by: Thomas Wieberneit, CustomerThink (Excerpt)

Go Digital or Die

The second big topic was digital transformation. Digital transformation can be defined as ‘the realignment of, or new investment in, technology, business models, and processes to drive new value for customers and employees and more effectively compete in an ever-changing digital economy”.

The consensus opinion can be summed up as ‘go digital or die’. This message was hammered home in his usual refreshing style by Ray Wang and, from a more organisational maturity point of view by Brian Solis during his day 2 keynote.

Brian Solis looked at digital transformation from organisational maturity and people points of view. He started off stating that one is on the wrong end of innovation when waiting for someone else to tell what needs to get done. Innovation, also digital innovation and innovation in customer experience, starts from within: Observe, believe in it, act! Similar to Dennis Snow the day before Brian Solis makes it a strong point that innovation in customer experience is about making the company “conform to expectations and aspirations of people instead of making them conform to [the company’s] assumptions or legacy investments and processes”. If people look for shortcuts, then the designed experience is wrong. […]