Digital is not a threat, but an opportunity to create new interfaces, enablers, connections and accountability to better serve humans across the business.
- Interfaces: Digital innovation is rapidly creating new interfaces to a host of experiences. Typing text and clicking boxes as navigation are increasingly being replaced by new on-ramps, such as voice recognition and the power of natural language processing. Facial recognition now removes friction in personal devices as we are authenticated to a new generation of mobile technology. And, virtual reality and augmented reality are finding new use cases within digital experiences to allow a different, more engaging form of interaction.
- Enablers: The human experience is increasingly being complemented by a host of technologies that allow a differentiated level of sheer process capability. Intelligent process automation is transforming how different workflows and processes get accomplished between people and technology – not to replace humans, but to enhance and elevate what they do. The spectrum of intelligent automation ranges from optimizing manual processes, to enabling self-service models, to automating decisions, to using artificial intelligence for true cognitive automation.
- Connections: Digital, by definition, is about the connections it creates – across people, data, and experiences. Business have the opportunity to embrace the connections fostered through digital technology to create and capture more value. A new generation of enterprise platforms, data analytics, and cloud solutions allow us to draw connections – as humans – across things that could not be connected before like the physical-digital divide, to drive insights and ideally action in faster cycles than ever before. But again, the technology platforms are not the most profound challenge – the key is to navigate innovation around the humans and workflows in the organization so they can use those new connections to drive value creation.
- Accountability: Innovation across the digital landscape also creates new obligations around accountability – to ensure that more quickly flowing data and technology respects security and does not breach trust – with consumers and businesses. Cybersecurity is no longer an esoteric luxury – it is a mandate to move faster, but safely. Blockchain is another fast emerging digital capability that speaks to the opportunity to secure transactions and exchanges of data. While technology enables new capabilities, the accountability is human.
Fundamental transformation
Transformation requires the right architecture of digital strategy – putting humans at the core – across five dimensions: strategy, innovation, experience, automation and trust. With these five elements in focus and with a consensus that digital strategy is fundamentally about business strategy, we can begin to transform the human experiences we create, the way we invest in differentiated assets, our ability to drive profitability, and ultimately our future business model. And, driving success demands us to keenly focus on the pace of change.
Given the totality of the mandate, we must battle the tension between incrementalism and wholesale change, honoring the duality of the businesses we are in and the ones we will be in as industries continue to evolve.