Digital business represents an evolution of how value is created, consumed and measured. Most often referred to as digital transformation – it happens at the intersection of people, technology and business. Digital business transformation occurs at the centre of feasibility, desirability and viability, and within the context of the infrastructure, business culture and type of interaction.
Irrespective of whether you are optimising a business process or innovating, in order to engage with new market segments, the approach, framework and methodology should be the same.
Best practice digital transformation enables you to rewire, redefine, or completely reimagine your business.
The Forge Digital Foundry has been designed to enable you to undertake three distinct types of digital business transformation.
As enterprises leverage serverless computing and make the move to the cloud, the transformation of your digital infrastructure means connecting to other cloud-based systems. This is the integration with a range of sensors, devices and things (Internet of Things) and ways to leverage information, Artificial Intelligence, and Machine Learning across a range of locations and operating environments. The Digital Foundry is designed to enable your digital infrastructure transformation, in a robust, scalable and innovative way.
Digital Business Applications (Apps) that augment and assist your people, processes and customer interaction, require an approach that leverages existing platforms, and builds your digital intelligence capability. The Digital Foundry enables you to create, deploy and improve intelligent application across your business.
Access enablement services to realise your digital ambitions - from modernisation and optimisation, to operational practice improvement, to innovation across your enterprise.
Using a platform-thinking and ecosystem approach to digital transformation, the Digital Foundry enables your enterprise to use interdisciplinary capabilities, appropriate industry knowledge and transform into a digital business platform.
According to Thomas Siebel, McKinsey contributor and CEO of C3 IoT:
“Digital transformation is about sweeping change. It changes everything about how products are designed, manufactured, sold, delivered, and serviced — and it forces CEOs to rethink how companies execute, with new business processes, management practices, and information systems, as well as everything about the nature of customer relationships.”
Evolving into a digital business affects all aspects of your enterprise and therefore requires a different mindset and approach to problem solving, in order to create valuable digital business outcomes.
At the core of a digital business model is the concept of evolving into a digitally intelligent business that embraces a mode of operation which is constantly sensing, understanding and responding - in much the same way as any organic system does.
In this model, enterprise value is created using the systems or platforms that have been built up to support Customers, leverage Things, access Partners and empower your People. Digital Business leverages these components to extract digital intelligence that can then be used automate decision making, processes, and interaction in a meaningful way.
Leveraging and transforming these platforms enables your enterprise to create new forms of value as well as competitive differentiation.
The Digital Foundry enables you to embrace a platform-thinking approach to building a more Digitally-Intelligent Business.
When we talk about “platforms” in Information Technology circles, it tends to centre around a stack of software components that typically sit in the cloud. However, the rise of platform businesses such as Uber, AirBnB, and Xero, along with others such as C3 IoT and GE Predix, have redefined what a platform represents for both consumers and supplier partners of that platform business. Each party and system forms part of an information and resource ecosystem that forms a business platform to achieve some form of digital business outcome.
Platforms enable value creation via digital means and span many systems, both internal and external. A platform-thinking approach, is built around a business model that leverages digital capabilities that the platform delivers, from a variety of systems, both within the domain of your enterprise, as well as that of your ecosystem partners.
Applying a platforming approach to building your business means that you can leverage comparatively short-term enablement projects and add longer-term value, as this will enable you to transform into an intelligent digital business platform.
Platforms and ecosystems go hand-in-glove. One enables the other symbiotically. In order to leverage the value platforms contain, there are a range of interdisciplinary services, capabilities, and industry-expertise that you want to work with – in order to co-create valuable digital business outcomes.
Applying a methodology in a flexible fashion - that leverages design thinking principles, agile practice, as well as tried-and-true digital consultancy toolsets - means that the Digital Foundry can be applied as needed to your particular digital transformation requirement.
This flexibility means that regardless of the size, complexity or breadth of the digital initiative, the methods applied are consistent and leverage the most appropriate platforms and ecosystem partners to deliver fit-for-purpose digital transformation outcomes.
The underlying reason why you are undertaking a digital initiative drives what is the optimal way to achieve your stated goals. Typically, there is a spectrum somewhere between optimising or innovating that constrains what is possible. With the Digital Foundry, time is invested at the beginning to identify the dynamic, in order to make sure a fit-for-purpose outcome is achieved.
The special ingredient that differentiates the Digital Foundry is the use of platforming (or platform-thinking) combined with an ecosystem approach. The underlying assumptions in these two concepts enable you to develop your enterprise’s Digital Intelligence Quotient.
There are 3 main categories of business outcomes in any optimisation or process improvement initiative:
In a digital transformation initiative you are looking to build your Digital Intelligence quotient across all these areas – and evolve systems, interaction and processes into truly smart commercial endeavour.
Depending on the category of your needs to rewire, redefine or reimagine - there are three pathways to solving your business challenge.
For instance, if you are wanting to implement some piece of technology then, in all likelihood, commissioning a business enablement services pathway will yield the right result, in the right way for your needs. Whereas, if you are wanting to improve your enterprise's deployment and use of business applications, then a solutioning and intelligent systems pathway is likely to yield the best result.
Similarly, effecting innovation requires an interdisciplinary approach which leverages a combination of management consulting methods, design thinking and digital methods to inform the architecting and delivery of a digital initiative.
The Digital Foundry approach, framework and methodology enables you to do any one of these things efficiently and effectively.
When deploying a point solution or digital business platform, you want to leverage deep industry experience and proven methods to deploy applications with confidence. We work with you to help architect and select the best-of-breed toolsets, as well as access the right ecosystem partners to transform your digital infrastructure.
Address more complex, cross-functional and multidisciplinary requirements to evolve customer, supplier, and employee interactions into an intelligent system. Using prebuilt and tested platform-based componentry enables you to shorten time to delivery and scale once proven.
Innovate, optimise and modernise by leveraging a range of management consulting, design thinking and digital methods. This holistic approach enables your enterprise to embrace the right set of methods, based on the organisation's appetite for innovation. The most cited reason for failure in digital transformation is not getting stakeholder alignment and cultural inertia. Addressing these challenges at the beginning is key to embracing new business models and strategic DX initiatives.
Learn more about how these organisations used a Digital Foundry approach to transform services.
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The competitive forces in today’s marketplace are a combination of exponential technological change and the need to adapt to dramatic global events, such as a pandemic or economic shock . This means that commercial competition is not necessarily coming from within your industry. Entirely new business models and the effects of natural disasters are starting to represent a more significant threat than that of your traditional competitors.
Consider the taxi business in New York where the cost of a taxi medallion – the means by which you could operate a yellow cab in the city - rose to over $1million, making it inaccessible to your average operator.
Along came an upstart digital platform provider called Uber. At first, it didn't represent a threat, but their unique digital business model has totally transformed the ride-hailing and public transport industry, as well as the labour supply for the taxi industry. Taxi companies have been forced to improve their digital operational model with ride-hailing apps and new forms of payment.
The long-term sustainability of your enterprise is predicated on the adoption of a Digital Business Transformation and Digital Intelligence approach.
Adopting a platform mindset, that leverages a digital business model, may be the key to stemming upstart competitors, as well as the impact of exponential change on your long-term viability as an industry.
The impetus for your digital initiative represents an opportunity to build your enterprise’s Digital Intelligence Quotient.
The Digital Foundry enables you to take even basic business improvement projects to the next level by systematically adopting a Digital Business Transformation mindset to the delivery of business outcomes.
Digital Enablement from Forge brings together the right platforms with the right capability using an ecosystem of business, industry and technical partners. That's how we support you to become a true digital business
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