The Two Parts
Much has been written and spoken about the making of a digital enterprise. It is now well understood that the digital enterprise is not only about technology but it is also about identifying areas for innovation, creating new business processes, and in many cases, creating new business architectures and new business models. Converging technologies make these endeavors possible. Even though it might seem to be the preponderant element, technology alone wouldn’t help in realizing the dream of the digital enterprise.
What is/are the missing element/s? It is hard to call it by one any name, but it is a motley set of capabilities that really determine the chances of success in creating the digital enterprise. This set includes things as diverse as organization culture, mindset towards innovation, ability to understand customer behavior, organization structure, and many more. Call it the ‘creative’ part of the organization. Taken together with technology, it forms one whole. It is like the yin and yang, the body and the mind, or the left brain and the right brain.
Enterprises need to understand this dichotomous aspect to be able to transform themselves into digital enterprises. In reality, mastering the creative side of the organization is the bigger challenge. Technology and capabilities in technology can be sourced externally most of the time, but the creative aspects have to be nurtured internally. For example, the creative aspect could mean devising a new approach for customers to co-create products or services in a hyper-customization mode and the technology used to deliver this new approach could be procured from a technology vendor.
The impact of this duality is so telling that even technology service providers are grappling with their own set of challenges. I met a leading global IT services vendor who claimed to offer digital transformation services. The vendor had acquired capabilities in digital marketing, customer experience management, consulting by buying out various specialist companies. But when they set out to sell their services in the market, various incompatibilities between the technical part of the organization and the creative part of the organization arose. The vendor pointed out that such incompatibility issues also existed within their client organizations so much so that it became a four-way problem!
CIOs would often find themselves bang in the middle of this turmoil. Yet, CIOs are the most suited to play the bridge between the technical and creative sides of the organization. The challenge is huge, but the rewards are handsome. Ed Nair Editor-at-large 6