10 learnings from 1,000+ digital transformations: #2 Start with Dreams and Details

Microsoft has been on a fascinating journey as we’ve begun to build out “Microsoft Digital” over the last 22 months. This post is the second of our Top 10 learnings on the transformational journey to becoming a digital business – a journey which has seen us partner with 1,000+ companies, who are looking to re-invent themselves for the modern, digital age.

Missed Learning #1? Read "Every company is a software company."

Learning #2: Digital transformation starts with “dreams and details”

My inspiration for the words “dreams and details” comes from a keynote presentation by Jim Hagemann Snabe, as well as his recent book of the same name. For me, Jim’s concept perfectly describes the foundation for every company’s digital transformation.

Just about every great company is founded on a good deal of imagination. But rapidly accelerating progress in technology has massively reduced the shelf life of even great ideas. The period of stability between industry disruptions is shrinking fast, yet companies atrophy as the world changes around them. It requires more than imagination to stay relevant – it requires constant re-imagination. A dream.

To survive digital disruption, the World Economic Forum believes “incumbent companies must re-tool and re-think every element of their business.” Sunk investments must give way to innovation and technology that will spark new opportunities where once there were only barriers. Opportunities like the falling cost and increasing capabilities of technology can open up new avenues, and can bring even more fundamental change to the way people live and work.

Digital dreams provide the anchor. The details then provide the roadmap of initiatives that accrue to those dreams. They provide the framework around which to organize, prioritize, and constantly calibrate. Thinking through the details of a digital dream can often lead to interesting new revenue streams not apparent at the outset.

For instance, Société Générale one of the largest banks in France, has been in the auto leasing business for decades through its subsidiary ALD Automotive – managing over 1.4 million vehicles across 48 countries. Given the rapidly changing landscape of commuter transportation, new challenges follow. What if auto leasing customers need to park at commuter stations and take public transport? Can a driver access interchangeable fleet resources? How do they accommodate customers as they travel to other cities? 

Société Générale partnered with Microsoft to re-imagine a new auto leasing customer experience as cities and urban living evolve. With digital advisory services, AI/machine learning capabilities, Azure and IoT devices, we are partnering to realize a range of solutions like car-sharing strategies, bundled mobility services, flexible payment options and digital telematics.

But “Re-imagining” is easier said than done. And it's often constrained by current business success, but we see a few simple ways to break through...

1/ Start with envisioning the “Art of the Possible.” Invest time in creating your dream and identifying your breakthroughs through facilitated workshops. This is an area where we have significantly scaled up our digital advisory capability to partner with our customers.

2/ Create the right environment for unfettered thinking through an “inclusive design” process that bring together a diversity of talent from different backgrounds and experiences, to industries and thinking. Remember, as I shared in Learning #1, finding the right opportunity to harness, or the right problem to solve for, is much harder than solving a hard problem!

3/ Think of the right framework to translate your dream into details. At Microsoft, we use four key pillars to guide the digital transformation journey of our customers: Engaging customers; Empowering employees; Optimizing operations; and Transforming products and business models.

4/ Use a good algorithm to prioritize and constantly calibrate the details into a living digital roadmap. We use a "Digital Maturity Model" which constantly learns and helps assess digital maturity relative to each company's vision and their industry peers.

5/ Finally, get started!

For Carl Zeiss AG, a 170-year old global technology leader in optics and optoelectronics, this meant finding a way to empower their employees through a “zero footprint” modern workplace powered by Azure and Office 365. For a company steeped in photography, Carl Zeiss AG understood the necessity of moving fast to capture the moment.

“Speed is the new business currency. Today, it’s important to be agile, fast…” -Matthias Feldmann, Head of Enterprise Workplace at Carl Zeiss AG

But what about a completely different setting? Like financial management?

For Grant Thornton, the world's sixth largest professional services network of independent accounting and consulting member firms, it meant optimizing their operations. The dream? Fundamentally redefining the business process of auditing. As the first step towards the details, Microsoft worked with them to replace a legacy system with a custom, centralized, cloud-based audit application on the Azure platform backed with analytics and a global CRM solution to help them better reach their clients.

Digital transformation is a journey. Immediately begin with micro-revolutions.

Once you create the roadmap of details, it's important to just get started. A key tenet of digital transformation is quick actions - I call them "micro-revolutions". Each action can have trajectory-altering impact. For instance, creating a digital engagement platform for your customers can allow you to gather data; which could help develop new insights around customer purchasing patterns; which could then lead to entirely new lines of revenue.

In Learning #3, I’ll delve a little deeper into starting small with micro-revolutions and a few great examples of companies who have just done that.

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For More Information:

·     Learning #1? Read "Every company is a software company."

·     Microsoft Digital Transformation

·     Grant Thornton

·     Société Générale

·     Carl Zeiss AG