Seven Levers of Digital Transformation
Channel: The Open Group
Date: 18/04/2019

Digital Transformation encompasses seven levers of change. These levers will reduce the number of failed projects, guide investment decisions, and create a set of products and services to seal customer loyalty.

The seven levers are about framing a complete problem statement and a comprehensive realization of outcomes. Strategy, Ecosystem and Business Model, and Customer Engagement and Experience frame the problem statement. Business Process Transformation, Product or Service Digitization, and Organizational Culture are operational steps to realize the strategy. IT and delivery transformation span both sides and help realize agility, efficiency, and decision support goals.

Lever 1 - Business Process Transformation (BPT)
* Creating the right balance of process discipline and instrumentation, with phased rolling-in of all parts of the enterprise to build intelligent insights
* Using the same concepts of productivity and efficiency to understand customer behavior and interaction patterns
* Building processes that match customer and partner touchpoints

Lever 2 - Customer Engagement and Experience (CEX)
* Experience is the emotion felt about how customers perceive the product or service has fulfilled their expectations – it is subjective, ephemeral, and qualitative, making it hard to measure
* Engagement is the behavior demonstrated by the interactions across touchpoints – it is intentional, measurable, and quantitative; a touchpoint is where a human or a system and the enterprise interact
* Correlating insights from business processes to deliver products or services that delight the customers, driving continually increasing revenue

Lever 3 - Product or Service Digitization
Creating products or services that are focused on the outcomes the customer wants – it may involve the use of digitization and/or digital twins to promote effectiveness in the usage of the product or service

Lever 4 - IT and Delivery Transformation
* Applying the same business process optimization, interaction insights, and customer experience-driven product development to IT operations of the enterprise
* Arriving at consistent agility across IT and other functional areas of the enterprise that is in-sync with the market expectations

Lever 5 - Organizational Culture
* Achieving transparency in decision-making, informed by data 
* Continuously learning to optimize the product and service portfolio 
* Focused on sustainability over cost optimization
* This includes the considerations about the approach to operations, solution delivery, and organizational structure

Lever 6 - Strategy
* Choosing unique configurations of the value chain and making decisions to maximize the benefit from employment of concurrent technologies
* Making a deliberate choice to employ the levers mentioned for the benefit of the enterprise
* This includes the commitment and clarity of direction provided by the leadership and the vision

Lever 7 - Ecosystem and Business Model
* Building and collectively growing the share of customer wallet with partners
* Cultivating a thoughtful approach to attract and retain partnerships that virtuously impacts the brand
* Driving laser clarity about core the business focus of each player in the ecosystem

With the exception of Lever 7 – Ecosystem and Business Model – all the levers are applicable to all enterprises. However, with the saturated market place, it is worth pausing to revisit your ecosystem and business model. All these levers should be engaged in tandem to amplify the returns. As we review each lever, it will broaden the understanding of the Digital Transformation landscape, help you assess where gaps exist within the enterprise, and successfully address them.

Summary
Each lever does not act alone. They are symbiotic and amplify the effects of one another. By the same token, missing or reduced output from each lever will have an exponential impact on the overall efficiency of the enterprise. Engaging these levers in conjunction with equitable investment is key. Additional benefits can be reaped by automating the relationships and connections from strategy to sensors in the field or by combining more than one technology. The common denominator is continuous improvement of west-to-east customer journey and north-to-south enterprise communications. 

Download White Paper: https://publications.opengroup.org/w17c

Presenter:
Dave Hornford leads visionary architecture thinking and execution for Conexiam's clients in the digital era. Dave has decades of real-world excellence, reflected in papers he co-authored including: 'Seven-Levers to Digital Transformation," TOGAF Body of Knowledge 'Leader's Guide,' 'Practitioners' Guide,' Governor's Guide.'
Dave leads Conexiam's EA Capability & Education movement. Dave's passion is to help others learn the steps of transformational success. Transformation success comes from being able to find straightforward answers to complex problems.