A top benefit from Digital Transformation – insight from a large recent study

I recently attended the Business Digital Transformation Forum which was put together by Vodafone, and hosted at The Telegraph offices in London.

It was an excellent event, with Neil Blagden – Chief Operating Officer of Vodafone UK, leading the way and introducing the Digital Ready study which was conducted by Circle Research on behalf of Vodafone.  This is an extensive study with more than 2,000 technology decision-makers from the UK surveyed – probably the most up to date indicator on the very broad topic of Digital Transformation.  A link to the study is included at the end of this article.

It was really useful to hear from Neil, how Vodafone have embraced Digital Transformation – and I have noted that below.

Also when I read the study – it was clear to me that the benefits are significant, and I wanted to highlight one of the top benefits.

It was great to hear how Vodafone was progressing on it’s own Digital Transformation journey – it lent real authenticity to the research study findings.

One of the key transformational actions Vodafone took was to decouple the ‘digital front end’ from the ‘core back end’.  This involves separating out the various customer interfaces via various channels e.g. website, portal, mobile app being and CRM (marketing, sales and service) from systems such as billing, and network management.  Doing this, coupled with operating in an Agile way, enables faster innovations in the digital front end.

Another major digital transformation initiative was to ‘bring Digital out of IT into the business’.  This is an amazing organisational change for such a large enterprise.  However it was necessary because in order to operate in an Agile, way, all the skills to deliver initiatives needed to be operating as one team.

Perhaps the most surprising aspect of the transformation was in organisation location.  Vodafone moved all of the digital team into ONE location in London.  A big big action given that the HQ is in Newbury and was the previous centre of all activity!  A further detail is the mode of operation for the team – everybody physically together – almost a hark back to working ways from two decades ago.

There were many other things that Neil very ably explained which may be worthy of another blog post, but what stuck in my mind at the end was a couple of learnings that he conveyed:-

• Start Digital Transformation IMMEDIATELY, and
• This needs to be done to SURVIVE!