- Gartner’s

Definition
Digital Business Terms
Digital

Signal transmission that conveys information through a series of coded pulses

representing 1s and 0s (binary code).
https://www.gartner.com/en/information-technology/glossary/digital

Digital is the representation of physical items or activities through binary code.

When used as an adjective, it describes the dominant use of the latest digital
technologies to improve organizational processes, improve interactions between
people, organizations and things, or make new business models possible.
https://www.gartner.com/en/information-technology/glossary/digital-2
Digitalization

Digitalization is the use of digital technologies to change a

business model and provide new revenue and value-producing
opportunities; it is the process of moving to a digital business.

https://www.gartner.com/en/information-technology/glossary/digitalization#:~:text=Digitalization%20is%20the%20use%20of,moving%20to%20a%20digital%20business.
Digital Business

Digital business is the creation of new business designs by

blurring the digital and physical worlds.
 Digital
Transformation
Digital transformation can refer to anything from IT
modernization (for example, cloud computing), to
digital optimization, to the invention of new digital
business models. The term is widely used in public-
sector organizations to refer to modest initiatives
such as putting services online or legacy
modernization. Thus, the term is more like
“digitization” than “digital business transformation.”

https://www.gartner.com/en/information-technology/glossary/digital-transformation
Digital Business
Transformation

Digital business transformation is the process

of exploiting digital technologies and
supporting capabilities to create a robust new
digital business model.
Platform (Digital Business)

A platform is a product that serves or enables other products or services.

Platforms (in the context of digital business) exist at many levels. They range from high-
level platforms that enable a platform business model to low-level platforms that provide a
collection of business and/or technology capabilities that other products or services consume
to deliver their own business capabilities.

Platforms that enable a platform business model have associated business ecosystems. They
typically expose their capabilities to members of those ecosystems via APIs.

Internal platforms also typically expose their capabilities via APIs. But they may offer other
mechanisms, such as direct data access, as required by the products that consume them.
Platform (Digital Business)

A platform is a product that serves or enables other products or services.

Platforms (in the context of digital business) exist at many levels. They range from high-
level platforms that enable a platform business model to low-level platforms that provide a
collection of business and/or technology capabilities that other products or services consume
to deliver their own business capabilities.

Platforms that enable a platform business model have associated business ecosystems. They
typically expose their capabilities to members of those ecosystems via APIs.

Internal platforms also typically expose their capabilities via APIs. But they may offer other
mechanisms, such as direct data access, as required by the products that consume them.
Data Literacy and Digital Dexterity

What is data literacy?

• Gartner defines data literacy as the ability to read, write and communicate data in context, including an
understanding of data sources and constructs, analytical methods and techniques applied — and the ability to
describe the use case, application and resulting value.

• This all boils down to a simple question, “Do you speak data?”

Data literacy is an underlying component of digital dexterity

• The ability to understand and communicate in a common data language is a core skill for a core technology. It is
the difference between successfully deriving value from data and analytics and losing out competitors who have
made it a core competency in their organizations.

• Further, data literacy is an underlying component of digital dexterity, which is an employee’s ability and desire to
use existing and emerging technology to drive better business outcomes, another important skill for digital
business.
Operating Model

An operating model is the blueprint for how value will be created and
delivered to target customers. An operating model brings the business
model to life; it executes the business model. An information and
technology (I&T) operating model represents how an organization
orchestrates its I&T capabilities to achieve its strategic objectives. An
enterprise operating model describes how the enterprise configures
its capabilities to execute its actions to deliver business outcomes as
defined in the business model.
Business Process Modeling (BPM)

Business process modeling (BPM) links business strategy to IT

systems development to ensure business value. It combines
process/workflow, functional, organizational and data/resource
views with underlying metrics such as costs, cycle times and
responsibilities to provide a foundation for analyzing value
chains, activity-based costs, bottlenecks, critical paths and
inefficiencies.
Digitization vs. Digitalization

Digitization is the process of changing

Digitalization is the use of digital
from analog to digital form, also
technologies to change a business
known as digital enablement. Said
model and provide new revenue and
another way, digitization takes an
value-producing opportunities; it is the
analog process and changes it to a
process of moving to a digital
digital form without any different-in-
business.
kind changes to the process itself.
Digital Disruption

Digital disruption is an effect that changes the

fundamental expectations and behaviors in a
culture, market, industry or process that is
caused by, or expressed through, digital
capabilities, channels or assets.
Business Capability Modeling Business capability modeling is a technique for
the representation of an organization’s business
anchor model, independent of the
organization’s structure, processes, people or
domains.
 Enterprises are increasingly connecting a broad variety and number
IoT Platforms of IoT endpoints to access data from and better manage physical
assets that are relevant to their business. Typical IoT-enabled
business objectives include traditional benefits, such as improved
asset optimization, as well as new business opportunities and revenue
models, such as subscribed-to services (versus owned assets). An IoT
platform is an on-premises software suite or a cloud service (IoT
platform as a service [PaaS]) that monitors and may manage and
control various types of endpoints, often via applications business
units deploy on the platform. The IoT platform usually provides (or
provisions) Web-scale infrastructure capabilities to support basic and
advanced IoT solutions and digital business operations.
Enterprise Architecture (EA)

Enterprise architecture (EA) is a discipline for proactively and holistically

leading enterprise responses to disruptive forces by identifying and analyzing
the execution of change toward desired business vision and outcomes. EA
delivers value by presenting business and IT leaders with signature-ready
recommendations for adjusting policies and projects to achieve targeted
business outcomes that capitalize on relevant business disruptions.
Business Process Re-engineering (BPR)

Business process re-engineering (BPR) is defined as an integrated

set of management policies, project management procedures, and
modeling, analysis, design and testing techniques for analyzing
existing business processes and systems; designing new processes
and systems; testing, simulating and prototyping new designs
prior to implementation; and managing the implementation
process.
Digital Transformation Consulting (DTC)

Digital transformation consulting (DTC) services are strategy and

transformation consulting services supporting senior business
stakeholders, such as CEOs, COOs, chief marketing officers (CMOs)
and other business leaders. DTC particularly helps these leaders in
efforts to leverage digital technologies that enable the innovation of
their entire business or elements of their business and operating
models. Specific capabilities include consulting services for digital
strategy and transformation, digital operations, and digital customer
experience.
Product (digital Business) A product is a named collection of business capabilities
valuable to a defined customer segment. A product may be
just software and data. Alternatively, it may comprise any
combination of software, hardware, facilities and services,
as required to deliver the entire product experience.

A product may be a repeatable service (for example, a

subscription service); or it may be a platform (one-sided or
multisided).

Although products (in the context of digital business)

principally serve external customers, software
organizations can also apply a product model to any
collection of business capabilities delivered in a coherent
value stream to internal customers.
Global Delivery Model

Global delivery model (GDM) refers to the assets and

competencies (IT skills/labor resources, tools, policies and
procedures, methodologies, infrastructure, management, human
resource functions, and delivery processes) of an organization’s
service provider (internal or external) to source skills from global
locations for IT/business benefit. In an optimized GDM, the
disparate set of resources comes together seamlessly; factors such
as high process maturity and a secure and scalable global
infrastructure supported by significant investments to mitigate or
manage risk are critical.
Bimodal

Bimodal is the practice of managing two separate but coherent styles of work: one focused on predictability; the other on
exploration. Mode 1 is optimized for areas that are more predictable and well-understood. It focuses on exploiting what is
known, while renovating the legacy environment into a state that is fit for a digital world. Mode 2 is exploratory, experimenting
to solve new problems and optimized for areas of uncertainty. These initiatives often begin with a hypothesis that is tested and
adapted during a process involving short iterations, potentially adopting a minimum viable product (MVP) approach. Both
modes are essential to create substantial value and drive significant organizational change, and neither is static. Marrying a
more predictable evolution of products and technologies (Mode 1) with the new and innovative (Mode 2) is the essence of an
enterprise bimodal capability. Both play an essential role in digital transformation.
Business Process

Gartner defines business process as an event-

driven, end-to-end processing path that starts
with a customer request and ends with a result
for the customer. Business processes often
cross departmental and even organizational
boundaries.
Business Process Management (BPM)

Business process management (BPM) is a discipline that uses various

methods to discover, model, analyze, measure, improve and optimize
business processes. A business process coordinates the behavior of
people, systems, information and things to produce business
outcomes in support of a business strategy. Processes can be
structured and repeatable, or unstructured and variable. Though not
required, technologies are often used with BPM. BPM is key to align
IT/OT investments to business strategy.
Capital Structure vs Cost Structure

• Capital structure is the mix of debt and equity that a company

uses to finance its operations and projects.
• Cost structure is the aggregate of the various types of costs, fixed
and variable, that make up a business’ overall expenses.
Companies use cost structure to set pricing and identify areas
where expenses can be reduced.
Data Strategy

A data strategy is a highly dynamic process

employed to support the acquisition,
organization, analysis, and delivery of data in
support of business objectives.
Data Warehouse

• A data warehouse is a storage architecture designed to hold data extracted from transaction systems, operational data stores
and external sources. The warehouse then combines that data in an aggregate, summary form suitable for enterprise wide
data analysis and reporting for predefined business needs.
• The five components of a data warehouse are:
 Production data sources
 Data extraction and conversion
 Data warehouse database management system
 Data warehouse administration
 Business intelligence (BI) tools
• A data warehouse contains data arranged into abstracted subject areas with time-variant versions of the same records, with an
appropriate level of data grain or detail to make it useful across two or more different types of analyses most often deployed
with tendencies to third normal form. A data mart contains similarly time-variant and subject-oriented data, but with
relationships implying dimensional use of data wherein facts are distinctly separate from dimension data, thus making them
more appropriate for single categories of analysis.
Data Lake

A data lake is a concept consisting of a collection of storage

instances of various data assets. These assets are stored in a near-
exact, or even exact, copy of the source format and are in addition
to the originating data stores.
Metadata

Metadata is information that describes various facets of an

information asset to improve its usability throughout its life cycle.
It is metadata that turns information into an asset. Generally
speaking, the more valuable the information asset, the more
critical it is to manage the metadata about it, because it is the
metadata definition that provides the understanding that unlocks
the value of data.
Edge Computing Edge computing is part of a distributed
computing topology where information
processing is located close to the edge, where
things and people produce or consume that
information.
UX & CX User Experience

• User experience (UX) is the sum of the effects caused by a person

using a digital solution. UX efforts concentrate on the experience
people have when interacting with a specific product or solution.

Customer Experience

• Gartner defines customer experience as the customer’s

perceptions and related feelings caused by the one-off and
cumulative effect of interactions with a supplier’s employees,
systems, channels or products.