For the past two years, we’ve been asking executives: Where is your company in its digital journey, and where do you want to go?
Roundtable discussions with 175 senior executives around the globe and a survey of more than 1,500 senior executives from over 90 countries helped form a picture of today’s digitally mature company. However, it’s one thing to know where you aspire to be, and another to understand how to get there. In this article, the second in a three-part series, we dive into the challenges these leaders confronted and strategies for how to address them.
Organizational change is never easy, but our roundtable discussions made clear that achieving digital maturity can be an especially arduous journey, even for digital-first companies. While the COVID-19 pandemic has made digital transformation an even more urgent need, companies must also morph iteratively to keep up with the speed of emerging technologies. It’s a process of continuous learning and pivoting to adapt to an evolving competitive landscape.
Despite the recognition by participants that speed is critical, they reported that digital transformation takes significant financial investment and time. Of those who reported making significant progress on their journey, 60 per cent had been at it for at least five years. In calculating the resources, financial and otherwise, necessary for change, participants emphasized the need to plan for continual upgrading of technology, organizational capabilities, and talent.
With these dueling considerations in mind, we distilled our research findings into seven guiding principles for digital transformations at any stage—nascent, progressing, or stalled
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