Digital transformation is not like progressing from walking to running so much as walking to flying, according to TM Forum’s Chairman, David Pleasance. He was opening the third in a series of workshops by the Forum to develop a Digital Transformation Maturity Model and Metrics at
TM Forum Live! Asia in Singapore.
Pleasance explained, “I had an epiphany this year. I had always understood that collaboration was at the heart of TM Forum and that it was powerful. But it was at our flagship event in Nice last summer that my thinking twisted and I realized that collaboration is a fundamental aspect of digital transformation and just how well it plays with the Forum and our long history of success through collaboration.”*
He added, “Like
Frameworx, which is the collective effort of the Forum’s members over many years, from many perspectives, the Digital Maturity Model & Metrics will be so rich and helpful, it will be a case of 1+1 = 3. It’s not just about what to do, but how to approach transformation.”
Interestingly, a pre-event survey of the 80 invited delegates showed that only 25 percent are using a digital maturity model of any kind. This is split between home-grown and third-party models. More than half – 54 percent – said they were not using a model and 21 percent didn’t know.
The high turnout for and lively engagement in the session suggests many are keen to know more because, as Rob Rich, who co-led the session and is Managing Director, Insights Research, TM Forum, explained, “Maturity models are indispensable as an aid to digital transformation as they give you a sense of where you need to be, where you are now and what you need to do to get from point A to B. Common language is essential or else you cannot benchmark against other, similar service providers, which helps you prioritize and navigate.”
The story so far
The first two Forum workshops (in Vancouver, Canada and Dallas, US) gauged the interest level among groups of members and then identified the five dimensions that the maturity model should include. They are: culture, people and organization; customer; strategy; technology; and operations. Download our whitepaper, which outlines the drivers for and captures the progress made so far.
Here in Singapore, the 59 participants at the workshop worked to develop the definitions of those dimensions in a lively, highly engaged session. This input will be collected, collated and contributed to the next stage of building the model and metrics.
Members can find a full write up of the suggestions made to firm up the definitions in Confluence
here.
The other co-leader of the workshop, Ken Dilbeck, VP, Collaborative R&D, TM Forum, asked the delegates to consider digital native companies and what would the target state look like if we were to describe them. Then to say whether that is what we, in the communications industry, want to emulate? This work will contribute to the metrics and can also be found on Confluence.
If you would like to know more, and especially if you’d like to get involved and help shape and progress the model and metrics, please contact Ken directly via
kdilbeck@tmforum.orgWe’d like to thank Sandra De Zoysa, Group Chief Customer Officer, Dialog Axiata for her presentation to the workshop – see the article on her keynote presentation
here – and to Terrence Phillips, Organizational Change Architect, IBM. We’ll be publishing an follow-up article next week.
* Read success stories from around the world in the just published
TM Forum Case Study Handbook 2017 –
Digital transformation: How to make the leap – which is free for everyone to download.
Watch the workshop highlights here: