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Demystifying Digital Transformation: Non-Technical Toolsets for Business Professionals Thriving in the Digital Age Attul Sehgal full chapter instant download
Demystifying Digital Transformation: Non-Technical Toolsets for Business Professionals Thriving in the Digital Age Attul Sehgal full chapter instant download
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Attul Sehgal
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5. Chapter five delves into the key innovations that have propelled
digital transformation, offering readers a glimpse into the game-
changing forces at play.
10. The final chapter synthesizes the learnings from the previous
chapters, illustrating how these insights can be applied in our day-
to-day operations moving forward.
b. Digital talent
1 = We outsource our development needs
3 = We have attracted some digital talent
5 = We have a deep set of digital talent and know how to attract,
grow, and retain them
c. Agile delivery
1 = We are considering launching agile teams
3 = We have a few agile teams running successfully
5 = We are driving agile at scale
e. Data management
1 = Data is a continuous challenge to all our efforts
3 = Systems in place to show single source of truth and expose
data to cloud and API
5 = Process and governance in place to enrich data to support
digital value creation
f. Adoption and operating model change
1 = Digital solutions are stuck in the pilot stage
3 = Customers adopt new digital solutions, but full value not
achieved because business operations model has not adapted
5 = Digital solutions adopted at scale, and business model
evolves to maximize value from technology
1. Introduction to Digital
Transformation
Attul Sehgal1
(1) London, UK
Great to Gone
There are numerous starting points to choose from, but to show what’s
at stake, let’s rewind to the year 1995 and focus on an electronics retail
store situated near a typical shopping mall in the United States as it
managed its business to the end of the first decade of the millennium.
As we will see in this book, the first decade of the millennium were the
pivotal years in digital transformation.
This store happens to be Circuit City, one among many spread
across the country. At first glance, Circuit City appears rather ordinary,
adopting a “warehouse style” layout where products are prominently
displayed for customers to peruse and purchase at service tills (refer to
Figure 1-1). Even if you have never set foot in a Circuit City store, you
might still recognize its familiar store design, as the mall locations
followed a standardized blueprint in your own country. It served as the
preferred destination for a wide range of electronic devices, including
televisions, video recorders, computers, and video games.
Figure 1-1 Circuit City Store. Source: parkescompanies.com
As a major retail player in 1995, Circuit City was competing against
large electronic retailers such as Radio Shack and Best Buy throughout
the 1980s and 1990s. Typically, the retailers would have stores
relatively close to each other – often near malls, thereby competing
directly for customer footfall.
The Circuit City brand grew steadily over many decades through the
acquisition of smaller independent electronics stores, and by building
deep customer understanding, they dominated the US electronics
market in the 1990s, and into the new millennium. The employees at
Circuit City were always willing to help, and they knew their stuff.
If you were looking for a new TV, they could tell you the difference
between a plasma screen and an LCD. If you were looking for a new
computer, they could tell you the difference between a Pentium 2 and a
Pentium 3 processor. And if you were looking for a new video game,
they could tell you the difference between a Nintendo 64 and a Sega
Dreamcast.
This retailer acquisition model was just not limited to the United
States, it played out across many regions and sectors around the world.
However, wide product inventories, coupled with brand recognition
and value nurtured over many decades, created a prominent and
profitable business.
The year 2008 saw the emergence of some of the most successful
tech companies of the 21st century like Waze, Uber, Slack, the Apple
app store, Google Chrome, Android, Bitcoin, Airbnb, and Spotify. It was
also the year that Circuit City went bust.
The classic story of Circuit City’s demise is salutary.
Due to high volume sales, Circuit City was able to offer products at
lower prices and offer service incentives such as home delivery and in-
store repairs. By 1990, it had sales of over $2Bn. It was so successful
that it went public in 1990, experiencing an 8000% stock growth
within six years. By 2001, industry recognition peaked when it was
profiled in a well-respected business management book entitled Good
to Great by Professor Jim Collins
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_to_Great) which
sought to discuss some of the greatest companies that were set to
dominate the new century. Good to Great was cited by members of the
Wall Street Journal as the best management book they’d ever read at
the time and sold over 4 million copies.
In his book, Jim Collins stated company greatness is not a function
of company outlook, or even that of the sector, but rather is a function
of the company’s conscious choice and discipline.
How could Circuit City go from “Good to Great” to “Great to Gone” in
eight years? What went so wrong, so quickly?
A digital presence was low on the list of reasons. Circuit City is an
electronics company and the IBM personal computers had been
available since 1981 and the World Wide Web (Internet) available for
public use in 1991. It took advantage of these developments as well as
the process of transferring documents and images in digital form, called
digitalization, which was widespread since the 1980s – although this is
not to be confused with digital transformation. It is important to make a
distinction between the computing practices over time. We had
computers at our desks and created digital content which was stored
locally on drives and we were actively digitalizing our content too.
Digitalization is the mechanism of taking printed matter and putting it
onto computers. These are not areas where Circuit City was ever
excluded.
In fact, Circuit City was digitally active. It launched its e-commerce
site in 1999. Figure 1-2 shows its online growth for the years from
2004 to 2009.