Let me start by quoting my teacher at MIT Sloan, Dr. George Westerman

“When digital transformation is done right, it’s like a caterpillar turning into a butterfly, but when done wrong, all you have is a really fast caterpillar.”

A Fast caterpillar maybe relevant for the short term for bringing limited efficiencies in the existing business as usual, adding new tools and reducing little bit of costs. But if there is no vision of:

• What does your butterfly look like?;
• When do you plan to become one?;
• How will you become that butterfly?;

then your digital transformation is just a mobile app, a pretty portal, 5-10% reduction in costs, large amount of data collection and a new technology stack.

Why is a fast caterpillar not ideal in long term?

• Doesn’t let the right side of brain kicks in, you are basically chasing to automate, not disrupt
• Keeps your organization in delusional state and competition catches up
• You lose talent to companies where real transformation is happening

Initiatives often disguised as digital transformations:

• Programs made up of ERP upgrades, website updates, cloud migrations, or similar technology enhancement (the list is endless).
• Projects that are typically operational, and not focused on the customer experience.
• Technology projects solely picked up because they are funded
• Technology projects that neglect to change the organization’s business model.
• Technology projects that overlook the hearts and minds within the organization.

How to spot “Fast Caterpillar”?

Rob Llewellyn, a leading transformation consultant has pin pointed questions that Top Executives (basically CEO) need to answer to spot if their Digital Transformation practice is real or the far fetched utopia

• How is our transformation going to disrupt the market or protect against disruption?
• Will our transformation eliminate our industry’s customer pain-points and complexity?
• Will is cut our prices by at least 70% and still enable us to make money?
• Will it make our dumb products and services smart?
• Will introduce a platform where buyers, sellers and innovators (including our competitors) can do business together?
• Will it transform our physical products and services into digital offerings?

And for every answer of “yes” you need to ask Why? When and How?. If your answer is no for any of these & in case you do not have all the answers, there is a extremely high probability that you are making a fast caterpillar.

Digital Transformation or Business Transformation

Digital Transformation is actually re-imagining you business from outside in perspective, your resources – People , Process and System will then be need to align to achieve this vision. The change or rather evolution will start at your legacy business model, hence its actually business transformation

• A Business Transformation, which will be driven through process innovation.
• Process innovation, that will digitally enabled;
• And fully supported by Re-Skilled People.

Will close this with words of John Hagel III, Co-Chairman at Deloitte LLP Center for the Edge leaders

Most of the executives I talk to are still very much focused on digital largely as a way to do “more of the same,” just more efficiently, quickly, cost-effectively.

But I don’t see a lot of evidence of fundamentally stepping back and rethinking, at a basic level, “What business are we really in?”

Many Thanks to Dr. George Westerman & Rob Llewellyn for their insights