Digital Business Transformation

Fuel your business' transition into the digital age with this insightful and comprehensive resource

Digital Business Transformation: How Established Companies Sustain Competitive Advantage offers readers a framework for digital business transformation. Written by Nigel Vaz, the acclaimed CEO of Publicis Sapient, a global digital business transformation company, Digital Business Transformation delivers practical advice and approachable strategies to help businesses realize their digital potential.

Digital Business Transformation provides readers with examples of the challenges faced by global organizations and the strategies they used to overcome them. The book also includes discussions of:

• How to decide whether to defend, differentiate, or disrupt your organization to meet digital challenges
• How to deconstruct decision-making throughout all levels of your organization
• How to combine strategy, product, experience, engineering, and data to produce digital results

Perfect for anyone in a leadership position in a modern organization, particularly those who find themselves responsible for transformation-related decisions, Digital Business Transformation delivers a message that begs to be heard by everyone who hopes to help their organization meet the challenges of a changing world.

Preface xvii

Section 1 Now 1

1 The Death of Business as Usual 3

It’s All Change 3

Truth, Knowledge, Vision 4

Constant Beta 9

Digital Assets and Liabilities 10

Digital Business Transformation: Why It’s More Than Just Technology 12

2 The Four Forces of Connected Change 15

Customer Behaviors 16

Technological Change 18

Business Models 23

Societal Change 26

3 What Is Slowing Down Established Businesses? Blocks, Brakes, and Behaviors 31

Top-down Decision Making 33

Organizational Silos 33

Legacy Technology 36

Short-termism 38

Talent Shortages 38

Values and Culture (and Purpose) 40

“Not Invented Here” 41

Section 2 Next 45

4 Characteristics of a Digital Business 47

The Inconvenient Truth 47

Decoding What Digital Companies Do Well 49

Decoding How They Do It 52

5 The Big Hairy Audacious Goals (BHAGs) of Digital Business Transformation 57

The Two BHAGs of Digital Business Transformation 58

Goal 1: Developing the Muscle of Continuous Change (the PS How) 59

Goal 2: Building the Capability to Identify and Realize Value (SPEED) 61

6 Strategy 65

Swarm Intelligence 65

The Role of Strategy 66

Anchor Strategy on Your Customer, Not Your Competition 67

Determine “Where to Play” by Looking at Your Market Differently (the D-3 Model) 68

“How to Win”: View Your Transformation as a Portfolio of Moves 71

Build “Your” Capabilities: The Partner Ecosystem 73

Bringing Products to Market: The Elusive Product-Market Fit 75

7 Product 77

Operating in Constant Beta 77

The Relentless Hunt for Value 79

The Inconvenient Truths of Product 79

The Forces of Change in Product 81

Agile, Lean, and DevOps 82

Banking Case Study: Transforming Product 85

8 Experience 89

Everything in Your Business Contributes to Your Customer Experience 89

What Is Experience, Anyway? 90

Orienting to the Customer 93

Brand Is the Experience and Experience Is the Brand 95

Data and Computation 100

What Makes a Great Experience? LEAD (Light, Ethical, Accessible, Dataful) 104

9 Engineering 107

Technology as a Cost Center to Technology as a Value-driver 108

Spaghetti Tech: The Layers of Enterprise IT 110

Moore’s Law 110

Legacy Technology 111

The Impact of Product and Rise of Engineering 112

Technology and Engineering 114

Architecture: Cloud 115

Microservices 116

Ways of Working: Agile, Lean, DevOps 118

Engineers 119

Automation 120

It’s All About the Talent 120

10 Data 123

Data as an Asset 125

Getting Started with Data 126

Utility: How Do You Get Useful Data on the Right Audience? 128

Data Architecture: Is the Data in a Format and Structure That Are Accessible? 130

Data Science and Artificial Intelligence 131

Designing for Data: How Do You Design Your Products, Services, and Experiences to Collect Data? 133

Ethics: How Does Becoming Data-led Impact Your Ethical Responsibility? 133

11 Leading a Gryphon Organization 137

Learning to Think Differently 138

Characteristics of a Gryphon Organization 140

Section 3 How 147

12 Components of Successful Digital Business Transformations 149

1. Always Remember the Ultimate Goals of Digital Business Transformations (the DBT BHAGs) 149

2. Align the Team Around a Shared Vision 150

3. Get C-level Buy-In 151

4. Anchor in Outcomes 151

5. Seize Your Quick Wins and Communicate 152

6. Move Fast 153

7. Be Thoughtful About Your Governance Choices 154

8. Choose Partners Who Will Co-create and Are a Fit for Your Team 155

9. Keep Your Teams Small and Cross-functional 156

10. Consider New Approaches to Funding That Match the Way Projects Work 157

13 What Transformation Journeys Actually Look Like 159

They Are Never a Straight Line 159

They Require Treating Digital as More than a Channel 161

They Are Almost Always Driven by Uncertainty 163

Without a Clear Vision, Functions Get Disconnected Fast 165

The Many Paths to Transformation 166

14 The Beginning 169

Why There Is No “End” 169

Where Do We Go from Here? 170

What’s in Your Digital Moat? 173

What Are You Building? 173

Everyday Superheroes 174

Notes 177

Acknowledgments 185

Index 189

NIGEL VAZ is CEO of Publicis Sapient, the digital business transformation company, and a member of the Executive Committee of Publicis Groupe. Named by Consulting Magazine as a Top 25 Global Leader, Vaz leads a 20,000-strong company that advises some of the world's largest businesses on their transformation initiatives. Publicis Sapient clients include British Gas, Carrefour, Goldman Sachs, Lufthansa, Marriott, McDonald's, National Institutes of Health, Nationwide, Nissan, T-Mobile, and Unilever. He is a regular commentator in broadcast and print media including the BBC, Bloomberg, CNBC, CNN, The Financial Times, and The Wall Street Journal, and is an inductee of the BIMA Digital Hall of Fame.

Traditional business models no longer work in the new normal. COVID-19, disruptive technologies, shifting consumer behaviors, and increasing awareness of the societal and environmental impacts of business and technology have forced companies to rethink their entire operation. Companies understand the urgent need to adapt in this time of rapid and fundamental change. The exciting and hopeful news is that digital business transformation increases growth, improves operational agility, creates more value, and provides better experiences for customers.

Drawing on decades of experience helping businesses transform, author Nigel Vaz, CEO of Publicis Sapient—one of world's largest digital consulting firms—shows established companies how to immediately adopt new ways of working and build new channels to connect with customers. Digital Business Transformation explains how to combine your 'SPEED' capabilities: strategy, product, experience, engineering, and data, for maximum impact and competitive advantage. The book also helps leaders understand:

• Whether to defend, differentiate, or disrupt their organization to meet digital challenges
• How to create a company that is able to continually change
• How to deconstruct decision-making at all levels of the organization

Perfect for anyone in a leadership position in a modern organization, particularly those who find themselves responsible for transformation-related decisions, Digital Business Transformation delivers a message that begs to be heard by everyone who hopes to help their organization meet the challenges of a changing world. Today's leaders face exponential change and must make difficult decisions. Letting go of things that made your company successful is not easy. Digital Business Transformation is your coach.

Praise for DIGITAL BUSINESS TRANSFORMATION

"With the knowledge of the practitioner and a gift for the anecdote, Nigel offers a comprehensive and insightful overview of the seemingly boundless space of digital business transformation. Just as impressively, he has done so in a highly readable and accessible format. This book is a compelling account of why digital business transformation is so much bigger than technology alone."
—Alan Jope, CEO, Unilever

"Digital Business Transformation explains with clarity and urgency why companies need to continually evolve to stay ahead of the curve. It's a timely and thoughtful 'how to' guide for those seeking to disrupt themselves and their industries. Nigel speaks with authority. He and Publicis Sapient's deep real-world experience and leadership in the digital space have been highly impactful in our own journey of transformation."
—Arne M. Sorenson, President and CEO, Marriott International

"For any organization working towards a new digital future and more innovative culture, Digital Business Transformation is an essential read. This book explains not just why building digital capabilities is crucial to value creation, but how business leaders can navigate the challenges and reach the decisions they must make in order to innovate and remain relevant."
—Beth Comstock, former Vice Chair of Innovation and Chief Marketing Officer, General Electric (GE), Author of Imagine It Forward

"Digital transformation has been dramatically accelerated due to the COVID-19 crisis. Nigel Vaz's book on Digital Business Transformation is a very timely and essential contribution to understand today's new digital landscape. His book connects the key ideas of rapid technological change, human behavior and societal shifts with strategies for enterprises to adapt and grow. This is essential reading for the successful transformation of business — with the human element at its core."
—Hiroshi Ishii, Jerome B. Wiesner Professor of Media Arts and Sciences, Associate Director of MIT Media Laboratory and Director of Tangible Media Group, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

"Digital Business Transformation provides compelling insights into how companies can use technology to build a 'digital moat' around their businesses, deliver incredible customer experiences and stay one step ahead of the competition. It couldn't come at a more relevant time."
—Parker Harris, Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer, Salesforce

"Digital Business Transformation is a vital reference for everyone in businesses today — grounded in insights and actionable ideas to create customer value, build loyalty and drive long-term growth. Nigel provides a persuasive case for putting technology at the core of an enterprise's transformation — and the necessity of harnessing the power of data to fuel a transformation across every element of the organization."
—Shantanu Narayen, Chairman, President, and CEO, Adobe Inc.

"Digital Business Transformation underscores the intensifying need among businesses to digitally transform as they look to create sustainable growth in today's environment. Nigel breaks down the core qualities held in common across so many of today's leading digital companies, and gets to the heart of why technology is vital in delivering new sources of customer value. This is an essential read for everyone in a business trying to adapt and prosper."
—Thomas Kurian, CEO, Google Cloud