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New roles that are likely to come up soon include digital strategist, digital marketing leader and digital business unit leader.
Digital business should not be considered an IT program and should instead become an enterprise mindset and lingua franca, says Gartner.
Here are the steps that will enable CIOs to build a successful digital enterprise.
1. Create the right mindset and shared understanding
Digital business is not just about expanding the use of technology. Digital business leaders must think about technology in a fundamentally different way than in the past. It is not an enabler to be applied to what the business wants to do but a source of innovation and opportunity for what the business could do.
Digital business is not synonymous with IT. It is about revenue, value, markets and customers. It is outward-focused. It is a metaphorical combination of front office, top line and downstage compared with back office, bottom line and backstage.
2. Put the right leaders in place
The fast-moving digital world is exposing gaps in digital leadership, especially with regard to front office disciplines (those related to the customer experience) and head-office disciplines (those related to enterprise strategy). Three types of digital business leader have emerged to fill these leadership gaps:
- The digital strategist
- The digital marketing leader
- The digital business unit leader
"These are roles and not necessarily titles," said Lee Weldon, research director at Gartner. These roles are likely to be around for the next five to 10 years, but are really just interim positions.
3. Launch a digital Business Center of Excellence
Create a digital business center of excellence (COE) to provide input, advice and opportunities for the collaborative formation of a digital strategy and the collaborative advice, innovations and capabilities needed for execution.
"Start by accessing digital opportunities," said McGee. "Examine your strengths, weaknesses and potential opportunities and identify new technologies and how they might pose a potential threat.
4. Formulate a digital strategy to respond to opportunities, threats
Once the necessity of a digital strategy has been established, the following five elements must be addressed:
New digitally enabled business models — New digitally enabled business models afford new sources of revenue and disruptive competitive advantage for some period of time.
The product and service portfolio — In an increasingly digital world, products and services can be virtual, with no physical presence.
Information as an asset — Information, and its effective use, has become a strategic asset and a competitive advantage to the digital businesses best able to exploit it.
Technology — In the digital enterprise, mobile devices and BYOD are becoming more commonplace, cloud computing and cloud-based services of all kinds are proliferating, and data of all types is exploding. As a result, evolving and implementing an effective technology strategy are more complex than ever before.
Content, Media and Channels — A successful digital business strategy critically depends on understanding customers' preferences for channels, the segmentation, and the possibilities associated with each instance.
5. Find, develop and acquire digital business skills, roles
Digital business combines the expertise, skills and roles found not just in IT, but across the enterprise. Digital business is not an IT program but an enterprise mindset. While digital business has roots in digital technology, it is ultimately about business.
6. Create new digital business capabilities
With the expectation that digital business expertise will spread around businesses within two or three years, but the acknowledgment by many that their workforce is unprepared and inadequate, organizations will need to explore the kind of disciplines needed to drive digital business initiatives.
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