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Most digitalization initiatives fail due to lack of strategy. Changes must addressed piece by piece and operators must have a cohesive, overall plan of action plotted out to deliver specific outcomes, with a good grip of how elements are interrelated and interdependent.
Make it happen – Strategies for improving digital maturity
This is an extract from our recent report Digital maturity: Are we on the right path? The research conducted in this report underlines yet again the role of leadership as a critical success factor in communication service providers’ (CSPs’) digital transformation efforts. Indeed, most initiatives fail due to lack of strategy. Certainly changes must addressed piece by piece – they cannot all be tackled at once – but operators must have a cohesive, overall plan of action plotted out to deliver specific outcomes, with a good grip of how elements are interrelated and interdependent. It is a huge, difficult task, but lots of help is at hand.
This is uncharted territory, and CSPs’ (and everyone else’s) tendency is to focus on urgent issues while putting off the essential if difficult tasks. The Covid-19 pandemic has underlined spectacularly that digital transformation is mandatory for any company that wants to survive, never mind prosper. Strategic goals broken into manageable chunks are required, not a series of disjointed, short-term departmental goals that also mislead and confuse staff about their contribution to the company’s future. The pandemic has revealed that sometimes the urgent and important come together dramatically – it has helped CSPs press the reset button, making clear the critical importance of delivering digital inclusiveness as well as the need to transform and help their business customers do the same.
For CSPs, focusing on the urgent often includes a fixation on new technologies and fear of being left behind, but seeing technology as the main driver of change can lead to islands of digitalization or simply digitalizing broken processes, which doesn’t move the organization forward. Companies need to focus on business outcomes and how they will benefit customers, no matter how far removed from customers they feel.
The network’s performance is arguably the single most important element of customer satisfaction. The “lift and shift” approach to cloud is a great example: running legacy software on virtual machines instead of gaining the full benefits of cloud native, or by taking a more holistic view of the systems, people and processes that use, or rely on, the application.
Some, like Vodafone Group, have moved to virtual machines as a carefully planned step to becoming cloud native.
Increasing digital maturity is about vision: To succeed a firm needs a strategy, but to develop a strategy there has to be a comprehensive and realistic vision or goal. Employees will move mountains if they understand what they are doing and why, and if they have confidence in their leaders. Consider the impact John Legere and his Uncarrier strategy had on the fortunes of T-Mobile US. Leaders must not only lead but be seen to be heavily committed to transformation, which is tricky when they too are often battling against the pressures of shortterm results and stock market valuations.
TM Forum’s most recent Digital Transformation Tracker reveals that CSPs are frustrated by many obstacles standing in the way of transformation and that they perceive lack of progress, yet their speed and agility in getting their workforces set up to work from home and support customers during the pandemic shows that they are indeed succeeding. Imagine if they were trying to achieve this five years ago. Operators should stick with the program: A coherent strategy will pay immense dividends later on, and as the pandemic demonstrates, CSPs should not be comparing themselves with the hyperscale companies’ type and levels of digitalization. This is a great time to build on those realizations and ambitions.
TM Forum members collaborate to continually improve the TM Forum Digital Maturity Model and to develop other assets companies can use to implement successful digital transformation. You can get involved in this work and the Forum’s important efforts to improve diversity and inclusion in the ICT industry by contacting Vicky Sleight.
