Analytic Value Chains

The promise of rewards through painful transformation initiatives have been the prized carrot on a very long stick[1].  And many companies have tried and some have succeeded.  What’s interesting are the driving motives fostering those behavioural changes.  And where some would like us to believe that adopting vision without any boundaries inspires our employees to achieve the necessary missions, some could perceive this to be rather perilous journey.
 
Organizations seeking to enable a digital transformation have been encouraged to radicalize change by pretending the resistance away.  This make me question the expected value of that vacuum.  And it is a vacuum, because leadership must provide directionality if it intends to complete its envisioning commitment. 
Instead honor and respect that the simple fact that it is indeed a perilous journey that cannot be done alone.  If it is one thing I hoped that we have learned by now, a team approach is experientially more successful over individual contributions.  So why not apply this to corporate transformations?
Change OfficerA digital transformation affects every executive so naturally appointing one to be accountable to the finished initiative is a sensible if not prudent step.  Naturally this person will need to provide instrumentation for the to-be strategy.  This can take many forms, and many do begin with a form of enterprise performance management.  Which then transforms the current operational metrics into the desired state. 
 
That’s what we’ve been lead to be believe so far at any rate and this does explain the sudden proliferation of “Digital Officer” roles popping up at many organizations.  But this imposes the burden of change on that role and the requirement to integrate into the past, or the current operations.  Change to a new operating model cannot occur without understanding the current.  But why does the responsibility rest with the target state?
 
Leverage change, both internally and externally, through a change officer.  Have that officer appointed as a transitional role with the sole responsibility and accountability of mandating that change.  And empower the appointed officers with the directionality they need.
 
Against that backdrop, here’s our list of the Top 5 RDI Digital Issues:

1. People – moving towards a data centric environment we must remember that people are always involved in each step.  And yes staffing, training, reward and recognition programs are key, but humanizing the transition and management processes themselves are vital.  This is often left as the last step, and too often forgotten or neglected.  Learn how to build your teams before you start your initiative.
2. Digital Market Adoption – the ability to combine existing brick and mortar products with digital services that returns to the original organization can define a market.  This market or eco-system provides the necessary growth catalysts to increase adoption rates of existing products by leveraging digital channels to increase market or wallet share.
3. Decision Automation & Analytics – a defined value chain in a digital market must be fully automated and rest soley on management decision criteria.  The criteria will drive the information requirements and can leverage components of the organization’s secret sauce to emphasize strategic initiatives.
4. Information Credibility – focus on credibility of results and mandate judicious selection of supporting data to justify decisions.  Process repeatability is critical and making decisions on hunches or guesses is considered a substantial setback.  This is likely the most difficult and awkward as it either relies on transformed instrumentation based the on current operating model or a departure from an idealized state.  Either will need heavy involvement from the change officer and commitment from all parties.
5. Expected Value – measure directionality, and yes this can be achieved with reasonable operating guidelines and no this should not require an advanced degree in mathematics.  This is the critical component to measuring of and providing the instrumentation for ongoing navigational changes.  As we continue to learn, we need to embrace these learnings into the change fabric already woven.

 
Empower your leadership team and drive the change innovation at your company.  Learn more at Refined Digital Insight
 
Martin
 
[1] http://www.forbes.com/sites/oracle/2016/01/13/the-rise-of-the-digital-cfo-the-top-5-strategic-finance-issues-for-2016/#251a2fa7437a29f13266437a