Digital business incompetence is expected to cause a
quarter of businesses to lose competitive ranking by 2017, according
to Gartner.. Gartner has conducted a survey of 151 participants who
were intimately involved in making digital business strategy
decisions or in locating, developing and acquiring talent for those
digital business strategy endeavors. Ninety percent of respondents
thought that competition for talent will make or break digital
business success.
"The next decade will move beyond the notion of
using technology to automate businesses and toward positioning
technology as revenue builder, market maker and customer finder,"
said Diane Morello, managing vice president at Gartner. "When
companies have those targets in mind, digital business becomes real.
The impact of digital business will be undeniable: It will introduce
new business models, cause industries to be 'digitally remastered'
and change the way that businesses put great minds to work.
"Few things have jumped into the consciousness
of business executives as quickly as digital business,"
continued Ms. Morello. "In our recent Talent on the Digital
Frontier survey, roughly one in two participants say that their
digital business strategy either is their business strategy or is at
least an integrated part of that business strategy."
According to Morello, 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 exploiting the pervasive digital connections
between systems, people, places and things.
Digital business has rapidly become a lingua franca
of modern business, a common and unifying language across people
whose native languages — in the modern age, the languages of
organizations, companies, cultures and occupations — are different.
To jump-start digital business activity, Gartner
recommends identifying key strategy players and possessors of
technology and business expertise both inside and outside the
enterprise and engaging them to launch a digital business community
of practice to enrich cross-business understanding. CIOs who learn to
orchestrate talent across multiple employment models and channels can
take advantage of global ecosystems to build digital expertise
quickly.
"Demand is growing for insight into digital
business, particularly among CEOs and CIOs who fear that their
companies may be falling behind new business models and competitive
opportunities," said Ms. Morello. "Their concern is
justified. Digital business will concentrate almost exclusively on
new sources of revenue derived from new products, services, channels
and information for new customers and constituencies. On top of the
expectation that digital business expertise will spread around
businesses within two or three years, other indicators suggest that
digital business represents not an extension of the past, but rather,
a different trajectory. Revenue ambitions will go unmet if CIOs and
senior executives ignore the cultural and organizational challenges
that accompany digital business."
The world of digital business does more than pose
challenges for CIOs and other executives. It also opens opportunities
to use digital technology to reach beyond organizational boundaries,
to assemble problem-solving expertise from around the world, to weave
a fabric of knowledge and expertise across communities of practice,
and to understand and exploit new models of work. Notably, the quest
for digital business expertise provides an undeniable opportunity for
CIOs and HR executives to create a robust alliance that helps them
meet their respective outcomes. Leading-edge CIOs become leading edge
because their HR and talent strategy counterparts support them.
"Together, CIOs and HR talent executives scour
the globe for qualified experts and talented people and bring them
into their work streams, no matter their locations or their
employment arrangements," said Ms. Morello. "Relying solely
on tactics of yesterday to find, acquire and develop digital business
knowledge, skills and competencies will cause many businesses to fall
behind as other businesses advance. The impact on people, talent and
long-term workforce strategy will be high, and the willingness to
break through stale or aging people practices will build advantage."
Ms. Morello advised CIOs to work with high-influence
HR executives to investigate talent orchestration and to redesign the
learning programs required to build digital business expertise. The
focus should be on hiring, developing and deploying versatile and
multidisciplined teams of people. Once teams are hired, the
organization should promote employee engagement as doing so will make
the organization more attractive to prospective employees and
increase talent retention rates throughout the shift toward the
digital strategy.
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