As a practical matter, it sometimes is easier to understand fuzzy concepts such as digital transformation by looking at how other industries see it. In the travel industry, a digital transformation report produced by Skift and Amazon Web Services notes that
digital transformation offers:
Customer experiences related to communicating, shopping, and buying
Pricing, price, promotion, distribution, and purchasing
Agility when demand or competitive environment changes
Analysis and forecasting
Revenue, cost, efficiency improvements
Remain competitive
Adapt to changing industry circumstances
Note that none of those benefits are quantifiable. They are qualitative changes. So one lesson is that digital transformation is not directly measurable. What can be measured are other business metrics related to the business model, customer satisfaction, acquisition and churn rates or operating costs, for example.
In other words, the emphasis is “transformation,” not simply “digital.”
Though business process changes believed to be associated with digitalization can be measured, there are no direct quantitative measures of “transformation.” What can be measured is process performance.
What can be measured are the results of changes in business processes “digital strategy” was meant to address. That includes marketing, advertising, customer experience, analytics, automation, resiliency and so forth. More of this; less of that, in other words.
Digital transformation is qualitative and non-quantifiable. Digitalization is quantifiable, but only as it relates to process outcomes.
As all that might apply to connectivity businesses, the obvious answer is to focus less on the qualitative benefits (agility, speed, adaptability, revenue growth, cost containment, experience advantages) and more on the practical business outcomes and how digitalizing can help produce the desired outcomes.
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