which
every outlet will learn from innovations
in other outlets. An airport authority
is re-examining the boundaries of its
business to consider whether it should
take on some functions traditionally
performed by airlines and vice versa.
The apparel firm is starting to envision
linkages between design, marketing,
and operations so that each can rapidly
adjust to what is learned in another
area. These overarching visions

More common is a vision that does not
go far enough. Insurers and financial
services firms are using tablets to
replace paper in sales presentations,
but have not yet integrated all
customer information or sales tools
into the new mobile or tablet format.
Many companies are using video and
collaboration tools to reduce travel
costs, but a financial services firm
and a consulting firm are building
capabilities to enable flexible global
collaboration among employees
working either from home or an office.
Marketing units are trying experiments
with social media and location-based
marketing, but a restaurant company
conducts pricing and promotion

© 2011 MIT Center for Digital Business and Capgemini Consulting 41
experiments in one site and then
rapidly shares the learning across the
company. Overly-limited visions can
dramatically affect the value obtained
from each digital transformation
investment.
Coordination issues
Many firms fail to transform because
of coordination difficulties across
business units or processes. Units are
able to make progress in their own
areas, but are unable to influence
practices in other units. The paint
manufacturer could not have continued
to benefit from transformation without
top-down coordination of internal
and customer-facing processes. Others
are learning this lesson. A hospitality
executive mentioned “We need to start
rethinking our strategy. The approach of
throwing was everything out there and
thinking that something is going to stick is
not the way to go.”
An apparel firm, after conducting
separate initiatives in design,

42 © 2011 MIT Center for Digital Business and Capgemini Consulting

marketing, and direct-to-consumer,
is now investing in coordination. It
recently created a digital division to
ensure that all of its digital efforts –
marketing, production, design and
even digitally-enhanced products – are
being coordinated. The significant
investment is expected to pay strong
dividends from better customer
experience, stronger knowledge of
rapidly-changing customer preferences,
and synergies between internal
functions.
A further concern arises from
coordination issues between new and
traditional businesses or processes.
This channel conflict is real, and
can be very painful for managers in
traditional units that lose when new
businesses gain. It often must be
addressed through an overarching
vision. In a business directory firm,
that vision was to have 80 percent of
business online. In a credit firm, the
digital division envisioned as small
and complementary, so that it did
not compete directly with the offline
business.
Case Study

CREDIT FONCIER: EVOLVING AS A VALUE
CHAIN ORCHESTRATOR IN MORTGAGES

F

acing increasing pressure from competitors, regulatory changes,
and customers, Credit Foncier decided to incorporate digital
transformation into its business model. The firm, one of the
top France’s largest mortgage companies, aimed to augment
its strong B2B capabilities by building a B2C experience that
extended well beyond its traditional boundaries. It would
orchestrate the entire customer experience of buying a property.
This required envisioning a whole new way of operating, and
then taking steps to experiment with offerings and educate both employees and
customers.
A customer can go online or use a self-service kiosk in the concept “megastore”
to learn how much she is qualified to borrow, or investigate what properties she
is qualified to buy. The company can refer her to real estate brokers or provide
financial products as part of the process. When the customer is ready to buy,
she returns to the store or website to start the process of obtaining a loan. At
any point, she can talk to an advisor who will help her in the process. The full
experience is digitally enhanced, including color-coded maps, analytics-aided
suggestions, and even a RFID-based key that the customer can use to save and
retrieve her information in the store.
Internally, the entire process is integrated with analytics and a CRM system
connecting elements of the B2C experience into the firm’s other processes. The
branch advisor can follow each customer through the process, offering help as
needed. The company augments its existing assets by partnering with other firms
from the long-standing web of business relationships that the firm has built in
its B2B business. The company also hired new skills to augment its existing staff
capabilities. The project, which was under consideration for 6 years, took 2 years to
be implemented.
While the megastore concept has been successful, and the company is considering
opening a new store in the near future, the company’s focus remains on growing
its successful B2B business. The vision for B2C is to augment existing B2B offerings
and hedge against competitive pressure in the consumer mortgage space. As the
concept matures, the firm will begin offering other products through the channel.

© 2011 MIT Center for Digital Business and Capgemini Consulting 43
Case Study

AIRCO: DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION IN
AN INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT

A

irCo manages operations for several of a country’s major
airports. Following market evolution, the government
demanded that AirCo reduces its dependency on a public
subsidy that funded more than half of the firm’s operations.
The challenge of converting a former government agency to a
profitable company was exacerbated as economic challenges
reduced air travel volumes and made airlines more aggressive
in negotiating the fees they paid to AirCo.

To gain new revenues, AirCo is transforming its business model. The firm’s vision
is twofold: to gain efficiencies by unifying processes across airports, and to focus on
serving end customers instead of only the airlines. Implementing the transformation
also requires engagement to help employees adopt more business-oriented
perspectives. According to executives, however, the transformation benefits from
two strategic assets: the firm’s ownership of the airports (and thus control of how
products and services are sold), and the employees’ collaborative culture.
After unifying the management team, AirCo focused on rationalizing and
integrating processes and IT infrastructure. It launched a digital transformation
program owned by a CIO board that would coordinate and support the digital
progress of the airports. The objective of the program is to allow the company
airport to follow each customer as she moves through an airport, providing services
wherever possible.
Customer experience:
The firm envisions increasing revenues from fliers to overcome diminishing
revenues from airlines. It plans to take advantage of a major change in customers’
behaviors: travelers are increasingly their own travel agents. In this world of
self-service, the company believes it can help customers to reduce the stress of
going to the airport, navigating traffic, checking in, and getting to the right gate
through the use of a website or mobile app. Customer apps already exist for the
two biggest airports of the country, providing both the customer and the company
with information about the trip. The firm supplements its digital services with
information agents who roam the airport with tablets to support and guide travelers.
AirCo will augment the apps with core business services like car rental, parking,
and train tickets. The firm is also developing airline partnerships to provide airline
tickets on the website.

© 2011 MIT Center for Digital Business and Capgemini Consulting 44
Operational processes:
The firm’s biggest operational challenge is to have one digital strategy for all of its
airports. It plans to provide every customer in every airport with the same services.
The firm has started its platform consolidation and partnered with foreign airports
to provide more information to travelers. It also made services such as drop-off or
check-in available to the airlines, taking advantage of the interconnectivity of the
firm’s digital platform.
Digitization of operational processes is also improving the communication between
employees. They are able to deliver a better service to the end customer. 75 percent
of workers are already using mobile devices as they move through the airport.
The company does not have a social media policy, but has created guidelines. It
encourages employees to be active on Facebook and Twitter. The firm has also
launched a collaborative community platform to understand travelers’ experiences
better and to be able to adapt its services.
AirCo’s digital transformation journey, currently underway, is seen as critical to
helping the firm reach financial autonomy. Executives started with a clear vision
that leveraged key strategic assets, hired a new CIO, and then created governance
mechanisms to improve the chances of success. These leaders also started early to
build digital engagement with employees to change the firm’s culture. Executives
believe the firm is well positioned to implement the remaining elements of the
digital transformation.

© 2011 MIT Center for Digital Business and Capgemini Consulting 45
6
HOW CAN YOU MAKE YOUR DIGITAL JOURNEY
SUCCESSFUL?
© 2011 MIT Center for Digital Business and Capgemini Consulting 46
Successful digital transformations
in our study used a common set of
elements (see Figure 12). Each is a
lever executives can use to initiate and
drive digital transformation in their
organizations. Leaders diagnose the
potential value of existing corporate
assets and build a transformative
vision for the future. Then, they
invest in skills and initiatives to make
the vision a reality. Fundamental
to the transformation is effective
communication and governance to
ensure that the firm is moving in the
right direction.

These elements work together in
an iterative approach – constantly
communicating and listening to
re-envision and further implement
new types of digital transformation.
Senior executives drive digital
transformation through an iterative
three-step process:
1. Envision the digital future for your
firm.
2. Invest in digital initiatives and
skills.
3. Lead the change from the top.

Figure 12: Digital transformation framework

Transformative Digital Vision

Strategic Assets
Sales Force

Products &
Content

Partnership
Network

Customer
knowledge

Point of sale &
Distribution Channels

Product Innovation

Brand

Culture

Customer
Experience

Operational
Process

Business Model

Customer
understanding

Process
digitization

Digitally-modified
businesses

Top line growth

Worker enablement

New Digital
Businesses

Customer touch
points

Performance
management

Digital
Globalization

Digital Governance

Digital Engagement

Digital Building Blocks

Digital Capabilities

Digital Investment
SKILLS

INITIATIVES

Iterative Transformation Roadmap
© 2011 MIT Center for Digital Business and Capgemini Consulting 47
6.1. Envision the digital
future for your firm
Many digital transformation initiatives
fail to capture all of the value available
to them because their vision is not
transformative. Only the top of the
company can create a compelling
vision of the future and communicate
it throughout the organization.
Successful digital transformation does
not occur bottom up. The true value
of transformation often comes from
seeing value across silos and then
helping everyone else see that value.
Identify and diagnose strategic
assets
Large companies survive major
transitions not by radically replacing
the old with the new, but rather
by transforming some of their
existing resources and competencies
for the new environment. While
this sometimes involves changing
leadership or replacing assets, it
usually involves reassigning or
adapting assets and realigning or
re-motivating employees. However,
it also requires understanding when
traditional assets and sources of
advantage no longer provide value.
Digital transformation is the
same. Your company will thrive in
digital transformation not by doing
something completely new, but by
taking advantage of your powerful
capabilities to gain advantage through
digitization. But that requires
thoughtful diagnosis: what assets will
be useful in a digitally transformed
world?

48 © 2011 MIT Center for Digital Business and Capgemini Consulting

Interviewees, without being asked,
often identified important assets
that could help or hinder their
transformations. These strategic assets
include:
• Sales force: A strong source of
customer loyalty is the set of
relationships cultivated by a strong
sales force. Digital initiatives
can threaten to disintermediate
salespeople, leading to channel
conflict. However, digital
transformation can also be used to
enhance those relationships, such as
a logistics firm that can use demand
data in one part of the world to
provide customers in another part
of the world with forecasts of trends
that will hit them soon. In addition
to sales people, front line employees
often are an important face to
the customer, as well as having
important knowledge about how
business is done.
• Point of sale and distribution
channels: Stores are often a strong
source of location-based advantage,
even in a digital world. In other
cases, firms with a strong warehouse
and supply chain capabilities are
able to use their distribution assets
to disrupt the advantage of local
competitors.
• Products and content: Media firms
find their content is a strong
asset that can be reused in digital
environments. Product companies
often find they can build new digital
business around strong products. An
electronics manufacturer is building
energy management solutions
around its highly successful devices
for the commercial buildings
market, and a manufacturer of
expensive long-lived transportation
products is building services that
digitally diagnose and help to
maintain those devices.
• Product innovation: A high-tech
materials firm has engineering
capabilities that few other firms
can match in its niche markets. It
has the opportunity to use digital
transformation to connect its
engineers more closely with global
manufacturers. An apparel firm has
world-class fashion design talent. It
uses digital technology to connect
designers closer to manufacturers,
speeding the design-to-market cycle
time while enabling designers to
change designs at will.
• Partnership network: Strong
partnerships can be a key lever
for transformation. Networks of
exclusive or trusted relationships
can enable firms to combine
different expertise and deliver
powerful new operating models. A
mortgage company, in switching
from a single value chain link to a
value chain orchestrator, benefited
greatly from its partnership assets.
Partners could have refused the idea
out of fear of direct competition,
but they cooperated in the project
because of years of working together
on many financial products and
transactions.
• Brand: Companies with a strong
brand are able to leverage it in
related offerings. Through mobile
web, social media, new digital
businesses and other digital
initiatives these companies can
extend and strengthen their brands,
building additional points of contact
with customers.

• Customer knowledge: Across the
years, companies had gathered
more and more knowledge about
customers. Today, some are
reaching a point where they can
start envisioning the next step,
monetizing this relationship to
launch new products, enhance
customer relationships or augment
sales via customer-segmentation.
• Culture: Some firms are able to
use culture as a powerful asset.
Executives in a manufacturing firm
found that the company’s historically
entrepreneurial culture made digital
transformation easier. Employees
were willing to embrace operational
changes and strategic partnerships
as part of the new vision. An
airport authority noted that the
nation’s collegial culture made it
easier to engage in transformation.
Meanwhile, another airport authority
found that its unionized culture
restricted change.
Create a transformative vision
Successful digital transformation
comes from envisioning new ways
that digital technology improves
performance and customer satisfaction,
not just trying to find a use for the
new technologies. As we described
earlier, many companies that are doing
experiments in mobile marketing,
social media, or analytics find that
they can be quickly stymied by
organizational boundaries or by
culture issues. Often the problems
arise through vision focused on
technology rather than different ways
of operating. More often they are
limited by a vision that is incremental
instead of transformative.

© 2011 MIT Center for Digital Business and Capgemini Consulting 49
Start with an overarching vision of
the what, not the how: “customer
experience transformation” not
“mobile marketing” or “social media.”
Then support the message through
consistent communication. Each
specific element of the transformation
can then be placed in a context of
the broader vision. This will also
highlight when issues such as a single
customer profile or a coordinated
messaging approach may be
important in reaching the vision.

specific business units, while others
extended across the enterprise.
Another element of the vision is the
relationship between new and existing
businesses. Companies in the study
had visions that included launching
new businesses, digitally improving
existing businesses, or creating an
overarching vision for a transformed
company.

Our interviews showed visions
that were internally focused,
externally focused, or bridging the
two. Some visions were focused on

Transformation does not happen
without investment. Digital
transformation is no different. The
investment may be large, and the

50 © 2011 MIT Center for Digital Business and Capgemini Consulting

6.2 Invest in digital
initiatives and skills
business case may not be completely
clear. It may be a series of lowrisk experiments that lead to a
larger investment. It often becomes
a strategic bet that only senior
executives can make. As with any
investment, digital transformation
requires understanding the need
for investment, managing risk, and
making the changes necessary to
capitalize on the change. In addition,
there is often tremendous value to
be gained from making the most of
investments you have already made.

capabilities quickly while helping
existing employees understand what it
means to work in an analytics-driven
environment. An apparel company
hired two senior people who were
already well-versed in social media
marketing and online commerce,
asking them to help the firm build
skills in those areas.

Find the right skills
Respondents nearly universally
described the difficulty of finding the
right skills to manage new initiatives
or to change work methods. While
some were able to reassign or retrain
existing employees for the new vision,
most found it necessary to acquire
skills from outside.
Find good vendors for technical skills, but
coordinate them. When investigating
a new technology, it is often easier
to hire vendors than to hire people.
Companies can hire vendors for an
emerging technology experiment,
and then easily end the contract at
the end of the experiment. However,
coordination is still necessary or
knowledge will remain stuck in
vendor silos.
Hire some stars. Analytics skills are
becoming more plentiful, but are not
distributed evenly across firms. One
firm hired good analytics leaders
from firms where these skills were
more plentiful. The new people, who
were skilled but experiencing limited
upward growth in their firms, were
able hit the ground running. The
new hires created initial analytics

While outsiders can be helpful to
jumpstart the change, companies
also found insiders very helpful. In
particular, it was very useful to put
senior insiders in roles that required
coordinating across units and changing
cultures. Meanwhile, other firms found
that they could move junior level fastrisers into roles where their energy and
resilience was essential for success. The
hospitality firm moved two relatively
young managers into roles in mobile
marketing and digital innovation.
These two people oversaw rapid
experimentation in their areas using
very small staffs and a set of vendors.
Both reported to a much more
senior executive who could manage
coordination across their units and
with the rest of the firm.
Invest in initiatives that advance
the vision
Very few examples of successful
digital transformation were fully
planned in advance. In many cases,
executives built basic capabilities for
one need, and then incrementally
added capabilities. A set of relatively
incremental changes added up to a
radical transformation. A medical
device firm implemented relatively
incremental digital changes to
enable knowledge sharing and
videoconferencing, but then used them
to radically transform its strategymaking processes. An apparel firm

© 2011 MIT Center for Digital Business and Capgemini Consulting 51
conducted digital transformation
initiatives in product design and in
marketing, and is now considering
initiatives to link the two.
In other cases, radical changes were
just the start of even more radical
changes later. Executives envisioned
a radical transformation of the
company, invested in key initiatives,
and then opportunistically made
additional changes that advanced
the vision. In addition to the home
improvement products and directory
services companies, a financial
services firm is an example. Radically
changing its headquarters design
caused people to rethink the way they
work. Instead of working in defined
offices in headquarters, employees
began to envision their work
happening independently of location
– moving desks as needed, working
on mobile devices, collaborating
virtually, or working from home. Then
it was only a minor step to improve
the way the firm collaborated globally.
As a leader, build a roadmap for your
initial changes. Make it clear how
the initial roadmap connects to your
broader vision for the company. But
then be open to ideas that will build
on that foundation for even more
change later on. It requires judgment,
but also strategic bets. Not every
idea will be a winner. By promoting
a strong vision of a transformed
organization, you put in place a
process through which smart people
throughout the company can help you
to implement and extend that vision
in the future. But then you must be
open to hearing and sponsoring those
extensions.

52 © 2011 MIT Center for Digital Business and Capgemini Consulting

6.3 Lead the change from
the top
Top-level vision rarely translates to
local-level action unless reinforced
through top-down communication and
governance. Consistent engagement,
backed with appropriate coordination,
KPIs, and incentives, make the difficult
process of transformation possible.
Engage the organization
As in most business transformation, the
role of communication is paramount
in effecting change and reducing
organizational resistance. People
can be a much bigger obstacle to
successful digital transformation than
any complex technology. Successful
companies in our study recognized
this by communicating early their
digital vision and using technology to
mobilize their workforce. There are two
main characteristics of communication
in a digital world that are making
mobilizing the workforce easier and
more impactful than traditional
methods:
• Moving away from “cascading”
information through traditional
hierarchical channels toward
enterprise-wide large scale
communication. On top of traditional
tools such as e-mail, new possibilities
have been opened up with webcasts,
internal social networks or PC-based
video conferencing.
• Moving away from a oneway “broadcasting” model of
communication toward offering
people in the organization the
opportunity to engage in a real
dialogue around the transformation.
Wikis, discussion forums, blogs and
so on are easy tools to support such
conversations.
Enterprise 2.0 tools are powerful
tools to help mobilize and align
the workforce towards digital
objectives. Most organizations
have already implemented some
of these technologies but are not
exploiting them to the full in their
communication efforts. Successful
organizations have not only created

awareness through communication,
but have increased the level of
transparency and trust through this
open dialogue.
Establish digital governance
Bottom-up digital transformation
is rarely successful. With the right
vision and leadership, opportunities
from digital transformation build
on each other to create new ways of
working that would not have been
possible earlier. However, they require

© 2011 MIT Center for Digital Business and Capgemini Consulting 53
top-down ambition setting to put the
organization in motion, coordination
to turn disconnected or poorlyconsidered digital investments into
true platforms for transformation and
monitoring to ensure that progress is
being measured and managed.

One executive stated “There’s an
intense focus on the transition to digital
because, from the very top, the CEO has
mandated that 20 percent of our sales will
be digital within 5 years. To achieve that
we will have to change the culture and
the way the organization operates.” In a
financial company, the CMO stated
“Unfortunately, digital transformation was
not a priority of the board a year ago. We
had 2-3 percent of digital revenue. Now this
has changed and we have set a challenging
target of 15 percent for all divisions.”
Ambitions need not be only about
revenue changes. A home improvement
product firm sets targets related to
health, safety and environment, as well
as to scrap reductions in plants.

Ambition setting: Once an organization
has defined its transformative vision,
leaders must translate that vision into
a set of ambitions and targets that
signal to executives and employees
“what good looks like.” In our study,
some of the companies most advanced
in their digital transformation had
established a clear set of ambitious
KPIs to drive the desired results.
Figure 13: Coordination models for digital transformation

Silo
Initiatives and skills
located in
business units

Central coordination

BD

BU 2

op

op

op

BD

BD
Hub

Global
Senior-level Digital
Officers in each BU
Digital BU provides
core-business
solutions and
support

D

D

BU 2

BU 3

op

BU 1

BU 2

op

Digital BU

BU 1

op

Digital BU

HQ

HQ

Digital BU provides
core-business
solutions and
support

BU 3

Digital Strategy set
by a dedicated
business unit

B

Enterprise-level
coordination of
locally-led digital
initiatives

BU 3

BU 1

op

Local business units
must use central
resources

Initiatives and skills
located in business
units

HQ

BU 3

BU 1

No enterprise-level
coordination

BU 2

HQ

Local business units
must use central
resources

D

Budget Owner

D

54 © 2011 MIT Center for Digital Business and Capgemini Consulting

B

BD
op

BD BD
op

Strategy & Digital roadmap

op

op

Deliver Digital Operations
Coordinating mechanisms: Successful
companies in our study had strong
leadership for digital initiatives. Most
had to adjust their organizations
to accommodate the new digital
ambitions. As the CEO of a digital
business unit explained “We said we’d
find the balance between central and
de-central by creating one central role
for coordinating the digital strategy. We
appointed local Chief Digital Officers
(CDO) in local business units reporting
to both the CEO of the business units and
a CEO of an overall digital business unit.
In one of our business units we moved
the CEO to the position of Chief Digital
Officer. It was a promotion. So the Chief
Digital Officer (CDO) role is more a
business role than a technology role.”
We observed in our study that not
all the companies use the same
structure. We found four models for
coordinating digital transformation

(see Figure 13). Figure 14 shows
that central coordination is the most
commonly used model in our study,
but all models are relatively common.
We found no single model that clearly
outperforms others. However, we do
see clearly that companies lacking
effective digital coordination do not
get the value possible from their
digital transformation initiatives.
Monitoring progress through KPIs:
Once the ambition is clearly stated
and the organization structure is
aligned, leaders need to ensure that
a transparent set of metrics and KPIs
are in place to constantly monitor
and review progress towards that
ambition. As an executive stated
“To ensure alignment with our digital
strategy, we monitor our progress through
a transparent scorecard where everyone
can see a quantified assessment of our
progress and take actions against it.”

Figure 14: Usage of digital coordination models in the study

Hub

Silo

18%
18%

Global

24%
40%

Central coordination

Note: Percent of firms using each coordination model for their digital initiatives.

© 2011 MIT Center for Digital Business and Capgemini Consulting 55
Case Study

PRISA: DRIVING DIGITAL
TRANSFORMATION ACROSS A GLOBAL
COMPANY

P

RISA is a Spanish-language-based global media organization
with businesses spanning television, press, radio and educational
publishing. As with many media organizations, PRISA was faced
with a rapid transition to digital in most of its core businesses,
and a move away from more traditional media. According to a
senior executive, “We realized early that if we don’t transform the
way we do business, we’re going to die. It’s not about changing the way
we do technology but changing the way we do business.” The digital
transformation was mandated from the top of the organization. The CEO, in laying
out his vision of the future, demanded that the firm substantially grow its digital
business from less than 1 percent to 20 percent of its sales within a span of a few
years.
The CEO instituted a radical change for the highly decentralized organization
by creating a centralized digital unit to coordinate and assist in building digital
businesses. The appointment of a global Chief Digital Officer from outside the
organization, who reports directly to the CEO of the Group, was a major signal.
Senior executives were appointed to the position of Chief Digital Officer in each
division, coordinating with the central digital unit. The Chief Digital Officer of each
division was responsible for the implementation and coordination of the digital
transformation of their division. This was a very senior role that had not existed
before. For example,
The company’s digital transformation was designed around four key pillars:
1.	Creating a federated digital organization
2.	Creating the next generation digital distribution and monetization platform
to ensure that all of their global assets could be shared effectively across
businesses, and new products could be easily created
3.	Injecting new digital skills and experience from outside the company
4.	Encouraging digital experimentation (e.g. social media strategy) and innovation
(e.g. crowd sourced textbooks) in the business lines.
The company monitors the progress of its digital transformation through clear and
transparent performance management scorecards. The digital unit is simultaneously
driving innovation (an investment model), sales strategy (a P&L model) and service
delivery (shared service model).

56 © 2011 MIT Center for Digital Business and Capgemini Consulting
Through digital, PRISA faces cannibalization of its traditional business. The
firm still has profitable traditional activities and there is a temptation to focus
on retaining this current business. But the transition is being reinforced in
communication from the top of the organization. For example the top management
at PRISA TV talks about the evolving interactive landscape of digital video
technologies, not just about the traditional set-top-box model of pay TV. Education
is also moving fast. “It’s not only taking a book and making a textbook that’s digital.
It’s reinventing education. It’s defending the old business through the power of digital
opportunities.”
PRISA is engaged in a strategic project with technology partners “to be able to deliver
any type of content anytime, anywhere, any device.” This digital platform will be fully
centralized and support information sharing in the group: “It will enable them to
get a South African interview of Christiona Ronaldo for El Pais local, and to publish it in
Spain. Of course, the system will preserve some exclusive content for a certain time.” With
this digital platform, “PRISA will be able to offer a global platform to its customers with
one identity -- fifty million customers’ credit cards -- and start giving them a consequent
ecosystem. No other media companies have yet done that.”
For Mobile, the company faces market issues as executives believe the advertising
market is not well educated on the new cost structures. PRISA launched
some initiatives like an app for El Pais that was recognized as the world’s #1
media-related iPad app in April 2011 (see http://mcpheters.com/2011/04/05/
imonitor™-releases-list-of-best-publication-apps/).
In Social Media, the firm is doing some experiments. PRISA has been on Twitter
for a couple of years and does some advertising on Facebook. The company has
integrated its digital products more tightly with social media and intends to use
social media information to drive content consumption. The company views social
media, mobile, and video to be key drivers for future growth.
PRISA also envisions several new business opportunities “So if you’re watching, for
example, a soccer game of Real Madrid and you see players running around, you’re going
to have technology that understands the numbers on the back of the shirts, and it can go up
to the database, and then they can say ‘give me the stats on these players’ and pull them up
on the right side of screen. That’s an interactive content analytics play. And maybe you can
tweet about it right there.”
PRISA’s transformation challenges have mainly been around cultural resistance,
the differing speeds of transition in each business unit, digital skills building, and
allowing for experimentation while keeping the integrity of the unified strategy. The
firm’s top three challenges for the future are breaking risk aversion, streamlining
the decision making process, and executing technology on pace to support all of
the needed changes. Digital will also enable PRISA to expand to other European
countries and to deepen its Latin American ties.

© 2011 MIT Center for Digital Business and Capgemini Consulting 57
7
WHAT IS DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION MATURITY?
58 © 2011 MIT Center for Digital Business and Capgemini Consulting
7.1 The What and The How

set of elements implemented by the
organization, and the resources used
to do so. Together they represent,
in essence, the digital intensity of the
organization.

The digital transformation framework
has many moving parts because much
is required to drive a successful digital
transformation. However, executives
can think about the figure in terms of
two main areas (see Figure 15).

The How: The outer boxes, consisting
of digital vision, governance and
engagement, are the ways in which
leaders will drive the transformation
to a successful outcome. They serve
as a form of scaffolding through
which leaders can ensure that the
elements of the “what” are built
effectively and that the organization

The What: The inner boxes,
consisting of strategic assets, the nine
digital elements, digital capabilities,
and investments, are the shape of the
transformation. They are the specific

Figure 15: The What and the How of Digital Transformation

Transformative digital vision

Strategic Assets
Sales Force

Partnership
Network

Customer
knowledge

Point of sale &
Distribution Channels

Product Innovation

Brand

Culture

Digital Engagement

Digital Building Blocks
Customer
Experience

Operational
Process

Business Model

Customer
understanding

Process
digitization

Digitally-modified
businesses

Top line growth

Worker enablement

New Digital
Businesses

Customer touch
points

Performance
management

Digital
Globalization

Digital Governance

THE “HOW” IS THE
WAY THAT SENIOR
EXECUTIVES DRIVE
CHANGE THROUGHOUT
THE ORGANIZATION.
THIS INCLUDES
CREATING AND
COMMUNICATING
VISION, ESTABLISHING
GOVERNANCE AND
MEASUREMENT
MECHANISMS, AND
BUILDING A
DIGITAL-READY
CULTURE.

Products &
Content

THE “WHAT” IS
SPECIFIC SET OF
DIGITAL
TRANSFORMATION
ELEMENTS
IMPLEMENTED BY
THE ORGANIZATION,
INCLUDING THE
STRATEGIC ASSETS
AND DIGITAL
INVESTMENTS THAT
ARE USED TO
CREATE THOSE
ELEMENTS.

Digital Capabilities

Digital Investment
SKILLS

INITIATIVES

Iterative Transformation Roadmap

© 2011 MIT Center for Digital Business and Capgemini Consulting 59
has the skills and culture to drive
value from them. It is, in essence, the
transformation management intensity of
the organization.
Together, the “what” and the “how”
represent the digital maturity of an
organization (see figure 14). They can
be thought about as digital “Style” and
“Substance.” Firms that are mature on
both dimensions can drive powerful
digital transformation that yields
business value. Unfortunately, many
firms in our study are mature at only
one, or neither.

7.2 Digital maturity matrix
Figure 16 shows digital maturity as a
classic 2x2, highlighting four different

types of approaches to driving digital
transformation.
Firms in the lower left are Digital
Beginners. They are doing very little
with advanced digital capabilities,
although they have more traditional
digital capabilities such as ERP, internet
or e-mail. Companies may be in this
quadrant by choice. For example,
executives in a specialty chemicals
firm believe that their B2B customers
will not be interested in social media
or mobile technologies, and that
their engineering employees are very
effective with traditional collaboration
tools. However, many companies are
in this quadrant by accident. They are
either unaware of the possibilities of
new digital technologies or are starting

Figure 16: Digital maturity matrix

FASHIONISTAS
• Many advanced digital features
(such as social, mobile) in silos
• No overarching vision
• Underdeveloped coordination
• Digital culture may exist in silos

Digital Intensity

BEGINNERS
• Management skeptical of the
business value of advanced
digital technologies
• May be experimenting with
advanced digital
• Immature digital culture

DIGIRATI
• Strong overarching digital vision
• Good governance
• Many digital initiatives
generating business value in
measurable ways
• Strong Digital culture

CONSERVATIVES
• Overarching digital vision exists,
but may be underdeveloped
• Few advanced digital features,
though traditional digital
capabilities many be mature.
• Strong digital governance
across silos
• Taking active steps to build
digital skills and culture

Transformation Management Intensity

60 © 2011 MIT Center for Digital Business and Capgemini Consulting
some investments without effective
transformation management in place.
Firms at the top left are Digital
Fashionistas. They have implemented
a large amount of sexy digital “stuff.”
Some of these items may be creating
value, but some may not. While
the digital fashion items may look
good together, they may clash with
other items, and they rarely generate
synergies. Digital fashionistas are
motivated to bring on digitallypowered change, but their digital
transformation strategy is not founded
on real knowledge of how to proceed.
As a result, fashionistas may look
good, but rarely have much substance
-- in terms of business value -- behind
the sizzle. We see many fashionistas
in B2C businesses, where executives
(especially the marketing units) believe
they must move fast to keep up with
the fast-moving world of consumer
electronics, but do not necessarily have
a clear vision for how the elements will
collectively create value. Some firms
are in this quadrant at the enterprise
level even though digital efforts in silos
may be in other quadrants. This is the
case with a hospitality firm, in which
marketing and customer service are
both relatively mature digitally, but the
two are not yet well coordinated.
Firms at the bottom right are Digital
Conservatives. These represent the
wise old men and women of the digital
world. They understand the need
for a strong unifying vision and for
governance and internal engagement
activities to ensure prudent investment
management. However, they are
typically skeptical of the value of new
trends, sometimes to their detriment.
Digital conservatives understand where
the company should be going and
how to master digital challenges, but

they can’t always build organizational
momentum to carry out an ambitious
program. As a result, though aiming
to spend wisely, their careful approach
may cause them to miss valuable
opportunities that their more stylish
competitors will pounce on.
Firms at the top right are Digirati.
These firms truly understand
how to drive value from digital
transformation. They combine a strong
shared vision for transformation,
careful governance and engagement,
and sufficient investment in new
opportunities. Through managing
the “how” carefully, they develop
a digital culture that can envision
further changes and implement
them wisely. Through managing the
“what” sufficiently, they continuously
advance the competitive advantage
they draw from implementing digital
transformation.

7.3 How to assess your
digital maturity
Figure 17 shows how companies in our
study scored on an initial qualitative
assessment of digital maturity.
What is your digital maturity? Use
the guidelines below to assess your
company. Note that digital maturity
may vary across business units,
and will usually be different at the
enterprise level than within silos.
• Digital intensity: consider how
advanced your digital capabilities
are relative to competitors, or
relative to rising expectations of
customers and employees. How
much are you investing in new
technologies such as mobile,
analytics and social media? Are
you launching technology-enabled

© 2011 MIT Center for Digital Business and Capgemini Consulting 61
business changes such as locationaware marketing or analyticsinformed supply chain planning?
Digital intensity also depends on
your firm’s IT capabilities and the
strategic relationship between IT
and non-business managers, since
most digital opportunities will
have a significant IT component.
• Transformation management
intensity: consider how carefully
you are envisioning and
managing the firm’s move into
the digital future. Is the vision

well-articulated and shared?
How well are you governing and
coordinating digital investments?
How well are you helping the
organization be ready for changes?
Using these guidelines, you can plot
your own organization on the digital
transformation maturity matrix. Then,
if your company is not yet a digerati,
take steps to address any weaknesses in
your digital transformation capabilities
or build a roadmap to maneuver up the
maturity cycle.

Figure 17: Distribution of digital maturity

Digital Intensity

FASHIONISTAS

BEGINNERS

DIGIRATI

CONSERVATIVES

Transformation Management Intensity
Note: Digital maturity assessments were conducted by the research team using information from interviews. Vertical and horizontal lines represent median points for the two dimensions in the figure.

62 © 2011 MIT Center for Digital Business and Capgemini Consulting
Case Study

PAGES JAUNES: CAPITALIZING ON
DIGITAL OPPORTUNITIES

H

istorically the market leader in local advertising based
on printed directories, Pages Jaunes began to experience
a digitally-induced change in its markets. Individuals
looking for business providers were increasingly shifting
from paper directories to alternative digital channels in
their search for information. Facing a 10 percent annual
decline in business as its clients (typically SMEs) switched
their advertising spend, Pages Jaunes saw little opportunity
for growth in the business of printed directories. Although Pages Jaunes had
some significant online activity by 2009, they needed to quickly grow their online
presence to counter the decline of the printed directory business, as well as the
global economic and financial turmoil.
New CEO Jean-Pierre Remy convinced the organization to re-envision its business.
Pages Jaunes was not just a provider of directories, but was a trusted name in the
relationship business. It disseminated local information to end-users (consumers)
and provided local communications services to advertisers. The firm held only a 10
percent share of its newly-envisioned market, providing scope for growth. With this
new vision, the company started to identify new client needs and rapidly capture
opportunities to extend its relationship brokering role from paper to the Internet.
Pages Jaunes’ strategy aimed to accelerate the transformation of the business from
having roughly 30 percent of its business online to 75-80 percent in 3-4 years.
Elements of the transformation included:
• restructuring the organization into an SME-facing Advertising group and two
consumer-facing -media groups, focused on Internet & print respectively. A second
CIO was recruited to lead developments around new digital technology while
keeping the first CIO in charge of the existing, and still critical, IT systems.
• recognizing the value of the relationships built over many years between the firm’s
salesforce and its thousands of clients. The firm committed to keeping as many
salespeople as possible and helping them to learn to sell the firm’s new services.
• substantial effort to change the culture of an erstwhile state-owned company by
recruiting new tech-savvy employees and by instituting KPIs to retain focus on
attention and performance.
• educating clients (SMEs) about how digital possibilities could impact their own
business and drive revenues, without losing sight of that portion of its clients’
customers who continue to rely on the print channel.

© 2011 MIT Center for Digital Business and Capgemini Consulting 63
• building content strength online by creating and managing websites for more than
100,000 SMEs in France and Spain. The firm is experimenting with social media
possibilities, 3D applications, and focusing on various other services, including
display, SEM, SEO, direct marketing, coupons, etc. to reach an increasingly online
audience.
• building and continuing to enhance a strong online mobile brand presence,
reaching number three in the marketplace after Google and Facebook in France.
This tactic allows the firm to spend less than before on driving traffic to its sites
(search engine marketing).
• leveraging analytics heavily to analyze audience traffic and patterns, to quantify
for each advertising client the value and impact of products they purchase and to
help clients optimize media spending.
Pages Jaunes’ approach built on an already strong brand, a strong network of
salespeople who had existing relationships with SME clients, strong investments in
content and therefore the ability to partner (vs. compete) with major search engines
like Bing and Google, and with major content sources like Facebook.
Within two years of this strategic shift, Pages Jaunes earned €1billion from online
sales at a 50 percent net margin. Online business comprised about 50-60 percent of
its total business, and the firm was well-positioned to reach its goal of 75-80 percent
online business within two years.

64 © 2011 MIT Center for Digital Business and Capgemini Consulting
CONCLUSION
Digital technology, which transformed the media industry,
is now transforming the rest of the commercial world.
Companies in all industries and regions are experimenting
with – and benefiting from – digital transformation.
Whether it is in the way individuals work and collaborate,
the way business processes are executed within and across
organizational boundaries, or in the way the company
understands and services customers, digital technology
provides a wealth of opportunity to those willing to change
their businesses to take advantage of it.

• Where are the key investment areas that will maximize the
contribution to the new vision?

The pressure points for change are increasing from many
angles. Globalization is dictating efficient integration of
businesses which can only be achieved through digital
processes and collaborative tools. Employees and customers
are starting to demand new ways of working. As competitors
and new entrants make digitally-enabled practices a reality in
an industry, other firms will need to follow.

3. Lead the change from the top

Faced with these challenges, what are the key steps senior
executives should take to steer their organization?
1. Envision the digital future for your firm.
• What assets will be valuable in a digitally-transformed
business?
• How can you transform customer experience? Internal
operations? Your business model?
• How can units work differently – and work together
differently – in a more connected way?
2. Invest in digital transformation initiatives
• Are you getting all of the value out of your previous
technology and platform investments in ERP, analytics,
or collaboration tools? If not, what is necessary to get the
foundations right?

• Can you de-risk some of the investments through
experimentation and controlled testing?
• What skills are missing in your digital transformation
initiatives? Do you need to hire new executives? Retrain
front-line employees? Partner with another firm to gain
capabilities?

• How do you communicate the vision and engage the
organization on a large scale? How do you monitor
engagement?
• What process do you have in place to iterate the vision and
strategy?
• How do you coordinate investments and activities across
silos? What is the best organizational model to coordinate
digital initiatives in parallel to the core business?
• What KPIs and metrics do you need to put in place to
monitor the progress of your digital transformation towards
your strategic goals?
• What mechanism do you use to make the necessary
adjustments?
Digital transformation requires skills and influence that only
senior leaders possess. Create a transformative vision that is
clear and compelling to galvanize the organization. Mindfully
consider what parts of your company should move -- and why,
and when – to make it implementable. Build digital maturity
in two dimensions to increase your chances of success. Then
take actions and monitor progress to turn your vision into
reality.

© 2011 MIT Center for Digital Business and Capgemini Consulting 65
MIT Center for Digital Business and Capgemini Consulting Team members
George Westerman, a research scientist in MIT Sloan’s Center for Digital Business
(CDB), is also faculty chair for the MIT Sloan executive course Transforming Your
Business Through Information Technology. George’s research examines the role of
executive leaders in driving competitive advantage from digital technology. George
is co-author of two award-winning books, The Real Business of IT: How CIOs Create
and Communicate Value, and IT Risk: Turning Business Threats into Competitive
Advantage. Prior to earning his Doctorate from Harvard Business School, he gained
more than fifteen years of experience in innovation and technology management.
georgew@mit.edu

Claire Calméjane is a Managing Consultant in the Technology Transformation
Practice. She worked for the last 6 years at the Paris office and is currently visiting
scientist at the MIT Center for Digital Business, working with the researchers. She
specializes in Digital Transformation and IT Financial Services. She graduated from
a Computer Science Engineering School and holds a Master degree from HEC Paris
Business School.
claire.calmejane@capgemini.com

Didier Bonnet is a Managing Director and global head of practices at Capgemini
Consulting. Didier has more than 25 years’ experience in strategy development,
globalisation, internet & digital economics and business transformation for large
multinational corporations and private equity firms.
He has authored several research articles and is regularly quoted in the press e.g., WSJ,
FT, the Economist and provides commentary for broadcasters such as the BBC, CNN,
Reuters and CNBC.
Didier graduated from a French Business School and holds a DPhil from Oxford
University. He is based in London.
didier.bonnet@capgemini.com

Patrick Ferraris is the Global Leader of the Technology Transformation practice
within Capgemini Consulting. With over 20 years of consulting experience, Patrick has
supported large multinational organizations in their digital strategy and transformation
with a focus in Telecom, Media, Internet, Insurance and Transportation. He is an
alumnus from M.I.T and Ecole Nationale des Ponts & Chaussées.
patrick.ferraris@capgemini.com

Andrew McAfee, a principal research scientist at MIT, studies the ways that
information technology (IT) affects businesses. He coined the phrase “Enterprise 2.0;”
his book on the topic was published in 2009 by Harvard Business School Press. He
has also held appointments as a professor at Harvard Business School and a fellow at
Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society. In 2008, he was named the 38th
most influential person in IT.
amcafee@mit.edu

66 © 2011 MIT Center for Digital Business and Capgemini Consulting
Special thanks to our other research team members: Greg Gimpel and Mael Tannou.
We would like also to acknowledge the valuable support of a number of colleagues
who have either helped with the data collection or have contributed with their ideas
and insights; they are: Emmanuel Rilhac, Vincent Leonetti, Julien Pontault, Deborah
Soule, Michael Krauch, Cyril Francois, Martin Hanlon, Kieran Draper, Jerome
Buvat.
Last thanks to our point of contacts who facilitated access to their clients and often
performed interviews: Eric Lamotte, Peter Lindell, Ravouth Keuky, Jesus Viceira
Alguacil, John Varghese, Diego Mackee, David Blackwood, Benoit Pradet, Philippe
David, Stanislas de Roys, Mark Hoffland, Eric Kruidhof, Ulf Holmgren, Philippe
Bigot, Jari Matula, Adeline Pairault, Sebastien Blot, Sandra Lagrue and others.

© 2011 MIT Center for Digital Business and Capgemini Consulting 67
About Capgemini Consulting
Capgemini Consulting is the Global Strategy and Transformation Consulting brand
of the Capgemini group, specializing in advising and supporting organizations in
transforming their business, from the development of innovative strategy through
to execution, with a consistent focus on sustainable results. Capgemini Consulting
proposes to leading companies and governments a fresh approach which uses
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Digital transformation, a roadmap for billion dollar organizations

  • 1.
    MITSloan MANAGEMENT DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION: AROADMAP FOR BILLION-DOLLAR ORGANIZATIONS FINDINGS FROM PHASE 1 OF THE DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION STUDY CONDUCTED BY THE MIT CENTER FOR DIGITAL BUSINESS AND CAPGEMINI CONSULTING
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    Contents 2 © 2011 MITCenter for Digital Business and Capgemini Consulting
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    1 The Study 06 2 Common pressures; different results 08 3 The shape of digital transformation 16 4 Digital technology usage 28 5 Challenges on the road to transformation 34 6 How can you make your digital journey successful? 46 7 What is digital transformation maturity? 58 8 Conclusion 65 ••Common pressures to begin digital transformation ••Different digital transformation speeds and different results Case Study: Finding new opportunities for digital transformation across a hospitality company Case Study: Digital transformation in India ••Transforming customer experience ••Transforming operational processes ••Transforming business models ••Digital capabilities Case Study: Digital transformation in an international banking group Case Study: Moving from separate to integrated digital initiatives in an apparel manufacturer ••Initiation challenges ••Execution challenges ••Governance challenges Case Study: Evolving as a value chain orchestrator in mortgages Case Study: Digital transformation in an international airport ••Envision the digital future for your firm ••Invest in digital initiatives and skills ••Lead the change from the top Case Study: Driving digital transformation across a global media company ••The What and the How ••Digital Maturity Matrix ••How to assess your digital maturity Case Study: Capitalizing on digital opportunities for a business directory © 2011 MIT Center for Digital Business and Capgemini Consulting 3
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    EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 4 © 2011 MITCenter for Digital Business and Capgemini Consulting
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    Digital transformation (DT)– the use of technology to radically improve performance or reach of enterprises – is becoming a hot topic for companies across the globe. Executives in all industries are using digital advances such as analytics, mobility, social media and smart embedded devices – and improving their use of traditional technologies such as ERP – to change customer relationships, internal processes, and value propositions. Other executives, seeing how fast digital technology disrupted media industries in the past decade, know they need to pay attention to changes in their industries now. How can senior executives successfully lead digital transformation? While many experts urge companies to get started on the digital transformation journey, few tell how to do it. In this report we share the findings from a global study of how 157 executives in 50 large traditional companies are managing – and benefiting from – digital transformation. We will describe the elements of successful digital transformation and show how to assess your firm’s digital maturity. Our research shows that, although large traditional firms are truly different from digital entrants, many are starting to transform their businesses successfully through digital technology. Specifically, • Companies face common pressures from customers, employees and competitors to begin or speed up their digital transformation. However they are transforming at different paces with different results. • Successful digital transformation comes not from implementing new technologies but from transforming your organization to take advantage of the possibilities that new technologies provide. Major digital transformation initiatives are centered on re-envisioning customer experience, operational processes and business models. Companies are changing how functions work, redefining how functions interact, and even evolving the boundaries of the firm. • Successful DT does not happen bottom up. It must be driven from the top. • Focus on the “how” more than the “what.” The most successful transformations we have seen focus as much (or more) on how to drive change as on the detailed content of the change. A compelling transformative vision, with related engagement, governance and KPIs will allow people throughout the enterprise to identify new “whats” to meet or extend the vision. • Successful DT comes not from creating a new organization, but from reshaping the organization to take advantage of valuable existing strategic assets in new ways. • Companies can do much more to gain value from investments they have already made, even as they envision radically new ways of working. Despite the hype around innovative digital technologies, most companies still have a long way to go in their digital transformation journeys. Leadership is essential. Whether using new or traditional technologies, the key to digital transformation is re-envisioning and driving change in how the company operates. That’s a management and people challenge, not just a technology one. © 2011 MIT Center for Digital Business and Capgemini Consulting 5
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    1 THE STUDY 6 © 2011MIT Center for Digital Business and Capgemini Consulting
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    Many popular storiesof digital transformation involve digital startups or high-tech firms such as Amazon, Apple, or Google. Executives in traditional companies often find these examples hollow. Big traditional companies, with decades of history and legacy, are simply different from these newer digital entrants. Other stories focus on exciting initiatives by traditional companies, but are anecdotal and do not show how those companies implemented the change. These examples may be good triggers for other companies to take action, but they give no advice on how or whether to do so. – and benefiting from – Digital Transformation. We are working to understand how digital technology is changing the business of large leading firms. Phase 1 of this multi-year study is an exploratory investigation involving 157 executive-level interviews in 50 companies in 15 countries (see Figure 1). These companies are large, with typically $1 billion or more in annual sales. We conducted in-depth interviews to qualitatively explore the nature of the digital transformation phenomenon with real executives in real companies. To provide balanced perspectives, approximately half of the interviewees are business leaders such as CEOs, line of business managers, marketing heads, or COOs, while the other half are IT and technology leaders. With that in mind, MIT Center for Digital Business and Capgemini Consulting set out investigate the ways in which large traditional companies around the world are managing Figure 1: Interviews cover a broad range of countries and industries Transport Americas & Canada 30% Telecom, Media, and Entertainment Services 6% Retail & Food services 12% Energy, Utilities and Chemical 12% 20% 22% 54% 16% Europe Asia Pacifi c 8% Pharmaceuticals & Medical 12% Manufacturing & distribution 8% Government Financial Services © 2011 MIT Center for Digital Business and Capgemini Consulting 7
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    2 COMMON PRESSURES; DIFFERENTRESULTS 8 © 2011 MIT Center for Digital Business and Capgemini Consulting
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    2.1 Common pressuresto begin digital transformation Executives rated the pace of business compared to five years ago as 5.6 out of 7* *Scale: 1=very much slower than 5 years ago, 7=very much faster than 5 years ago Customers, too, are becoming more demanding. An airport executive described an “ever-rising tide of customer expectations” for service and convenience. For a manufacturer/ retailer, “People’s expectations have changed. They want to be more in charge. They expect that we know them more... their online behavior is developing expectations and behaviors that they apply in other contexts as well.” The executives we interviewed report feeling pressure to transform from forces inside and outside the company. Figure 2 shows that most executives expressed at least moderate pressure to change. Employees are asking why they cannot collaborate with coworkers the way they can with friends. One executive quoted younger employees as saying “Come on. I know the company’s more than 100 years old, but our IT capabilities don’t have to match the age of the company.” Other employees are incorporating their personal practices into their work lives without waiting for corporate practices to catch up. According to one CIO, “Officially iPads are prohibited by our policies. Yet 50 percent of our employees are using them at work.” Nearly every executive (72 percent) cited competitive pressures to change. This relates closely to increases in the pace of business. Respondents rated the current pace of business relative to five years ago as 5.6 on a scale from 1=very much slower to 7=very much faster. Most indicated the pace will continue to increase, leading to further pressure to transform their businesses. While several executives indicated this was “the new normal” for their Figure 2: Pressures for change* High 70% M Medium 72% M 32% H H M H Customers Competitors Employees * Percentage of companies experiencing moderate or high pressure to transform from customers, competition, or employees as mentioned by their executives. Some firms mentioned more than one pressure. © 2011 MIT Center for Digital Business and Capgemini Consulting 9
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    industries, others expressedconcern that the acceleration would not be sustainable. Executives on average rated their innovation culture at only 4.2 on a 7-point scale. Although few companies strive to be as high as seven on the scale, none of the executives felt their innovation culture was as strong as it should be. Executives rated their innovation culture as 4.2 on a 7-point scale. Some executives expressed other, less common, pressures. Globalization is a driver for seven firms. These companies have a strategic need to expand globally or are facing pressures to generate information and process synergies across their global enterprises. Executives in three firms mentioned M&A as a pressure to transform. 2.2 Different digital transformation speeds and different results A few companies in our study are using digital technologies, old and new, to truly transform their businesses. However, these companies are in the minority. Despite internal and external pressures, very few businesses are gaining the full value of technologically-enabled change, even with technologies they already own. Many companies we interviewed took on the significant effort and expense of implementing ERP, CRM 10 © 2011 MIT Center for Digital Business and Capgemini Consulting or other technology-enabled changes, but obtained only basic levels of value from the investments. They can obtain much more value by continuing the effort – envisioning new capabilities and process changes to reap larger returns from their foundational investments. Manufacturers’ ERP systems have improved process efficiency and are providing better financial data for strategic decisions, but companies have not yet retrained buyers in how to use the information in negotiating with suppliers. Retailers and other service firms are gathering detailed information on buyer behavior, but lack the analytics capabilities to truly understand the power of the data. A hospitality company is conducting experiments in mobile marketing in two different business units, and building digitallyenhanced customer service apps in another, but is not conducting a unified digital transformation of the customer experience. These companies are gaining some value from transforming parts of their businesses, but are only part of the way toward achieving the potential of digital transformation. Still others have not yet begun their digital transformation journeys. In the following sections, we will describe how firms are digitally transforming, the challenges they are facing, and the levers executives can use to drive digital transformation.
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    Case Study HOTELCO: FINDINGNEW OPPORTUNITIES FOR DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION ACROSS THE ENTERPRISE H otelCo is one of the world’s ten largest hospitality companies. The firm constantly strives to improve operational efficiencies and customer service both within and across properties. The firm’s loyalty program is the centerpiece of the company’s approach to understanding, serving, and selling to customers. HotelCo executives, who have always believed in the power of technology to improve processes and increase customer intimacy, see further opportunity for digital transformation. Opportunities exist not only in new technologies such as social media and mobile, but also in the firm’s more traditional areas like transactional IT and analytics. HotelCo is actively pursuing digital transformation in many areas and is working to innovate further. Because HotelCo experiences organizational and IT challenges common to many large global enterprises, it seeks to take a rational, well-defined approach to its digital transformation initiatives wherever possible. HotelCo has created opportunities for digital transformation in three areas: online presence, mobile customer engagement, and internal operational processes. Online: HotelCo continually evolves its online presence. It has integrated the website presence of all its properties on a common platform, enabling marketing across properties within a market. It also added new capabilities. For example, property managers using the firm’s corporate digital marketing tools can control their property content, e.g., events, independently of other properties, while not having to build and maintain their own online capabilities. Further extending online capabilities, HotelCo has begun to implement social media and mobile marketing capabilities. Employees actively monitor social media for negative information and can respond. However, organizational questions remain about how to improve the response capability as volumes continue to grow: “Who handles it? Marketing? Product support? Customer support?” In addition, HotelCo is integrating social media information onto its websites. The website allows user comments on select pages, and the firm is working to extend comments to additional pages. HotelCo is also incorporating third-party social media onto the site. For example, tripadvisor.com ratings feed directly into property web pages, despite the initial hesitation of some property managers. “First off, this conversation is happening and most of the customers are now savvy enough they’re going to tripadvisor anyway. Let’s bring the content right to our site, positive or negative. Customers see that and they say ‘OK, well this © 2011 MIT Center for Digital Business and Capgemini Consulting 11
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    is an honestassessment from people like myself….” The marketing people have found that such content is much more compelling than internally generated information. Mobile: Realizing that most customers now carry cell phones, HotelCo has made mobile a key part of its marketing strategy. The company offers multiple smartphone apps and is making preparations for a future in which more people access sites via mobile than from a personal computer. HotelCo actively engages in mobile marketing. The company realizes the customer intimacy it can achieve through mobile because customers react to messages almost instantly. SMS and WAP sites are a core part of mobile marketing because of their ubiquity. The different properties are in charge of their own mobile marketing messages, but the messages are delivered through a unified corporate-level system. The company is also experimenting with location-based services. Innovation activities that initially focused on embedded devices and RFID have been facilitated by mobile phones. For example, customers arriving at some properties can receive mobile coupons for restaurants, shows, and other services in the hotel. Customers can also receive personalized service and information from digital displays located around the properties using phones or their loyalty cards. While mobile and location-based services show promise, they have challenges. The firm is trying to balance a tradeoff between the capabilities of location-based devices and their potential intrusiveness. For example, when building a digital customer service display, HotelCo opted to ask customers to place their loyalty cards on the device rather than have the device automatically read who they are. Additional challenges are technological and organizational. The firm wants to “support experimentation by all parties, but also clearly delineate their roles and scopes.” For example, multiple groups conducting mobile experiments meet regularly to coordinate activities. And the company is starting to examine how it coordinates its use of vendors so that knowledge is not fragmented across multiple digital transformation initiatives. Internal operations: HotelCo is investigating how to incorporate emerging technologies into internal processes. Compared with the device-agnostic policy for customers, HotelCo aims to use standard devices for internal processes and to make them available only to those employees who need mobile capability for their jobs. The firm is trying to take the same measured process to implementing social media in internal processes as it does in other areas. One obstacle stems from security and cost: free platforms are not seen as secure, and the firm wants to be careful about investing large amounts of money to in license a secure platform for an uncertain goal. Another challenge is organizational: who would own the internal collaboration process? Until there is a clear internal owner and a 12 © 2011 MIT Center for Digital Business and Capgemini Consulting
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    well-defined purpose, thefirm is taking a slow approach to widespread internal use of social media instead of targeted efforts. The firm is midway through a set of initiatives aimed at rationalizing processes across the enterprise. When complete, HotelCo will have a set of shared services that are available to all properties, but which can be tailored by properties for their own use, much as the online platform is today. IT, while a significant enabler of the firm’s capabilities, remains a challenge as the company changes. For example, the loyalty database is not optimized for multi-channel interactions, making it difficult to integrate information that arrives from, or is sent via, multiple media. Another challenge is integrating information and processes from acquired companies into the firm’s core IT backbone. At HotelCo, analytics is “something we do a ton of.” Executives are proud of the firm’s ability to understand drivers of customer and operational metrics. HotelCo is now investigating how to move analytics capability further out to the edges of the company. However, executives expressed the desire to make good choices about where to apply analytics. Analytics is “absolutely a different way of thinking… we don’t need every role to do it, but we definitely want the skills in certain places. “ For example, analytics may enable the firm’s customer-facing employees to further personalize the customer experience, but executives are aiming to do it in a way that doesn’t disempower those workers. © 2011 MIT Center for Digital Business and Capgemini Consulting 13
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    Case Study ASIAN PAINTS:DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION IN INDIA A sian Paints, India’s leading manufacturer of coatings, has digitally transformed its business step by step. The firm has been able to maintain fast growth and globalize while increasing efficiency and reducing its impact on the environment. In the early 2000s, as part of an effort to reduce debt and increase internal efficiencies, the firm implemented an enterprise-wide ERP and advanced Supply Chain Management system. This helped to create an enterprise-wide platform that was the basis for further improvements in sales and customer processes. The change also liberated working capital that helped fund acquisitions in emerging markets. Asian Paints gained further efficiencies by linking subcontractors and suppliers on a B2B portal. In 2003, the firm invested in a CRM system. In 2010, Asian Paints centralized its order taking process into a single corporate call center. This change helped the company further improve operational efficiencies and sustain its growth. In customer-facing processes, the move entailed much more than just creating the call center. Retailers were encouraged to place orders through the call center, where they could receive a more consistent service level than they could through the firm’s 100 local depots. Centralized data also enabled delivery of products to large institutional customer job sites, giving the company a capability that competitors could not provide. The biggest change resulting from centralizing order taking was in the way salespeople interacted with retailers. Liberated from routine order collection, the sales team could focus on building stronger relationships. To enable a more meaningful dialogue between the sales team and each retailer, the company provided salespeople with vital customer data in the field using mobile devices. A rollout of tablet devices, which is currently underway, will further mobile-enable the sales staff. Asian Paints’ digital transformation also extended to internal production processes. High growth in paint demand creates the need to set up new manufacturing plants every three years. Given the scale and size of these plants, the firm has begun to focus on creating highly automated plants. Automation has led to greater scalability, better quality and stronger safety and environmental protections. The new plants are fully integrated from an information management perspective. Data from shop floor control systems and automated warehouses are linked seamlessly to the ERP. This has helped to further sustain the firm’s operational efficiencies. 14 © 2011 MIT Center for Digital Business and Capgemini Consulting
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    In India, AsianPaints has begun to sell services (such as a painted wall) instead of products (a can of paint). The services strategy has benefits beyond new revenues. Selling services helps to ensure that high-end products are applied properly, thereby improving customer satisfaction. Services also help the firm to get closer to the end-consumer, understand core consumer choices, and launch highend texture finishes. Additionally, having a contractor in a client’s house yields information that marketing staff can use to understand both customer preferences and potential demand. Gaining better knowledge of end-customer preferences is a high priority for the company, since its business model – operating largely through retailers – means that customer involvement has been traditionally very low. The relationship between IT and business executives has traditionally been very strong. The IT team consists of business graduates with a deep understanding of the underlying business processes. They act as internal process consultants. Governance is centralized and top down, with a strong executive-level understanding about the importance of standardization and coordination. Although business executives suggest many digital investments, IT executives originate others such as the firm’s new analytics initiative. Corporate growth and new technology demands have increased the challenges of digital governance. The firm is in the first year of a new portfolio planning process. “We have enjoyed great equity with the business because we have delivered solutions. But seeing so many projects coming at us, we felt that now we need to establish processes to match expectations and resources whilst taking on innovative projects,” says Mr. Manish Choksi, CIO and Chief of Strategy. Asian Paints’ investment in strong IT capabilities, combined with organizational and process changes intended to leverage those investments, will serve as a foundation upon which the organization can continuously envision and implement new forms of digital transformation. © 2011 MIT Center for Digital Business and Capgemini Consulting 15
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    3 THE SHAPE OFDIGITAL TRANSFORMATION 16 © 2011 MIT Center for Digital Business and Capgemini Consulting
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    The companies interviewedare moving forward with digital transformation at varying paces and experiencing varying levels of success. Some are transforming many parts of their organizations while others are still doing only the basics. Others are encountering organizational issues or other challenges that prevent them from transforming successfully. Analysis of the interviews shows clear patterns. Executives are digitally transforming three key areas of their enterprises: customer experience, operational processes and business models (see Figure 3). Within each of the three pillars, different elements are changing. These nine elements form a set of building blocks for digital transformation. Currently, no company in our sample has fully transformed all nine elements. Rather, executives are selecting among these building blocks to move forward in the manner that they believe is right for their organizations. The tenth element– digital capabilities – is an essential enabler for transformations in all areas. In this section, we explore how companies in our study are implementing each transformational building block. Subsequent sections examine adoption of four key technologies and then common Figure 3: Building blocks of the digital transformation Customer Experience Customer understanding • Analytics-based segmentation • Socially-informed knowledge Top line growth • Digitally-enhanced selling • Predictive marketing • Streamlined customer processes Customer touch points • Customer service • Cross-channel coherence • Self service Operational Process Business Model Process digitization Digitally-modified businesses • Performance improvement • New features • Product/service augmentation • Transitioning physical to digital • Digital wrappers Worker enablement New digital businesses • Working anywhere anytime • Broader and faster communication • Community knowledge sharing Performance management • Operational transparency • Data-driven decision-making • Digital products • Reshaping organizational boundaries Digital globalization • Enterprise integration • Redistributing decision authority • Shared digital services Digital Capabilities • Unified Data & Processes • Analytics Capability • Business & IT Integration • Solution Delivery © 2011 MIT Center for Digital Business and Capgemini Consulting 17
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    challenges that interferewith digital transformation. The paper concludes with a set of key levers senior executives can use to successfully transform their organizations. digital tools aimed at helping clients invest more safely. These tools, while not selling the firm’s products directly, aligned closely with the firm’s reputation for conservatism and safety. 3.1 Transforming customer experience Companies are also building new online communities to advise and build loyalty with clients in medical, real estate or financial services products. Others are building products that improve branding in lifestyle communities. A consumer sports equipment manufacturer enables individuals to publish their sport performance to communities and stay connected with other customers who have similar interests. Marketing and customer understanding Companies are starting to take advantage of previous investment in systems to gain an in-depth understanding of specific geographies and market segments. Other firms are exploring social media to understand customer satisfiers and dis-satisfiers. A mortgage executive noted “We launched a non-profit real estate community to help our customers. As an unplanned benefit this helps us to understand them better. We launched special products, such as a special loan offering for divorced people, following several customer questions.” In addition, companies are learning to promote their brands more effectively through digital media: • A medical device firm is launching a social media campaign to promote a radically new class of products in an online community of medical specialists. Executives expect awareness to grow in weeks rather than years. • A media company has teamed with product manufacturers for social media-based brand enhancement tied to in-person events. • After the 2009 economic downturn, a financial firm built a set of educational 18 © 2011 MIT Center for Digital Business and Capgemini Consulting Many firms are building analytics capability to understand customers in more detail. Some insurance firms, for example, are improving their portfolios and cost structures through analyticsbased underwriting and pricing. Other companies are conducting analyticsbased experiments to drive customer behavior. In one case, a restaurant firm is actively conducting experiments in pricing and promotion across a set of franchised stores. The experiment dynamically adjusts product prices in response to demand, weather, inventory levels, and proximity to closing time. Top-line growth Companies are using technology to enhance in-person sales conversations. Financial services firms are using tablet-based presentations instead of paper-based slide decks to make sales pitches. Some are going beyond. Insurance firms are introducing mobile tools to help sales people and customers engage in analytics-based planning. A medical device salesforce is
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    replacing in-person interactionswith digital interactions. When visiting a doctor’s office, a salesperson leaves an iPad with video and other information on new products. The aim is to get the doctor’s attention and gain a 10 minute conversation when the salesperson returns to retrieve the iPad. Better understanding helps firms to transform the sales experience. Companies are integrating customer purchasing data to provide more personalized sales and customer service or even to offer customized product packages. One executive commented “Analytics help us to segment our clients and to connect SME offerings and clients in a predictive way.” A hospitality firm engaged in locationbased marketing uses analytics to send personalized mobile coupons to customers as they near a facility and can track uptake in real time. A mortgage firm is setting up a CRM strategy to link customers to local real estate references. This system proposes new offers in real time via the internet. Other firms are using concept stores as flagships for their digital selling innovations. A mortgage company offers investors an integrated process combining real estate and bank services with external services, and showcases the overall process in a concept megastore. A bank created a concept store in a major city to innovate customer relationships and offer a different experience. Customers could connect their experiences in concept stores to social community initiatives like Facebook. Some firms try to make the life of the customer easier, simplifying their processes through a digital plug-in. A retailer automatically loads a customer’s last online shopping list into its e-commerce site. This streamlines the shopping process, allowing customers extra time to look at other products. Customers can then decide whether to use home delivery or a drive-through service with a specific pick-up time. A mortgage company also developed an integrated multi-channel experience to help investors set their realistic expectations quickly. Then, processes can cross-sell or up-sell products. Customer touch points Customer service can be enhanced significantly by digital initiatives. Fast and transparent problem resolution builds trust for customers. A bank established a twitter account to answer client complaints quickly, helping customers avoid going physically to a branch. This digital initiative also leveraged an expert community, allowing crowd sourcing with several employees and other customers. Companies with multiple channels to the customer are experiencing pressure to provide an integrated experience. A hospitality executive commented “I think consumers still respond in the same way, but consumers are now looking in so many different places that’s it’s now hard to get that message across efficiently.” Many firms, especially in retail and financial services, are making strong inroads in integrated multichannel activity. However, multichannel services require envisioning and implementing change across customer experience and internal operational processes. Many retailers now offer home shopping with the option to receive products by mail or in a store. However, problems remain as, © 2011 MIT Center for Digital Business and Capgemini Consulting 19
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    for example, oneretail executive described customers being angry that customer service representatives in a store could not access online order history. Some firms are moving beyond simple multi-channel models to enable new forms of digital strategy. A mortgage company, for example, is offering B2C offerings in one channel to complement its existing B2B offerings in another. It supplements the multichannel experience through a new type of storefront. Several companies are offering selfservice via digital tools. These tools allow the customer to save time, while saving the company money. Classic mobile apps allow bank customers to access account information or media customers to have electronic rather than paper subscriptions. Many firms are now offering customer apps to enhance customer touch points. In a hospitality firm, smart phone apps are linked to the customer’s profile, enabling integration across SMS, app, and social media efforts. A media company offers apps with geolocalization and augmented reality to help customers find interesting places to visit and provide special offers via vouchers and e-couponing. 3.2 Transforming operational processes Although transformed customer experiences are the most visible – and arguably the most exciting – aspects of transformation, firms are also realizing very strong benefits from transforming internal processes. 20 © 2011 MIT Center for Digital Business and Capgemini Consulting Digitizing operational processes Companies historically have used automation to make processes more efficient and scalable. ERP for example has enabled significant efficiency and quality gains in core transactional, financial, and supply chain processes. An insurance firm has created a central digital platform for core claim processes and deployed the model across several countries. Employee self-service systems, especially in areas like HR, are also becoming widespread. Some firms are going beyond simple automation to gain additional benefits. Automation can enable companies to refocus their people on more strategic tasks. A manufacturer has begun to centralize the HR function, allowing economies of scale through self-service while freeing HR people to “focus on enlarging manager skills, rather than counting days off.” A specialty materials company has automated many R&D processes. Automation allows researchers to focus on innovation and creativity rather than repetitive efforts. It also creates streams of data that can be useful in later data mining efforts. New technologies are extending this trend of gaining benefits beyond efficiency. A paint manufacturer has created fullyautomated plants that significantly reduce labor requirements, improve product quality and enhance environmental, health, and safety performance. An apparel company has moved to digital design processes when collaborating with manufacturing partners. Going digital eliminates most need to ship physical prototypes back and forth, reducing the product development lifecycle by 30 percent. It allows the firm to be much more agile, changing designs quickly in response to market changes.
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    Enhancing individual work Once-noveltechnologies such as mobile e-mail, collaboration tools, and video conferencing have now become the norm in many companies. Employees routinely collaborate with people whom they have never met in person, in regions they have never visited. Mobile devices allow employees to stay connected with the office at all hours and to work from home when not able to be in the office. Individual level work has, in essence, been virtualized – separating the work process from the location of the work. Some companies are starting to examine new possibilities for virtualizing individual work processes. A financial services firm rearranged its headquarters so that nobody had an assigned desk, even the CEO. Employees now work from home one or two days per week and, when they are in the office, sit near people with whom they are temporarily collaborating. Meanwhile, the firm’s collaboration and networking tools allow employees to talk with anyone in the company from wherever they are sitting. This is setting the stage for further changes related to globalization. In a broader sense, digital transformation replaces limited oneway vertical communication with broad communication channels that are both vertical and horizontal. CxOs can engage in 2-way communication quickly at scale. Employees can collaborate in ways that were previously not possible. The tools that virtualize individual work, while implemented for cost reasons, have become powerful enablers for knowledge sharing. Salespeople and front line employees, for example, are beginning to benefit from collaborative Figure 4: Digital transformation creates a virtuous cycle of knowledge sharing dge sharin owle g Kn CxOs Communication at scale Virtualization of work Remote working, Collaborative tools, Knowledge platforms, Cloud Computing Internal Crowdsourcing Employees edge sharing owl Kn © 2011 MIT Center for Digital Business and Capgemini Consulting 21
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    tools in whichthey can identify experts and get questions answered in real time. They are also increasingly gaining access to a single global view of the company’s interactions with a customer. Better strategic performance management Performance transparency was a key highlight mentioned by several executives. Executives in most companies say they are more informed when making decisions. Transactional systems give executives deeper insights into products, regions, and customers, allowing decisions to be made on real data and not on assumptions. “Instead of simply revising last year’s plan, we can use data to make better decisions about how we prioritize.” This is happening in both internal processes and customerfacing processes. The level of detail is also increasing, allowing managers to compare status across sites or reallocate product manufacturing capacity in ways they could not do before. It is also prompting additional data gathering and integration as managers start to see the value of being better informed. Beyond being better informed, digital transformation is actually changing the process of strategic decision-making. Top executives in a medical device manufacturer used the company’s existing collaboration tools to extend strategic planning sessions from 12 people to more than 300 of the firm’s top managers. This enabled better input into the process and better uptake of the vision after decisions were made. 22 © 2011 MIT Center for Digital Business and Capgemini Consulting 3.3 Transforming business models Digitally-modified businesses A media executive said: “We’ve realized that if we don’t transform the way we do business, we’re going to die. It’s not about changing the way we do technology but changing the way we do business.” It is finding ways to augment physical with digital offerings and to use digital to share content across organizational silos. A grocery firm is staying true to its traditional business, but using digital to transform a new growth business. “After two years, our e-commerce platform is bringing us 20 percent of our new clients and our traditional clients are consuming 13 percent more on average.” Other firms are building digital or service wrappers around traditional products. A national post office is creating a free digital mailbox attached to each physical mail address that companies can use as a substitute for a person’s physical mailbox. A business credit firm is developing a digital business for some credit products that requires less involvement than their traditional high-touch offerings. New digital businesses Companies are introducing digital products that complement traditional products. A sports apparel manufacturer started selling GPS and other digital devices that can track and report on a customer’s workout. Other companies are changing business models by reshaping their boundaries through digital. A mortgage company is moving from being a link in the value chain to
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    being a globalassembler of investment products. An airport authority is aiming to become the owner of a traveler’s end to end process. It will enable for travelers an integrated multichannel experience including information on airplane traffic and reservations, duty-free shopping promotions and other benefits. Digital globalization Firms are increasingly transforming from multi-national to truly global operations. Digital technology coupled with integrated information is allowing firms to gain global synergies while remaining locally responsive. They are, in the words of many executives, “becoming more centralized and decentralized at the same time.” These companies benefit from global shared services for finance, HR, and even core capabilities like manufacturing and design. Global shared services promote efficiency and reduce risk. They even promote global flexibility. One manufacturer can shift production around the globe with only a few days’ notice in response to interruptions or excess demand. For local managers, the pain of centralization is balanced by efficiency benefits and ability to focus on more strategic activities. Local managers, empowered to make decisions autonomously, also gain a broader view of the business through centralized data. They have the freedom to tailor business to their local needs, but the responsibility to act in the interests of the larger enterprise. Globalization also entails a different approach to policy: “fewer mandates from headquarters, but more guidelines.” 3.4 Digital capabilities Digital capabilities cut across all three pillars. They are a fundamental building block for transformation in customer experience, operational processes, and business models. Although CIOs and existing IT departments are leading digital initiatives across companies, they hire extra skills or implement separate units to coordinate digital transformation. Unified Data and Processes The most fundamental technology need for digital transformation is a digital platform of integrated data and processes. Large successful companies often operate in silos, each with their own systems, data definitions, and business processes. Generating a common view of customers or products can be very difficult. Without the common view, advanced approaches to customer engagement or process optimization cannot occur. The difficulty of operating without a platform becomes greater as companies engage in multi-channel operations. Many companies, for example, cannot link customers’ activity in stores or bank branches to their activity on the web or mobile. An executive in one company, echoing statements by many others, said “data integration is the biggest challenge in setting up our digital services: self-services, web-strategy and running partnerships.” Unified data and process is one reason that web-based companies are able to gain advantage through analytics and personalization much more readily than traditional firms. For many traditional companies, the first step in preparing for digital transformation © 2011 MIT Center for Digital Business and Capgemini Consulting 23
  • 24.
    Figure 5: Digitalplatform implementation* Single integrated digital platform No platform 39% 47% 14% Multiple digital platforms * Percentage of companies in each digital platform state among the 50 interviewed for the study to invest – sometimes heavily – in integrating data and processes across the enterprise. In this respect, firms that have already implemented ERP and CRM systems are a step ahead of others. Unified platforms can also help to manage the centralization/ decentralization challenge in globalization. Hospitality firm properties can use centralized platforms to deliver locally-customized information while not having to support the technology. A media company common technology platform allows the firm to share content at worldwide level, offering media content developed in one part of the world to be used easily in other markets and publishing formats. Solution delivery Companies also need the capabilities to modify their processes or build new methods onto the data and process platform. Solution delivery requires effective methods and strong skills. Most IT departments have solid development methods in place. However, those methods are often geared to well-defined requirements and mature technologies 24 © 2011 MIT Center for Digital Business and Capgemini Consulting but not to emerging digital technologies and practices. Mobile and social media, for example, often require iterative approaches to learn about what will work in the market or workplace. They also use technology that is not commonly available in enterprises. Analytics activities often require specific knowledge and temperaments that typical IT developers do not possess. Some IT departments have established special units to build emerging technology skills and methods. Others have innovation units to identify how new technologies and practices might change the business. Still others look outside the firm for help. 78 percent of the companies interviewed hire vendors to address large projects or those that require advanced technologies. Vendor partners can be very effective, but some executives expressed concern about over-reliance on vendors. A hospitality executive firm said that knowledge of key emerging technologies is spread across silos of external vendors, making integration difficult. Several executives described knowledge gaps that existed after they ended a vendor relationship.
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    Analytics capabilities Information managementand analytics were highlighted as major goals by executives across industries. Several firms echoed the statement of an executive who stated “It’s time to harvest the data and turn it into insights.” Combining integrated data with powerful analysis tools is seen as a way to gain strategic advantage over competitors. Companies are engaging in analytics at varying levels of intensity. Some are just beginning to make better use of the data available from transactional systems. They are making more-informed and better decisions and reacting more quickly to changes in their operations. Companies with integrated data are able to engage in more powerful analytics strategies. An Insurance company is able to do predictive sales, helping salespeople to target products that a specific type of customer is likely to buy. A hospitality company and a restaurant firm are using analytics to target promotions and conduct pricing experiments. A media company is using web analytics to provide real-time KPIs to customers in order to demonstrate the added-value of the firm’s products. Several insurance firms are using analytics to underwrite policies, enabling better pricing and reshaping the firms’ risk portfolios. However, all executives also mentioned that building analytics capability was difficult, requiring skills and culture change in addition to investments in information technology. Business and IT integration Digital Transformation, more than other business changes, requires strong integration between technology and business executives. Companies with a history of strained IT and business relationships are handicapped when trying to conduct digital transformation. These companies often have issues common to those that do not govern IT well, namely complex IT architectures, unintegrated data, and processes that are not well-enabled through technology. In contrast, companies with a solid IT/ business relationship are in a solid position to begin digital transformation. A bank executive stated: “IT has been brought closer to business during the last five years. It is very important to success because many of the important transformations in our business enabled by technology.” With trust and shared understanding, IT executives can help business executives meet their goals, and business executives listen when IT people suggest innovations. Where strong relationships exist, executives on both sides of the relationship are willing to be flexible in creating new governance mechanisms or digital units without feeling threatened. In most firms, digital transformation is being led by CIOs. Where the relationship is strong, this approach can be very effective. At a manufacturer, the CIO is also head of strategy. He led aggressive investments in technology that generated tremendous benefits for the firm (see case study). The CIO of a global services firm also manages the firm’s e-commerce operations and its innovation activities. Other companies place responsibility for digital in another unit or executive who works closely with the CIO. An apparel firm established a new digital division that works closely with the existing IT department. A business directory company hired a CIO to focus on transformation-related activities, working in concert with the CIO who focused on keeping the firms’ existing platform functional. © 2011 MIT Center for Digital Business and Capgemini Consulting 25
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    Case Study BNP PARIBAS:DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION IN AN INTERNATIONAL BANKING GROUP I nternational banking group BNP Paribas grew rapidly in the past decade by acquiring banks in several countries. The firm is now aiming to solidify its international position, aligning processes at global scale. The group strategy is defined around three key points: internationalization, process rationalization and maintaining trust with the customer. Crisis, regulation and technology adoption by customers and employees are pushing BNP Paribas to consider digital transformation. Executives envision digital as a way to reshape boundaries, focus on profitable business areas and streamline middle and back office processes, but BNP Paribas is only part-way through its transformation journey. The first step of the transformation has focused on reach: creating a multichannel strategy that includes the web as well as emerging technologies such as mobile and social media. BNP Paribas is today in a transition phase to reach the second step of the transformation: integrating transactions across channels and building a conversation with clients via an external CRM and analytics-based tools. BNP Paribas is currently developing a new digital platform leveraging the firms various distribution assets into multichannel processes and tools. To improve customer experience, the firm launched multiple initiatives. Mobile apps provide a substitute to using the internet website. The firm increased customer touch points via social media, providing customer service on twitter and advertising on Facebook. In 2010, BNP Paribas launched a new branch model. This Concept Store will help develop new ways of interacting and selling products to the customer via new technologies and self-service areas. The firm’s next step is to start a conversation with customers on social media. This will require building social-customer knowledge, via an external CRM, and increasing analytics capability. In 2011, BNP Paribas launched new mobile bank services in partnership with a telecom operator. This was more than a simple website substitution. It was a switch from traditional business model to a digital one, with a different cost and revenue structure. From an operational process point of view, BNP Paribas is still at the beginning of its transformation journey. The firm is focusing on security improvements and cloud solutions, which executives see as key differentiators in the industry. The objective of process rationalization will be to have end-to-end digitized processes in an integrated platform, which could generate international economies of scale. A group digital committee sponsored by general management elaborates the group digital strategy and encourages digital best practice sharing. BNP Paribas’ next digital objectives are to move into mobility, reach the next level of customer intimacy and develop a strong analytics strategy. Challenges on this road are to strengthen digital coordination at the group level and to balance digital and physical in the front-office perspective 26 © 2011 MIT Center for Digital Business and Capgemini Consulting
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    Case Study MOVING FROMSEPARATE TO INTEGRATED DIGITAL INITIATIVES IN AN APPAREL MANUFACTURER A n apparel company has built its successful business by combining good products with compelling branding and a set of high-profile celebrity relationships. Its entrepreneurial spirit has led to growth in product silos. The firm spent the past ten years improving internal processes and its connections to manufacturing partners. The firm’s entry into digital occurred in three successful but disconnected areas. In customer experience, the firm developed a customized products offering. Customers can go online or work with an advisor in a store to configure products in exactly the color schemes they wish, and then receive the products by mail. This process modified existing customer-facing and manufacturing capabilities to deliver a new customer experience. Separately, the company made forays into social media. It built communities around different categories of product, allowing customers to communicate with the company and each other via Facebook and Twitter. It also launched a few digital products meant to augment the lifestyle needs of customers, such as GPS devices for athletes. In internal operations, the product design area moved from paper-based design processes to a fully digital process. Although some designers initially experienced trouble in the transition, the process has yielded important benefits. Shipping digital designs instead of physical prototypes between headquater and suppliers has cut the product development cycle time by months. It also allows the company to adjust designs much more easily in response to manufacturing issues or changes in customer demand. In addition, the firm can use digital designs to promote new products to retailers differently, gaining attention and orders much earlier and making retailer promotion easier than was possible with a physical design process. The company has recently recognized the need to begin coordinating its digital efforts. It has created a digital division to deliver all digital efforts for the firm. This included recruiting key senior executives with experience in different aspects of digital business management, and building an innovation unit charged with identifying new customer and process approaches that cut across the firm’s traditional silos. The digital division does more than enable and capture synergies between initiatives. It also opens up new possibilities for taking the firm from a product-focused to a customer-centric approach. © 2011 MIT Center for Digital Business and Capgemini Consulting 27
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    4 DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY USAGE 28© 2011 MIT Center for Digital Business and Capgemini Consulting
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    The interviews askedhow four digital technologies – analytics, mobile, social media, and embedded devices – are being used in the enterprise. All of the executives we interviewed were aware of these technologies, although few considered themselves experts. Most could describe how the company used the technology, or how it might or might not be important in the future. Figure 6 shows how often firms in the study used each digital technology to improve customer experience and operational processes. Analytics, Mobile and Social Media are widespread in these large organizations, despite their relative newness to most industries. Customer-experience applications of social media are more common than internal uses, reflecting awareness of the fact that consumers are rapidly adopting these technologies, and well as some skepticism about how effective they will be for internal collaboration. Analytics, too, is more common in customer experience applications, reflecting organizations’ increasing efforts to target marketing activities and personalize customer experience better than in the past. Mobile is used widely in both domains. Embedded devices are still an emerging technology. Less than onefourth of companies are using these Figure 6: Applications of digital technology in customer experience and operational process Customer experience Operational process 72% 66% 62% 66% 62% 52% 24% 14% Analytics Mobile Social Media Embedded Devices Note: Percentage of firms using digital technologies in their customer experience and operational processes. © 2011 MIT Center for Digital Business and Capgemini Consulting 29
  • 30.
    devices. Most executivescommented that they did not yet see applications for the technologies. In the case of RFID, they mentioned the cost of the RFID tags or the difficulty of using them in busy, machine-filled spaces. Many executives did express interest in using embedded devices in the future. Companies varied greatly in the ways they used the four technologies. We identified three levels of usage: • Substitution is using new technology as an alternative or replacement for substantially the same function that the enterprise already performed with a different technology and process. Blackberries and iphones substitute for PCs in both internal operations (email) and customer experience (web access). Many employees use both methods depending on their needs at a point in time. Analytics, in the form of basic business intelligence tools and detailed reporting, substitutes for similar information sources available through other methods. Substitution is useful when it improves performance over, or is more convenient than, traditional methods. • Extension is significantly improving performance or functionality of Figure 7: Applications of digital technologies in the enterprises we studied Transformation Extension Substitution • Predictive promotion • Location-based marketing • Social lead generation • Smart grid devices • Insurance underwriting transformation • Remote-control mining operations • Social-enabled product development • Automated factories • Deeper customer segmentation • M-Commerce • Pharma / medical device firm physician communities • Phones as payment devices • Production/Supply chain optimization • Mobile salesforce enhancements • Internal collaboration communities • Consolidated status monitoring for medical devices • Basic reporting or BI • Simple apps • Facebook pages and ads • Cards replace passwords • Basic reporting or BI • Working anytime, anywhere, anyplace • Employee blogging, internal Facebook • Building access control Customer Experience 30 © 2011 MIT Center for Digital Business and Capgemini Consulting Operational Process
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    a process throughtechnology. A power company and a paint company provide full information to field workers on mobile devices, eliminating the need for workers to spend time in the office at the start and end of shifts. A pharma company’s social media physician community enables the company to learn about issues and opportunities by allowing doctors to talk with one another. analytics to engage in location-based marketing with its customers. Figure 7 shows examples of how companies are using the four digital technologies. Figures 8 and 9 show the extent to which each is being used to improve customer experience or internal operations. The most common usage of each technology is in substitution -- Mobile email replaces desktop email, Facebook pages and ads substitute for web. However, companies are making inroads in each technology. Roughly 30 percent of firms are engaging in extension or transformation with Mobile, Social, or Analytics. Although usage of embedded devices lags the other technologies, some companies are already extending or transforming their processes through these devices. • Transformation is fundamentally redefining a process or function through technology. A paint company uses a combination of embedded devices and analytics to create fully-automated factories that deliver higher efficiency, quality and environmental protections than manually-tended factories. A hospitality firm uses predictive Figure 8: Use of digital technologies to transform customer experience 2% 8% 14% 16% 18% 4% 28% 40% 36% 4% 22% 6% Analytics Substitution Mobile Social Media Extension Embedded Devices Transformation Note: Chart plots extent of transformation each firm is attaining in customer experience using a particular digital technology. Many companies had multiple applications of a technology. For each firm, only the most transformative usage is counted. © 2011 MIT Center for Digital Business and Capgemini Consulting 31
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    Figure 9: Useof digital technologies to transform operational processes 4% 18% 18% 36% 14% 22% 4% 36% 12% 20% 28% 8% Analytics Substitution Mobile Extension Social Media Embedded Devices Transformation Note: Chart plots extent of transformation each firm is attaining in operational processes using a particular technology. Many companies had multiple applications of a technology. For each firm, only the most transformative usage is counted. The interviews show an interesting trend toward identifying transformative opportunities that combine multiple technologies with new management practices. • Remote-control mining equipment and automated paint factories include both mobile and analytics technologies to improve production significantly. • Mobile phones are increasingly becoming seen as embedded devices 32 © 2011 MIT Center for Digital Business and Capgemini Consulting for customer-facing applications. • An apparel company aims to integrate its social and web-based marketing approaches with its digital product design capabilities and embedded devices in products to be more responsive to emerging consumer preferences. • Concept stores combine multiple technologies to test or deliver a new buying experience.
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    These types ofmulti-technology solution are signs of a maturing approach to digital transformation in enterprises. Executives are beginning to envision possibilities that cross organizational and technological silos – letting the possibilities drive technology and organization rather than the reverse. © 2011 MIT Center for Digital Business and Capgemini Consulting 33
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    5 CHALLENGES ON THEROAD TO TRANSFORMATION 34 © 2011 MIT Center for Digital Business and Capgemini Consulting
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    What is causingfirms to have difficulty starting or benefiting from digital transformation? Challenges occur in all three elements of the transformation process: Initiation, Execution, and Coordination. was astonished that none of the senior executives were aware of TripAdvisor.” Executives need not be aware of all changes in industries outside their own, but knowing major digital consumer services products such as Tripadvisor, Facebook, or eBay can be very useful fodder for envisioning how executives might change their own businesses. 5.1 Initiation challenges Lack of impetus Regulation and reputation Impetus often starts at the very top of the firm. Executives are justifiably skeptical of the benefits of emerging technologies. The experience of e-commerce taught many executives that a fast follower approach can sometimes be lower risk than a pioneering approach. However, this skepticism can result in bureaucratic investment processes that prevent the firm from engaging in useful digitallyenabled experiments and business changes. A manufacturing executive stated: “We’ve always been fairly slow in adopting technology because we more or less have the ambition of not being first ...but we have become even slower at the same time that technology development has been speeding up. So, the gap has increased.” Company performance can also slow the move to transformation. If the company is not experiencing pain, the perceived risk of change may outweigh the potential benefits in the minds of many executives. A manufacturer said “At the end of the day, we don’t want to stay on the edge of the latest trend. It’s not really our business.” An other concern issue can be lack of awareness of the opportunities or threats of digital transformation. An executive in one of the world’s largest financial companies said “When I made a presentation to the board, I Many executives, especially in healthcare and financial services, are being careful about mobile and social technologies because of security and privacy concerns. In our sample, 47 percent of companies stated a high or medium concern over regulatory impacts on their potential digital initiatives. A lost or hacked mobile device can give outsiders access to confidential data on patients or customers. This has reputational repercussions well beyond any regulatory penalties. A financial services executive said “The last thing that any of us want to do is put the reputation that we built for more than 100 years on the line because someone lost a device.” A medical executive had a similar concern: “We’ve done a good job of becoming a trusted partner to a lot of governments and customers. If we violate that trust, if we have one bad apple, you can throw the whole thing out the window very quickly.” Companies, especially in financial services, are taking a slow approach to social media for fear of regulatory sanction. For example, blogs, tweets and other messages are typically not reviewed as carefully as other corporate communications, but may be construed as advice by readers. A financial company executive said “We © 2011 MIT Center for Digital Business and Capgemini Consulting 35
  • 36.
    jumped into goingahead with Twitter and YouTube and Facebook without knowing what people are actually saying about us. Now we have started to monitor it.” While these regulatory concerns are real, they need not prevent companies from moving forward. Two financial services firms and one medical device firm are already successfully selling products and services with tablets instead of paper. Several firms have implemented tools to protect confidential information on phones and tablets or to wipe the devices in case they are lost. Nearly all of the regulated companies we interviewed are establishing policies for employee use of personally owned or mobile devices and for using social media. Many firms we interviewed are using Facebook and Twitter for brand building. Meanwhile, an insurance firm is helping agents build their presence on LinkedIn, and a medical device company plans to use Facebook as a radically new way to reach the specialists who use its products. Unclear business case Healthy skepticism or regulatory concerns are legitimate reasons to be careful when investigating new technologies. Certainly not all digital initiatives make sense for all companies (or for all employees in the company). One CIO, discussing mobile-enabled process changes, said “At the end of the day, we’re still looking at value and cost. For some folks, the most cost-effective technology is still the desktop.” However, these reasons should not prevent companies from investing in potentially valuable experiments or transformations. 36 © 2011 MIT Center for Digital Business and Capgemini Consulting Executives in our sample used a set of four methods (see Figure 10) to justify investment in digital transformation initiatives. Some initiatives can be justified in the traditional way, through quantified economic business cases. Audio and videoconferencing technologies, for example, can be justified on travel cost savings or other efficiencies, as could a financial firm’s move to a transformed office environment. Larger process transformations also can cite clear returns, such as when an apparel firm justified its move to digital design processes through cost savings and significantly shortened product development cycles. However, other investments are truly bet-your-company, do-or-die propositions, in which the financial case is one of survival. Firms facing a burning platform often make large changes without a strict financial business case. A business directory service, realizing their paper-based model was declining rapidly, brought in a new CEO to lead a radical digital transformation. An airport authority invested heavily in digital transformation when governments stated that they would withdraw 60 percent of public funding within 5 years. However, as with many innovations, digital transformation investments often have less clear business cases than these examples. Many companies considered their initial forays into Facebook or Twitter as simple experiments built with limited funding and risk to investigate the potential of the new media. Similarly, initial mobile apps or pilot experiments with mobile marketing have been scoped to limit cost and risk. These experiments are
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    Figure 10: Howcompanies justify their digital transformation investments ECONOMIC: BURNING PLATFORM: Traditional capital budgeting processes emphasizing measurable cost or revenue improvements. “bet the business” investments made in response to rapidly declining performance in the existing businesses STRATEGIC FOUNDATION INVESTMENT: LOW-RISK EXPERIMENT: initiatives undertaken to provide important organizational capabilities, usually without a quantified financial business case often funded “below the radar”, using the spending authority available to a senior executive. Other initiatives are funded as strategic foundation investments that build infrastructure and capabilities to be used elsewhere. These investments rarely go through the rigor of developing a quantified business case, but rather are undertaken as strategic bets. Collaboration tools and internal knowledge bases, for example, were often justified as relatively low cost/ low risk infrastructure investments to smooth cooperation and synergies among a distributed workforce. However, some foundation investments are larger. A manufacturing firm invested in building a shared digital division to provide capabilities and support to digital initiatives across the firm. Each new digital initiative investments structured with limited size and risk to learn about technologies, customers, or potential capabilities. would be funded on its own merits, but the initial investment to set up the shared service was seen as a strategic foundation investment. Similarly, several firms hired senior executives or content experts to get started in the analytics and social media spaces. The new leaders must financially justify their existence in the future, but the initial investment was considered as capability-building. When enabling larger transformations, executives often use a combination of approaches over time. Analytics is an interesting example. Specific customer segmentation or predictive analytics efforts can often show a business case. Marketing experiments either generate higher sales or they don’t. Insurance analytics either generate a better risk/return profile or they don’t. However, firms often require © 2011 MIT Center for Digital Business and Capgemini Consulting 37
  • 38.
    an investment ininfrastructure – integrating data, buying tools or hiring expertise – before they can start to conduct more measurable analyticbased experiments. For a restaurant firm considering analytics, the return for hiring new skills and conducting initiatives was initially unclear, but senior executives believed it was a bet worth making to understand better sales trends and start to engage in dynamic localized pricing experiments. Missing skills Regardless of how an initial investment is justified, the interviews highlighted an important point. The real value of digital transformation comes not from the initial investment, but from continuously re-envisioning how capabilities can be extended with digital technology to increase revenue, cut costs or gain other benefits. Initial investments, made with or without a financial business case, become foundational capabilities on which additional investments can be made. When it first centralized order taking and implemented an ERP system, executives at the home improvement products company did not envision the many successful business model changes they would be able to add in the future. But, to their credit, they continuously envisioned what else they could do with their digitally-enhanced foundation, and earned higher and higher returns as a result. Firms are filling gaps by hiring experts or working with vendors. Skills that are in short supply in one industry can sometimes be found in others. A restaurant executive said “We have been hiring analytics experts from other firms. We give them a chance to play a more senior role than they could in their previous employers, where their skills are more plentiful.” A medical company executive said “We missed the boat on social media. We just hired a global CMO to take care of our social media strategy.” Meanwhile, although the executive recognizes that smart embedded devices will be essential to the firm’s future product strategy “We have nobody to look into that.” A hospitality firm, aiming to limit long-term HR investment while experimenting with new technologies, is working with vendors who have the right skills and are willing to work for reduced rates to get a foot in the door. However, it is encountering knowledge integration issues as key skills are located in different vendors. 5.2 Execution challenges While a top-level impetus for transformation is important, it is often not enough. Interviewees cited three missing elements that threatened to prevent them from moving forward successfully (see Figure 11). 38 © 2011 MIT Center for Digital Business and Capgemini Consulting Analytic-based decision-making does not always come naturally to people accustomed to using “professional judgment” or other methods to make decisions. A grocery CFO lamented “We have all of the information in place, but we can’t get those guys to change the way they work.” Emerging technologies are another area where skills may be scarce internally, especially in areas such as mobility and social media. Culture issues Cultural issues can also become a bottleneck for digital transformation. A major cultural issue is related to changes in jobs due to automation or information empowerment. A
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    Figure 11: Organizationalgaps in digital transformation 77% Missing Skills 55% Culture Issues 50% Ineffective IT Note: Percentage of firms encountering gaps in skills, IT or culture as mentioned by their executives. Some firms are encountering more than one gap. grocery executive mentioned that the firm’s information-based benefits are reduced by managers who cannot think differently about how they make decisions. Other executives find that they must work to change the culture when empowering front-line workers. Executives shared that these workers, accustomed to taking orders from headquarters, needed help to adopt the idea of using new information capabilities to make autonomous decisions. Meanwhile, previouslyautonomous country managers in globalizing firms often require coaching to grow comfortable working in an environment of centralized shared services and standardized processes. One lever for change is to hire new leaders. These people, while bringing new skills, also bring new vision that helps change the culture in their areas. A business directory company, apparel company, and restaurant firm have all benefited from this approach. However, whether leaders come from inside or outside, senior executives cite a strong vision and frequent communication as essential for driving culture change. Labor relations issues are a stickier source of culture change issues. A business directory company, even in the midst of a successful digital transformation, continues to experience resistance from unions. In an airline firm, flight employees embrace digitally-enabled changes, but ground employees, fearing job cuts, are strongly resistant. These laborrelated culture issues can be overcome. Consider two airport operators from different countries. Both feel pressure to change from governments, airlines and customers. One company feels “stuck” in their environment, unable to move because of a culture that resists changes. The other operator overcame these cultural issues. It is now starting to partner with airlines to develop initiatives such as self-service drop-off, common check-in desk, and selling online airport-related (as opposed to airline-related) products to customers. © 2011 MIT Center for Digital Business and Capgemini Consulting 39
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    IT Difficulties Digital initiativesare built on a solid foundation of technology-enabled processes and data, as well as the analytics, solution delivery and relationship capabilities to create and extend that platform (see Figure 5). Information technology is a fundamental part of the firm’s digital capabilities. However, many companies find their information technology infrastructures and capabilities severely lacking. According to the head of the disability business for a major insurer, “We have through the last 50 years proliferated our IT systems and applications. We don’t retire systems. We just add on top of them, which creates a tremendous amount of expense and complexity.” Data issues are felt especially keenly in marketing. One marketing executive, echoing the sentiment from many we interviewed, said “It is very difficult to get a good understanding of the customer when customer data is spread across so many systems.” Beyond technical issues in IT, relationship issues can be difficult. A history of poor business / IT relations is a difficult foundation for the collaborative work required in digital transformation. One business executive said “IT is a mess. Their costs are not acceptable. They propose things in 9-10 months where external firms could do them in 3-9 weeks. We started offshoring our IT, and now our IT guys are trying to change.” A CIO described how he communicates about the possibilities of digital transformation, but none of his business executive peers (interviewed separately) seemed to find the discussions credible. 40 © 2011 MIT Center for Digital Business and Capgemini Consulting A strong IT/business relationship can be very helpful in transformation. The CIOs in a hospitality and medical devices firm have very strong relationships with other senior executives, enabling them to suggest and deliver important digital initiatives. A financial services firm has consolidated operations and IT under a single senior executive, enabling the firm to envision and execute process and technology changes in sync. 5.3. Governance challenges Benefiting from transformation typically requires changes in processes or decision-making that span traditional organizational or functional structures. Transformation, like any major organizational change, requires top-down effort to help employees envision a different reality, and coordination to ensure the firm moves in the right direction. 40 percent of the companies envision a radical digital transformation Incremental vision While incremental investments can be effective starting places to build digital capability, the largest benefits of digital transformation come from truly transforming activities. This requires a more radical vision – one that offers a view of a different way of working, not just a faster or more efficient one. Unless senior executives establish a
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    transformative vision ofthe future, managers in the rest of the firm will tend to locally optimize within their own spheres of authority. establish a picture of what is legitimate and help to delegitimize local behavior that detracts from a more global approach. An overarching vision can span organizational boundaries. Firms undergoing globalization are envisioning themselves as a single entity with local offices, rather than a collection of independent units. The restaurant firm has a vision in which every outlet will learn from innovations in other outlets. An airport authority is re-examining the boundaries of its business to consider whether it should take on some functions traditionally performed by airlines and vice versa. The apparel firm is starting to envision linkages between design, marketing, and operations so that each can rapidly adjust to what is learned in another area. These overarching visions More common is a vision that does not go far enough. Insurers and financial services firms are using tablets to replace paper in sales presentations, but have not yet integrated all customer information or sales tools into the new mobile or tablet format. Many companies are using video and collaboration tools to reduce travel costs, but a financial services firm and a consulting firm are building capabilities to enable flexible global collaboration among employees working either from home or an office. Marketing units are trying experiments with social media and location-based marketing, but a restaurant company conducts pricing and promotion © 2011 MIT Center for Digital Business and Capgemini Consulting 41
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    experiments in onesite and then rapidly shares the learning across the company. Overly-limited visions can dramatically affect the value obtained from each digital transformation investment. Coordination issues Many firms fail to transform because of coordination difficulties across business units or processes. Units are able to make progress in their own areas, but are unable to influence practices in other units. The paint manufacturer could not have continued to benefit from transformation without top-down coordination of internal and customer-facing processes. Others are learning this lesson. A hospitality executive mentioned “We need to start rethinking our strategy. The approach of throwing was everything out there and thinking that something is going to stick is not the way to go.” An apparel firm, after conducting separate initiatives in design, 42 © 2011 MIT Center for Digital Business and Capgemini Consulting marketing, and direct-to-consumer, is now investing in coordination. It recently created a digital division to ensure that all of its digital efforts – marketing, production, design and even digitally-enhanced products – are being coordinated. The significant investment is expected to pay strong dividends from better customer experience, stronger knowledge of rapidly-changing customer preferences, and synergies between internal functions. A further concern arises from coordination issues between new and traditional businesses or processes. This channel conflict is real, and can be very painful for managers in traditional units that lose when new businesses gain. It often must be addressed through an overarching vision. In a business directory firm, that vision was to have 80 percent of business online. In a credit firm, the digital division envisioned as small and complementary, so that it did not compete directly with the offline business.
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    Case Study CREDIT FONCIER:EVOLVING AS A VALUE CHAIN ORCHESTRATOR IN MORTGAGES F acing increasing pressure from competitors, regulatory changes, and customers, Credit Foncier decided to incorporate digital transformation into its business model. The firm, one of the top France’s largest mortgage companies, aimed to augment its strong B2B capabilities by building a B2C experience that extended well beyond its traditional boundaries. It would orchestrate the entire customer experience of buying a property. This required envisioning a whole new way of operating, and then taking steps to experiment with offerings and educate both employees and customers. A customer can go online or use a self-service kiosk in the concept “megastore” to learn how much she is qualified to borrow, or investigate what properties she is qualified to buy. The company can refer her to real estate brokers or provide financial products as part of the process. When the customer is ready to buy, she returns to the store or website to start the process of obtaining a loan. At any point, she can talk to an advisor who will help her in the process. The full experience is digitally enhanced, including color-coded maps, analytics-aided suggestions, and even a RFID-based key that the customer can use to save and retrieve her information in the store. Internally, the entire process is integrated with analytics and a CRM system connecting elements of the B2C experience into the firm’s other processes. The branch advisor can follow each customer through the process, offering help as needed. The company augments its existing assets by partnering with other firms from the long-standing web of business relationships that the firm has built in its B2B business. The company also hired new skills to augment its existing staff capabilities. The project, which was under consideration for 6 years, took 2 years to be implemented. While the megastore concept has been successful, and the company is considering opening a new store in the near future, the company’s focus remains on growing its successful B2B business. The vision for B2C is to augment existing B2B offerings and hedge against competitive pressure in the consumer mortgage space. As the concept matures, the firm will begin offering other products through the channel. © 2011 MIT Center for Digital Business and Capgemini Consulting 43
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    Case Study AIRCO: DIGITALTRANSFORMATION IN AN INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT A irCo manages operations for several of a country’s major airports. Following market evolution, the government demanded that AirCo reduces its dependency on a public subsidy that funded more than half of the firm’s operations. The challenge of converting a former government agency to a profitable company was exacerbated as economic challenges reduced air travel volumes and made airlines more aggressive in negotiating the fees they paid to AirCo. To gain new revenues, AirCo is transforming its business model. The firm’s vision is twofold: to gain efficiencies by unifying processes across airports, and to focus on serving end customers instead of only the airlines. Implementing the transformation also requires engagement to help employees adopt more business-oriented perspectives. According to executives, however, the transformation benefits from two strategic assets: the firm’s ownership of the airports (and thus control of how products and services are sold), and the employees’ collaborative culture. After unifying the management team, AirCo focused on rationalizing and integrating processes and IT infrastructure. It launched a digital transformation program owned by a CIO board that would coordinate and support the digital progress of the airports. The objective of the program is to allow the company airport to follow each customer as she moves through an airport, providing services wherever possible. Customer experience: The firm envisions increasing revenues from fliers to overcome diminishing revenues from airlines. It plans to take advantage of a major change in customers’ behaviors: travelers are increasingly their own travel agents. In this world of self-service, the company believes it can help customers to reduce the stress of going to the airport, navigating traffic, checking in, and getting to the right gate through the use of a website or mobile app. Customer apps already exist for the two biggest airports of the country, providing both the customer and the company with information about the trip. The firm supplements its digital services with information agents who roam the airport with tablets to support and guide travelers. AirCo will augment the apps with core business services like car rental, parking, and train tickets. The firm is also developing airline partnerships to provide airline tickets on the website. © 2011 MIT Center for Digital Business and Capgemini Consulting 44
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    Operational processes: The firm’sbiggest operational challenge is to have one digital strategy for all of its airports. It plans to provide every customer in every airport with the same services. The firm has started its platform consolidation and partnered with foreign airports to provide more information to travelers. It also made services such as drop-off or check-in available to the airlines, taking advantage of the interconnectivity of the firm’s digital platform. Digitization of operational processes is also improving the communication between employees. They are able to deliver a better service to the end customer. 75 percent of workers are already using mobile devices as they move through the airport. The company does not have a social media policy, but has created guidelines. It encourages employees to be active on Facebook and Twitter. The firm has also launched a collaborative community platform to understand travelers’ experiences better and to be able to adapt its services. AirCo’s digital transformation journey, currently underway, is seen as critical to helping the firm reach financial autonomy. Executives started with a clear vision that leveraged key strategic assets, hired a new CIO, and then created governance mechanisms to improve the chances of success. These leaders also started early to build digital engagement with employees to change the firm’s culture. Executives believe the firm is well positioned to implement the remaining elements of the digital transformation. © 2011 MIT Center for Digital Business and Capgemini Consulting 45
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    6 HOW CAN YOUMAKE YOUR DIGITAL JOURNEY SUCCESSFUL? © 2011 MIT Center for Digital Business and Capgemini Consulting 46
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    Successful digital transformations inour study used a common set of elements (see Figure 12). Each is a lever executives can use to initiate and drive digital transformation in their organizations. Leaders diagnose the potential value of existing corporate assets and build a transformative vision for the future. Then, they invest in skills and initiatives to make the vision a reality. Fundamental to the transformation is effective communication and governance to ensure that the firm is moving in the right direction. These elements work together in an iterative approach – constantly communicating and listening to re-envision and further implement new types of digital transformation. Senior executives drive digital transformation through an iterative three-step process: 1. Envision the digital future for your firm. 2. Invest in digital initiatives and skills. 3. Lead the change from the top. Figure 12: Digital transformation framework Transformative Digital Vision Strategic Assets Sales Force Products & Content Partnership Network Customer knowledge Point of sale & Distribution Channels Product Innovation Brand Culture Customer Experience Operational Process Business Model Customer understanding Process digitization Digitally-modified businesses Top line growth Worker enablement New Digital Businesses Customer touch points Performance management Digital Globalization Digital Governance Digital Engagement Digital Building Blocks Digital Capabilities Digital Investment SKILLS INITIATIVES Iterative Transformation Roadmap © 2011 MIT Center for Digital Business and Capgemini Consulting 47
  • 48.
    6.1. Envision thedigital future for your firm Many digital transformation initiatives fail to capture all of the value available to them because their vision is not transformative. Only the top of the company can create a compelling vision of the future and communicate it throughout the organization. Successful digital transformation does not occur bottom up. The true value of transformation often comes from seeing value across silos and then helping everyone else see that value. Identify and diagnose strategic assets Large companies survive major transitions not by radically replacing the old with the new, but rather by transforming some of their existing resources and competencies for the new environment. While this sometimes involves changing leadership or replacing assets, it usually involves reassigning or adapting assets and realigning or re-motivating employees. However, it also requires understanding when traditional assets and sources of advantage no longer provide value. Digital transformation is the same. Your company will thrive in digital transformation not by doing something completely new, but by taking advantage of your powerful capabilities to gain advantage through digitization. But that requires thoughtful diagnosis: what assets will be useful in a digitally transformed world? 48 © 2011 MIT Center for Digital Business and Capgemini Consulting Interviewees, without being asked, often identified important assets that could help or hinder their transformations. These strategic assets include: • Sales force: A strong source of customer loyalty is the set of relationships cultivated by a strong sales force. Digital initiatives can threaten to disintermediate salespeople, leading to channel conflict. However, digital transformation can also be used to enhance those relationships, such as a logistics firm that can use demand data in one part of the world to provide customers in another part of the world with forecasts of trends that will hit them soon. In addition to sales people, front line employees often are an important face to the customer, as well as having important knowledge about how business is done. • Point of sale and distribution channels: Stores are often a strong source of location-based advantage, even in a digital world. In other cases, firms with a strong warehouse and supply chain capabilities are able to use their distribution assets to disrupt the advantage of local competitors. • Products and content: Media firms find their content is a strong asset that can be reused in digital environments. Product companies often find they can build new digital business around strong products. An electronics manufacturer is building energy management solutions around its highly successful devices for the commercial buildings
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    market, and amanufacturer of expensive long-lived transportation products is building services that digitally diagnose and help to maintain those devices. • Product innovation: A high-tech materials firm has engineering capabilities that few other firms can match in its niche markets. It has the opportunity to use digital transformation to connect its engineers more closely with global manufacturers. An apparel firm has world-class fashion design talent. It uses digital technology to connect designers closer to manufacturers, speeding the design-to-market cycle time while enabling designers to change designs at will. • Partnership network: Strong partnerships can be a key lever for transformation. Networks of exclusive or trusted relationships can enable firms to combine different expertise and deliver powerful new operating models. A mortgage company, in switching from a single value chain link to a value chain orchestrator, benefited greatly from its partnership assets. Partners could have refused the idea out of fear of direct competition, but they cooperated in the project because of years of working together on many financial products and transactions. • Brand: Companies with a strong brand are able to leverage it in related offerings. Through mobile web, social media, new digital businesses and other digital initiatives these companies can extend and strengthen their brands, building additional points of contact with customers. • Customer knowledge: Across the years, companies had gathered more and more knowledge about customers. Today, some are reaching a point where they can start envisioning the next step, monetizing this relationship to launch new products, enhance customer relationships or augment sales via customer-segmentation. • Culture: Some firms are able to use culture as a powerful asset. Executives in a manufacturing firm found that the company’s historically entrepreneurial culture made digital transformation easier. Employees were willing to embrace operational changes and strategic partnerships as part of the new vision. An airport authority noted that the nation’s collegial culture made it easier to engage in transformation. Meanwhile, another airport authority found that its unionized culture restricted change. Create a transformative vision Successful digital transformation comes from envisioning new ways that digital technology improves performance and customer satisfaction, not just trying to find a use for the new technologies. As we described earlier, many companies that are doing experiments in mobile marketing, social media, or analytics find that they can be quickly stymied by organizational boundaries or by culture issues. Often the problems arise through vision focused on technology rather than different ways of operating. More often they are limited by a vision that is incremental instead of transformative. © 2011 MIT Center for Digital Business and Capgemini Consulting 49
  • 50.
    Start with anoverarching vision of the what, not the how: “customer experience transformation” not “mobile marketing” or “social media.” Then support the message through consistent communication. Each specific element of the transformation can then be placed in a context of the broader vision. This will also highlight when issues such as a single customer profile or a coordinated messaging approach may be important in reaching the vision. specific business units, while others extended across the enterprise. Another element of the vision is the relationship between new and existing businesses. Companies in the study had visions that included launching new businesses, digitally improving existing businesses, or creating an overarching vision for a transformed company. Our interviews showed visions that were internally focused, externally focused, or bridging the two. Some visions were focused on Transformation does not happen without investment. Digital transformation is no different. The investment may be large, and the 50 © 2011 MIT Center for Digital Business and Capgemini Consulting 6.2 Invest in digital initiatives and skills
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    business case maynot be completely clear. It may be a series of lowrisk experiments that lead to a larger investment. It often becomes a strategic bet that only senior executives can make. As with any investment, digital transformation requires understanding the need for investment, managing risk, and making the changes necessary to capitalize on the change. In addition, there is often tremendous value to be gained from making the most of investments you have already made. capabilities quickly while helping existing employees understand what it means to work in an analytics-driven environment. An apparel company hired two senior people who were already well-versed in social media marketing and online commerce, asking them to help the firm build skills in those areas. Find the right skills Respondents nearly universally described the difficulty of finding the right skills to manage new initiatives or to change work methods. While some were able to reassign or retrain existing employees for the new vision, most found it necessary to acquire skills from outside. Find good vendors for technical skills, but coordinate them. When investigating a new technology, it is often easier to hire vendors than to hire people. Companies can hire vendors for an emerging technology experiment, and then easily end the contract at the end of the experiment. However, coordination is still necessary or knowledge will remain stuck in vendor silos. Hire some stars. Analytics skills are becoming more plentiful, but are not distributed evenly across firms. One firm hired good analytics leaders from firms where these skills were more plentiful. The new people, who were skilled but experiencing limited upward growth in their firms, were able hit the ground running. The new hires created initial analytics While outsiders can be helpful to jumpstart the change, companies also found insiders very helpful. In particular, it was very useful to put senior insiders in roles that required coordinating across units and changing cultures. Meanwhile, other firms found that they could move junior level fastrisers into roles where their energy and resilience was essential for success. The hospitality firm moved two relatively young managers into roles in mobile marketing and digital innovation. These two people oversaw rapid experimentation in their areas using very small staffs and a set of vendors. Both reported to a much more senior executive who could manage coordination across their units and with the rest of the firm. Invest in initiatives that advance the vision Very few examples of successful digital transformation were fully planned in advance. In many cases, executives built basic capabilities for one need, and then incrementally added capabilities. A set of relatively incremental changes added up to a radical transformation. A medical device firm implemented relatively incremental digital changes to enable knowledge sharing and videoconferencing, but then used them to radically transform its strategymaking processes. An apparel firm © 2011 MIT Center for Digital Business and Capgemini Consulting 51
  • 52.
    conducted digital transformation initiativesin product design and in marketing, and is now considering initiatives to link the two. In other cases, radical changes were just the start of even more radical changes later. Executives envisioned a radical transformation of the company, invested in key initiatives, and then opportunistically made additional changes that advanced the vision. In addition to the home improvement products and directory services companies, a financial services firm is an example. Radically changing its headquarters design caused people to rethink the way they work. Instead of working in defined offices in headquarters, employees began to envision their work happening independently of location – moving desks as needed, working on mobile devices, collaborating virtually, or working from home. Then it was only a minor step to improve the way the firm collaborated globally. As a leader, build a roadmap for your initial changes. Make it clear how the initial roadmap connects to your broader vision for the company. But then be open to ideas that will build on that foundation for even more change later on. It requires judgment, but also strategic bets. Not every idea will be a winner. By promoting a strong vision of a transformed organization, you put in place a process through which smart people throughout the company can help you to implement and extend that vision in the future. But then you must be open to hearing and sponsoring those extensions. 52 © 2011 MIT Center for Digital Business and Capgemini Consulting 6.3 Lead the change from the top Top-level vision rarely translates to local-level action unless reinforced through top-down communication and governance. Consistent engagement, backed with appropriate coordination, KPIs, and incentives, make the difficult process of transformation possible. Engage the organization As in most business transformation, the role of communication is paramount in effecting change and reducing organizational resistance. People can be a much bigger obstacle to successful digital transformation than any complex technology. Successful companies in our study recognized this by communicating early their digital vision and using technology to mobilize their workforce. There are two main characteristics of communication in a digital world that are making mobilizing the workforce easier and more impactful than traditional methods: • Moving away from “cascading” information through traditional hierarchical channels toward enterprise-wide large scale communication. On top of traditional tools such as e-mail, new possibilities have been opened up with webcasts, internal social networks or PC-based video conferencing. • Moving away from a oneway “broadcasting” model of communication toward offering people in the organization the opportunity to engage in a real
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    dialogue around thetransformation. Wikis, discussion forums, blogs and so on are easy tools to support such conversations. Enterprise 2.0 tools are powerful tools to help mobilize and align the workforce towards digital objectives. Most organizations have already implemented some of these technologies but are not exploiting them to the full in their communication efforts. Successful organizations have not only created awareness through communication, but have increased the level of transparency and trust through this open dialogue. Establish digital governance Bottom-up digital transformation is rarely successful. With the right vision and leadership, opportunities from digital transformation build on each other to create new ways of working that would not have been possible earlier. However, they require © 2011 MIT Center for Digital Business and Capgemini Consulting 53
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    top-down ambition settingto put the organization in motion, coordination to turn disconnected or poorlyconsidered digital investments into true platforms for transformation and monitoring to ensure that progress is being measured and managed. One executive stated “There’s an intense focus on the transition to digital because, from the very top, the CEO has mandated that 20 percent of our sales will be digital within 5 years. To achieve that we will have to change the culture and the way the organization operates.” In a financial company, the CMO stated “Unfortunately, digital transformation was not a priority of the board a year ago. We had 2-3 percent of digital revenue. Now this has changed and we have set a challenging target of 15 percent for all divisions.” Ambitions need not be only about revenue changes. A home improvement product firm sets targets related to health, safety and environment, as well as to scrap reductions in plants. Ambition setting: Once an organization has defined its transformative vision, leaders must translate that vision into a set of ambitions and targets that signal to executives and employees “what good looks like.” In our study, some of the companies most advanced in their digital transformation had established a clear set of ambitious KPIs to drive the desired results. Figure 13: Coordination models for digital transformation Silo Initiatives and skills located in business units Central coordination BD BU 2 op op op BD BD Hub Global Senior-level Digital Officers in each BU Digital BU provides core-business solutions and support D D BU 2 BU 3 op BU 1 BU 2 op Digital BU BU 1 op Digital BU HQ HQ Digital BU provides core-business solutions and support BU 3 Digital Strategy set by a dedicated business unit B Enterprise-level coordination of locally-led digital initiatives BU 3 BU 1 op Local business units must use central resources Initiatives and skills located in business units HQ BU 3 BU 1 No enterprise-level coordination BU 2 HQ Local business units must use central resources D Budget Owner D 54 © 2011 MIT Center for Digital Business and Capgemini Consulting B BD op BD BD op Strategy & Digital roadmap op op Deliver Digital Operations
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    Coordinating mechanisms: Successful companiesin our study had strong leadership for digital initiatives. Most had to adjust their organizations to accommodate the new digital ambitions. As the CEO of a digital business unit explained “We said we’d find the balance between central and de-central by creating one central role for coordinating the digital strategy. We appointed local Chief Digital Officers (CDO) in local business units reporting to both the CEO of the business units and a CEO of an overall digital business unit. In one of our business units we moved the CEO to the position of Chief Digital Officer. It was a promotion. So the Chief Digital Officer (CDO) role is more a business role than a technology role.” We observed in our study that not all the companies use the same structure. We found four models for coordinating digital transformation (see Figure 13). Figure 14 shows that central coordination is the most commonly used model in our study, but all models are relatively common. We found no single model that clearly outperforms others. However, we do see clearly that companies lacking effective digital coordination do not get the value possible from their digital transformation initiatives. Monitoring progress through KPIs: Once the ambition is clearly stated and the organization structure is aligned, leaders need to ensure that a transparent set of metrics and KPIs are in place to constantly monitor and review progress towards that ambition. As an executive stated “To ensure alignment with our digital strategy, we monitor our progress through a transparent scorecard where everyone can see a quantified assessment of our progress and take actions against it.” Figure 14: Usage of digital coordination models in the study Hub Silo 18% 18% Global 24% 40% Central coordination Note: Percent of firms using each coordination model for their digital initiatives. © 2011 MIT Center for Digital Business and Capgemini Consulting 55
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    Case Study PRISA: DRIVINGDIGITAL TRANSFORMATION ACROSS A GLOBAL COMPANY P RISA is a Spanish-language-based global media organization with businesses spanning television, press, radio and educational publishing. As with many media organizations, PRISA was faced with a rapid transition to digital in most of its core businesses, and a move away from more traditional media. According to a senior executive, “We realized early that if we don’t transform the way we do business, we’re going to die. It’s not about changing the way we do technology but changing the way we do business.” The digital transformation was mandated from the top of the organization. The CEO, in laying out his vision of the future, demanded that the firm substantially grow its digital business from less than 1 percent to 20 percent of its sales within a span of a few years. The CEO instituted a radical change for the highly decentralized organization by creating a centralized digital unit to coordinate and assist in building digital businesses. The appointment of a global Chief Digital Officer from outside the organization, who reports directly to the CEO of the Group, was a major signal. Senior executives were appointed to the position of Chief Digital Officer in each division, coordinating with the central digital unit. The Chief Digital Officer of each division was responsible for the implementation and coordination of the digital transformation of their division. This was a very senior role that had not existed before. For example, The company’s digital transformation was designed around four key pillars: 1. Creating a federated digital organization 2. Creating the next generation digital distribution and monetization platform to ensure that all of their global assets could be shared effectively across businesses, and new products could be easily created 3. Injecting new digital skills and experience from outside the company 4. Encouraging digital experimentation (e.g. social media strategy) and innovation (e.g. crowd sourced textbooks) in the business lines. The company monitors the progress of its digital transformation through clear and transparent performance management scorecards. The digital unit is simultaneously driving innovation (an investment model), sales strategy (a P&L model) and service delivery (shared service model). 56 © 2011 MIT Center for Digital Business and Capgemini Consulting
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    Through digital, PRISAfaces cannibalization of its traditional business. The firm still has profitable traditional activities and there is a temptation to focus on retaining this current business. But the transition is being reinforced in communication from the top of the organization. For example the top management at PRISA TV talks about the evolving interactive landscape of digital video technologies, not just about the traditional set-top-box model of pay TV. Education is also moving fast. “It’s not only taking a book and making a textbook that’s digital. It’s reinventing education. It’s defending the old business through the power of digital opportunities.” PRISA is engaged in a strategic project with technology partners “to be able to deliver any type of content anytime, anywhere, any device.” This digital platform will be fully centralized and support information sharing in the group: “It will enable them to get a South African interview of Christiona Ronaldo for El Pais local, and to publish it in Spain. Of course, the system will preserve some exclusive content for a certain time.” With this digital platform, “PRISA will be able to offer a global platform to its customers with one identity -- fifty million customers’ credit cards -- and start giving them a consequent ecosystem. No other media companies have yet done that.” For Mobile, the company faces market issues as executives believe the advertising market is not well educated on the new cost structures. PRISA launched some initiatives like an app for El Pais that was recognized as the world’s #1 media-related iPad app in April 2011 (see http://mcpheters.com/2011/04/05/ imonitor™-releases-list-of-best-publication-apps/). In Social Media, the firm is doing some experiments. PRISA has been on Twitter for a couple of years and does some advertising on Facebook. The company has integrated its digital products more tightly with social media and intends to use social media information to drive content consumption. The company views social media, mobile, and video to be key drivers for future growth. PRISA also envisions several new business opportunities “So if you’re watching, for example, a soccer game of Real Madrid and you see players running around, you’re going to have technology that understands the numbers on the back of the shirts, and it can go up to the database, and then they can say ‘give me the stats on these players’ and pull them up on the right side of screen. That’s an interactive content analytics play. And maybe you can tweet about it right there.” PRISA’s transformation challenges have mainly been around cultural resistance, the differing speeds of transition in each business unit, digital skills building, and allowing for experimentation while keeping the integrity of the unified strategy. The firm’s top three challenges for the future are breaking risk aversion, streamlining the decision making process, and executing technology on pace to support all of the needed changes. Digital will also enable PRISA to expand to other European countries and to deepen its Latin American ties. © 2011 MIT Center for Digital Business and Capgemini Consulting 57
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    7 WHAT IS DIGITALTRANSFORMATION MATURITY? 58 © 2011 MIT Center for Digital Business and Capgemini Consulting
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    7.1 The Whatand The How set of elements implemented by the organization, and the resources used to do so. Together they represent, in essence, the digital intensity of the organization. The digital transformation framework has many moving parts because much is required to drive a successful digital transformation. However, executives can think about the figure in terms of two main areas (see Figure 15). The How: The outer boxes, consisting of digital vision, governance and engagement, are the ways in which leaders will drive the transformation to a successful outcome. They serve as a form of scaffolding through which leaders can ensure that the elements of the “what” are built effectively and that the organization The What: The inner boxes, consisting of strategic assets, the nine digital elements, digital capabilities, and investments, are the shape of the transformation. They are the specific Figure 15: The What and the How of Digital Transformation Transformative digital vision Strategic Assets Sales Force Partnership Network Customer knowledge Point of sale & Distribution Channels Product Innovation Brand Culture Digital Engagement Digital Building Blocks Customer Experience Operational Process Business Model Customer understanding Process digitization Digitally-modified businesses Top line growth Worker enablement New Digital Businesses Customer touch points Performance management Digital Globalization Digital Governance THE “HOW” IS THE WAY THAT SENIOR EXECUTIVES DRIVE CHANGE THROUGHOUT THE ORGANIZATION. THIS INCLUDES CREATING AND COMMUNICATING VISION, ESTABLISHING GOVERNANCE AND MEASUREMENT MECHANISMS, AND BUILDING A DIGITAL-READY CULTURE. Products & Content THE “WHAT” IS SPECIFIC SET OF DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION ELEMENTS IMPLEMENTED BY THE ORGANIZATION, INCLUDING THE STRATEGIC ASSETS AND DIGITAL INVESTMENTS THAT ARE USED TO CREATE THOSE ELEMENTS. Digital Capabilities Digital Investment SKILLS INITIATIVES Iterative Transformation Roadmap © 2011 MIT Center for Digital Business and Capgemini Consulting 59
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    has the skillsand culture to drive value from them. It is, in essence, the transformation management intensity of the organization. Together, the “what” and the “how” represent the digital maturity of an organization (see figure 14). They can be thought about as digital “Style” and “Substance.” Firms that are mature on both dimensions can drive powerful digital transformation that yields business value. Unfortunately, many firms in our study are mature at only one, or neither. 7.2 Digital maturity matrix Figure 16 shows digital maturity as a classic 2x2, highlighting four different types of approaches to driving digital transformation. Firms in the lower left are Digital Beginners. They are doing very little with advanced digital capabilities, although they have more traditional digital capabilities such as ERP, internet or e-mail. Companies may be in this quadrant by choice. For example, executives in a specialty chemicals firm believe that their B2B customers will not be interested in social media or mobile technologies, and that their engineering employees are very effective with traditional collaboration tools. However, many companies are in this quadrant by accident. They are either unaware of the possibilities of new digital technologies or are starting Figure 16: Digital maturity matrix FASHIONISTAS • Many advanced digital features (such as social, mobile) in silos • No overarching vision • Underdeveloped coordination • Digital culture may exist in silos Digital Intensity BEGINNERS • Management skeptical of the business value of advanced digital technologies • May be experimenting with advanced digital • Immature digital culture DIGIRATI • Strong overarching digital vision • Good governance • Many digital initiatives generating business value in measurable ways • Strong Digital culture CONSERVATIVES • Overarching digital vision exists, but may be underdeveloped • Few advanced digital features, though traditional digital capabilities many be mature. • Strong digital governance across silos • Taking active steps to build digital skills and culture Transformation Management Intensity 60 © 2011 MIT Center for Digital Business and Capgemini Consulting
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    some investments withouteffective transformation management in place. Firms at the top left are Digital Fashionistas. They have implemented a large amount of sexy digital “stuff.” Some of these items may be creating value, but some may not. While the digital fashion items may look good together, they may clash with other items, and they rarely generate synergies. Digital fashionistas are motivated to bring on digitallypowered change, but their digital transformation strategy is not founded on real knowledge of how to proceed. As a result, fashionistas may look good, but rarely have much substance -- in terms of business value -- behind the sizzle. We see many fashionistas in B2C businesses, where executives (especially the marketing units) believe they must move fast to keep up with the fast-moving world of consumer electronics, but do not necessarily have a clear vision for how the elements will collectively create value. Some firms are in this quadrant at the enterprise level even though digital efforts in silos may be in other quadrants. This is the case with a hospitality firm, in which marketing and customer service are both relatively mature digitally, but the two are not yet well coordinated. Firms at the bottom right are Digital Conservatives. These represent the wise old men and women of the digital world. They understand the need for a strong unifying vision and for governance and internal engagement activities to ensure prudent investment management. However, they are typically skeptical of the value of new trends, sometimes to their detriment. Digital conservatives understand where the company should be going and how to master digital challenges, but they can’t always build organizational momentum to carry out an ambitious program. As a result, though aiming to spend wisely, their careful approach may cause them to miss valuable opportunities that their more stylish competitors will pounce on. Firms at the top right are Digirati. These firms truly understand how to drive value from digital transformation. They combine a strong shared vision for transformation, careful governance and engagement, and sufficient investment in new opportunities. Through managing the “how” carefully, they develop a digital culture that can envision further changes and implement them wisely. Through managing the “what” sufficiently, they continuously advance the competitive advantage they draw from implementing digital transformation. 7.3 How to assess your digital maturity Figure 17 shows how companies in our study scored on an initial qualitative assessment of digital maturity. What is your digital maturity? Use the guidelines below to assess your company. Note that digital maturity may vary across business units, and will usually be different at the enterprise level than within silos. • Digital intensity: consider how advanced your digital capabilities are relative to competitors, or relative to rising expectations of customers and employees. How much are you investing in new technologies such as mobile, analytics and social media? Are you launching technology-enabled © 2011 MIT Center for Digital Business and Capgemini Consulting 61
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    business changes suchas locationaware marketing or analyticsinformed supply chain planning? Digital intensity also depends on your firm’s IT capabilities and the strategic relationship between IT and non-business managers, since most digital opportunities will have a significant IT component. • Transformation management intensity: consider how carefully you are envisioning and managing the firm’s move into the digital future. Is the vision well-articulated and shared? How well are you governing and coordinating digital investments? How well are you helping the organization be ready for changes? Using these guidelines, you can plot your own organization on the digital transformation maturity matrix. Then, if your company is not yet a digerati, take steps to address any weaknesses in your digital transformation capabilities or build a roadmap to maneuver up the maturity cycle. Figure 17: Distribution of digital maturity Digital Intensity FASHIONISTAS BEGINNERS DIGIRATI CONSERVATIVES Transformation Management Intensity Note: Digital maturity assessments were conducted by the research team using information from interviews. Vertical and horizontal lines represent median points for the two dimensions in the figure. 62 © 2011 MIT Center for Digital Business and Capgemini Consulting
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    Case Study PAGES JAUNES:CAPITALIZING ON DIGITAL OPPORTUNITIES H istorically the market leader in local advertising based on printed directories, Pages Jaunes began to experience a digitally-induced change in its markets. Individuals looking for business providers were increasingly shifting from paper directories to alternative digital channels in their search for information. Facing a 10 percent annual decline in business as its clients (typically SMEs) switched their advertising spend, Pages Jaunes saw little opportunity for growth in the business of printed directories. Although Pages Jaunes had some significant online activity by 2009, they needed to quickly grow their online presence to counter the decline of the printed directory business, as well as the global economic and financial turmoil. New CEO Jean-Pierre Remy convinced the organization to re-envision its business. Pages Jaunes was not just a provider of directories, but was a trusted name in the relationship business. It disseminated local information to end-users (consumers) and provided local communications services to advertisers. The firm held only a 10 percent share of its newly-envisioned market, providing scope for growth. With this new vision, the company started to identify new client needs and rapidly capture opportunities to extend its relationship brokering role from paper to the Internet. Pages Jaunes’ strategy aimed to accelerate the transformation of the business from having roughly 30 percent of its business online to 75-80 percent in 3-4 years. Elements of the transformation included: • restructuring the organization into an SME-facing Advertising group and two consumer-facing -media groups, focused on Internet & print respectively. A second CIO was recruited to lead developments around new digital technology while keeping the first CIO in charge of the existing, and still critical, IT systems. • recognizing the value of the relationships built over many years between the firm’s salesforce and its thousands of clients. The firm committed to keeping as many salespeople as possible and helping them to learn to sell the firm’s new services. • substantial effort to change the culture of an erstwhile state-owned company by recruiting new tech-savvy employees and by instituting KPIs to retain focus on attention and performance. • educating clients (SMEs) about how digital possibilities could impact their own business and drive revenues, without losing sight of that portion of its clients’ customers who continue to rely on the print channel. © 2011 MIT Center for Digital Business and Capgemini Consulting 63
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    • building contentstrength online by creating and managing websites for more than 100,000 SMEs in France and Spain. The firm is experimenting with social media possibilities, 3D applications, and focusing on various other services, including display, SEM, SEO, direct marketing, coupons, etc. to reach an increasingly online audience. • building and continuing to enhance a strong online mobile brand presence, reaching number three in the marketplace after Google and Facebook in France. This tactic allows the firm to spend less than before on driving traffic to its sites (search engine marketing). • leveraging analytics heavily to analyze audience traffic and patterns, to quantify for each advertising client the value and impact of products they purchase and to help clients optimize media spending. Pages Jaunes’ approach built on an already strong brand, a strong network of salespeople who had existing relationships with SME clients, strong investments in content and therefore the ability to partner (vs. compete) with major search engines like Bing and Google, and with major content sources like Facebook. Within two years of this strategic shift, Pages Jaunes earned €1billion from online sales at a 50 percent net margin. Online business comprised about 50-60 percent of its total business, and the firm was well-positioned to reach its goal of 75-80 percent online business within two years. 64 © 2011 MIT Center for Digital Business and Capgemini Consulting
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    CONCLUSION Digital technology, whichtransformed the media industry, is now transforming the rest of the commercial world. Companies in all industries and regions are experimenting with – and benefiting from – digital transformation. Whether it is in the way individuals work and collaborate, the way business processes are executed within and across organizational boundaries, or in the way the company understands and services customers, digital technology provides a wealth of opportunity to those willing to change their businesses to take advantage of it. • Where are the key investment areas that will maximize the contribution to the new vision? The pressure points for change are increasing from many angles. Globalization is dictating efficient integration of businesses which can only be achieved through digital processes and collaborative tools. Employees and customers are starting to demand new ways of working. As competitors and new entrants make digitally-enabled practices a reality in an industry, other firms will need to follow. 3. Lead the change from the top Faced with these challenges, what are the key steps senior executives should take to steer their organization? 1. Envision the digital future for your firm. • What assets will be valuable in a digitally-transformed business? • How can you transform customer experience? Internal operations? Your business model? • How can units work differently – and work together differently – in a more connected way? 2. Invest in digital transformation initiatives • Are you getting all of the value out of your previous technology and platform investments in ERP, analytics, or collaboration tools? If not, what is necessary to get the foundations right? • Can you de-risk some of the investments through experimentation and controlled testing? • What skills are missing in your digital transformation initiatives? Do you need to hire new executives? Retrain front-line employees? Partner with another firm to gain capabilities? • How do you communicate the vision and engage the organization on a large scale? How do you monitor engagement? • What process do you have in place to iterate the vision and strategy? • How do you coordinate investments and activities across silos? What is the best organizational model to coordinate digital initiatives in parallel to the core business? • What KPIs and metrics do you need to put in place to monitor the progress of your digital transformation towards your strategic goals? • What mechanism do you use to make the necessary adjustments? Digital transformation requires skills and influence that only senior leaders possess. Create a transformative vision that is clear and compelling to galvanize the organization. Mindfully consider what parts of your company should move -- and why, and when – to make it implementable. Build digital maturity in two dimensions to increase your chances of success. Then take actions and monitor progress to turn your vision into reality. © 2011 MIT Center for Digital Business and Capgemini Consulting 65
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    MIT Center forDigital Business and Capgemini Consulting Team members George Westerman, a research scientist in MIT Sloan’s Center for Digital Business (CDB), is also faculty chair for the MIT Sloan executive course Transforming Your Business Through Information Technology. George’s research examines the role of executive leaders in driving competitive advantage from digital technology. George is co-author of two award-winning books, The Real Business of IT: How CIOs Create and Communicate Value, and IT Risk: Turning Business Threats into Competitive Advantage. Prior to earning his Doctorate from Harvard Business School, he gained more than fifteen years of experience in innovation and technology management. [email protected] Claire Calméjane is a Managing Consultant in the Technology Transformation Practice. She worked for the last 6 years at the Paris office and is currently visiting scientist at the MIT Center for Digital Business, working with the researchers. She specializes in Digital Transformation and IT Financial Services. She graduated from a Computer Science Engineering School and holds a Master degree from HEC Paris Business School. [email protected] Didier Bonnet is a Managing Director and global head of practices at Capgemini Consulting. Didier has more than 25 years’ experience in strategy development, globalisation, internet & digital economics and business transformation for large multinational corporations and private equity firms. He has authored several research articles and is regularly quoted in the press e.g., WSJ, FT, the Economist and provides commentary for broadcasters such as the BBC, CNN, Reuters and CNBC. Didier graduated from a French Business School and holds a DPhil from Oxford University. He is based in London. [email protected] Patrick Ferraris is the Global Leader of the Technology Transformation practice within Capgemini Consulting. With over 20 years of consulting experience, Patrick has supported large multinational organizations in their digital strategy and transformation with a focus in Telecom, Media, Internet, Insurance and Transportation. He is an alumnus from M.I.T and Ecole Nationale des Ponts & Chaussées. [email protected] Andrew McAfee, a principal research scientist at MIT, studies the ways that information technology (IT) affects businesses. He coined the phrase “Enterprise 2.0;” his book on the topic was published in 2009 by Harvard Business School Press. He has also held appointments as a professor at Harvard Business School and a fellow at Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society. In 2008, he was named the 38th most influential person in IT. [email protected] 66 © 2011 MIT Center for Digital Business and Capgemini Consulting
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    Special thanks toour other research team members: Greg Gimpel and Mael Tannou. We would like also to acknowledge the valuable support of a number of colleagues who have either helped with the data collection or have contributed with their ideas and insights; they are: Emmanuel Rilhac, Vincent Leonetti, Julien Pontault, Deborah Soule, Michael Krauch, Cyril Francois, Martin Hanlon, Kieran Draper, Jerome Buvat. Last thanks to our point of contacts who facilitated access to their clients and often performed interviews: Eric Lamotte, Peter Lindell, Ravouth Keuky, Jesus Viceira Alguacil, John Varghese, Diego Mackee, David Blackwood, Benoit Pradet, Philippe David, Stanislas de Roys, Mark Hoffland, Eric Kruidhof, Ulf Holmgren, Philippe Bigot, Jari Matula, Adeline Pairault, Sebastien Blot, Sandra Lagrue and others. © 2011 MIT Center for Digital Business and Capgemini Consulting 67
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    About Capgemini Consulting CapgeminiConsulting is the Global Strategy and Transformation Consulting brand of the Capgemini group, specializing in advising and supporting organizations in transforming their business, from the development of innovative strategy through to execution, with a consistent focus on sustainable results. Capgemini Consulting proposes to leading companies and governments a fresh approach which uses innovative methods, technology and the talent of over 4,000 consultants worldwide For more information: www.capgemini-consulting.com Follow us on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/capgemini.consulting.global Follow us on Twitter: @CapgeminiConsul About the MIT Center for Digital Business Founded in 1999, the MIT Center for Digital Business (http://digital.mit.edu) joins leading companies, visionary educators, and some of the best students in the world together in inventing and understanding the business value made possible by digital technologies. We are supported entirely by corporate sponsors with whom we work in a dynamic interchange of ideas, analysis, and reflection intended to solve real problems. The Center has funded more than 50 faculty and performed more than 75 research projects focused on understanding the impact of technology on business value, and developing tools and frameworks our sponsors can use for competitive advantage. 101011010010 101011010010 101011010010