How top companies excel with digital and analytics
Six key areas to help senior executives manage a
tech-enabled transformation
The competitive dynamics of digital and analytics put enormous pressure on incumbents’ strategies and operating models. Companies that apply advanced technologies and new ways of working generate more value than those that don’t. Capturing that prize requires executives to rethink and reinvent every aspect of their business, from strategy to operations. Read on to learn more about the elements of successful tech-enabled transformations.
A digital strategy can’t be incremental. Top companies make big moves to reinvent themselves for the digital environment.
Strategy: The bold pursuit of digital’s value
1
Leaders balance their strategic priorities between digitizing their core businesses and creating innovative digital business models, including models built on digital platforms. They also up the pace of strategy setting, from old-fashioned annual planning to a continuous process that helps them respond more quickly to new developments.
Mastering the duality of digital: How companies withstand disruption
A winning operating model for digital strategy
A winning operating model for digital strategy
Successful companies match their workforces to their digital priorities and devote extra effort to recruitment and training.
Talent: Assembling a digital workforce
2
Skill shift: Automation and the future of the workforce
Skill shift: Automation and the future of the workforce
The analytics academy: Bridging the gap between human and artificial intelligence
The analytics academy: Bridging the gap between human and artificial intelligence
To meet rising demand for technology products and business enablers, companies are adding digital specialists with deeper, broader skill sets and teaming them with colleagues from standard business domains. They’re also upskilling current employees. Analytics academies, for example, are delivering training that’s customized for all workers, from executives to those on the front lines.
New ways of working provide organizations with the pace and flexibility to fulfill their customers’ rapidly changing needs.
Agile: How learning speeds delivery
3
Top-performing companies have allocated much more of their overall workforces to digital.
Share of organizations’ workforce dedicated to digital initiatives, % of respondents, by rate of organic revenue growth in past 3 years
Less than 10% growth rate
More than 25% growth rate
14%
46%
Top-performing companies commit as many resources to developing new digital businesses as they do to digitizing their core.
Organizations’ digital-capital allocation in past 3 years, by objective, %
Top economic performers
All others
Digitizing core business
Developing new digital businesses
50
50
63
37
The business value of design
The business value of design
The journey to an agile organization
With agile methods—making prototypes, letting users try them, and improving designs according to what users think—companies roll out products and tech solutions more quickly, while eliminating much of the risk that occurs with waterfall approaches. Design thinking is integral to this way of working, because it helps businesses to figure out what users value most.
Effectively applying analytics and AI means building applications that translate data into real-time insights for decision makers.
Analytics: Enabling data to guide decisions
4
Global AI Survey: AI proves its worth, but few scale impact
Building the AI-powered organization (Harvard Business Review)
Building the AI-powered organization (Harvard Business Review)
Our research shows that companies create the most value with artificial intelligence and analytics when they embed them across the organization. That requires defining strategic opportunities, increasing investment, strengthening data-management practices, and authorizing more people to make analytics-guided decisions.
81%
of respondents in agile units report a moderate or significant increase in overall performance since their agile transformations began
1.5×
On average, respondents in agile units are 1.5 times more likely than others to report financial outperformance relative to peers
Companies using analytics at scale are better at embedding analytics into decision-making processes.
Successful scalers
Successful scalers are 2 times more likely to prioritize top decision-making processes …
All others
… and are 2.5 times more likely to establish decision-making rights and accountability.
55%
31%
56%
22%
Technology functions are increasingly expected to support innovation and agile delivery, while still enabling basic operations.
Technology: An evolving role for IT
5
The CEO’s new technology agenda
The platform play: How to operate like a tech company
The platform play: How to operate like a tech company
Legacy IT architectures and traditional software-development processes tend to impede quick releases of digital applications. The most effective technology organizations configure IT systems as a set of modular platforms, embrace advanced technologies, perform key activities in-house, and hire or train people for a wide array of digital jobs, such as product owners and user-experience designers.
Top-performing IT organizations are more likely to excel at activities that are integral to digital transformation.
Top-quartile core IT organizations
Overall average
Respondents rating their IT organizations as very effective at each activity, %
39%
13%
34%
12%
28%
9%
Leading digital transformations
Automating business processes
Identifying innovative technologies
Full-scale digital transformation requires bringing a multitude of technology solutions into everyday business operations.
Operations: Transforming processes with technology
6
The drumbeat of digital: How winning teams play
The cornerstones of large-scale technology transformation
The cornerstones of large-scale technology transformation
Companies realize substantial value from technology by addressing two imperatives. One imperative is creating the many digital solutions—usually more than expected—that are needed to boost efficiency and improve customer experiences across an enterprise. The other is redesigning processes to capture the value of advanced technologies, and guiding workers toward these new patterns of operating.
Organizations that report successful digital transformations are:
More likely to embed advanced digital technologies in their operations …
Reported successful transformations
All others
Digital technologies currently used by organizations, % of respondents
81
71
68
53
45
33
31
23
Cloud-based services
Mobile internet technologies
Internet of Things
Artificial intelligence tools
… and
more likely to modify standard operating procedures to do so
1.8×
competitive dynamics of digital
generate more value
Mastering the duality of digital: How companies withstand disruption
Building new businesses: How incumbents use their advantages to accelerate growth
Building new businesses: How incumbents use their advantages to accelerate growth
The journey to an agile organization
Global AI Survey: AI proves its worth, but few scale impact
The CEO’s new technology agenda
The drumbeat of digital: How winning teams play