According to Gartner, digital business incompetence will cause a quarter of businesses to lose competitive ranking by 2017. The forecast is based on a global study conducted by the research firm in the second quarter of 2013. The study titled, ?Talent on the Digital Frontier? aimed at identifying the role of digital strategy determining the success of a company.
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The survey results show that about ninety per cent of the respondents believe that competition for talent will make or break digital business success. Diane Morello, managing vice-president, Gartner, says, ?The next decade will see companies moving beyond the notion of using technology to automate businesses and towards positioning technology as revenue builder, market maker and customer finder. Digital business will introduce new business models, cause industries to be ?digitally remastered? and change the way that businesses put their human resources to work.?
About 50 per cent of the participants in the study stated that digital business strategy either is their business strategy or is at least an integral part of the company?s overall business strategy. Majority of those surveyed are of the opinion that a digital business strategy creates value and revenue from digital assets. It goes beyond process automation to transform processes, business models and customer experience by leveraging the pervasive digital connections between systems, people, places and things.
By and large, digital business has become a common and unifying tool for people whose native languages, occupation and organisational cultures are different from each other. In order to rollout a digital business strategy, Gartner recommends that companies should begin by identifying key strategy players and possessors of technology and business expertise both within and outside the enterprise segment and engaging them to launch a digital business community. This practice will help companies enrich cross-business understanding. Further, chief information officers (CIOs), who learn to coordinate talent across multiple employment models and channels will be well-placed to take advantage of global ecosystems to build digital expertise.
According to Morello, demand is growing for insight into digital business, particularly among CIOs who believe that their companies may be falling behind new business models and competitive opportunities. Such concerns are justified and going forward, digital business will concentrate almost exclusively on new sources of revenue derived from new products, services, channels and information for new customers and constituencies.?
Morello adds, ?Companies will struggle to meet their revenue targets if CIOs and senior executives ignore the cultural and organisational challenges that accompany the adoption of digital strategy.?
The research firm recommends that CIOs should work closely with human resource executives to redesign the learning programs required to build digital business expertise. The focus should be on hiring, developing and deploying versatile and multi disciplined teams of people. Besides, once teams are hired, the organisation should promote employee engagement as doing so will make the company more attractive to prospective employees and increase talent retention rates with the company?s shift towards a digital strategy.
