Since early 2013, we have been helping companies understand how digital has a potentially disruptive impact on their future. We advise CEO’s from news media, radio and TV, banks, HR, automotive, retailers and many other industries on digital transformation. As international economists, consulting companies and opinion makers are increasingly talking about the importance of digital disruption, we are starting to feel the acceleration in interest in our own market as well.

We have debated for a while whether we should publicly share our vision, knowledge and approach, after all, it is our core business as consultants. So why give our expertise away in this book? Well, because keeping knowledge and insights away from a broader audience is an example of how people did business in the past. Sharing information and being open, transparent and collaborative are drivers of transformation that are shaping the business of the future. A future we believe in.

THE BOOK IS A STORY OF HOPE AND OPPORTUNITY

Of course digital is disruptive. But this book is not just a listing of everything that is being disrupted by the impact of digital. We really believe that most industries still have the time to transform themselves for the future. Digital is creating massive opportunities to develop new products, services and businesses. Understanding how digital is transforming our world and businesses might be intimidating at first, but once you start thinking about how things can be done differently you might just become more optimistic than ever before.

IT CONTAINS A METHODOLOGY

Digital Transformation Modeling has different dimensions.

You start from a strategic framework for businesses to identify and de ne the right opportunities while thinking about digital transformation. Starting from 7 metaphors and over 40 drivers of transformation, our model allows businesses to create different scenario plans to better understand the future.

Next we focus on the organisational model that introduces new ideas on how your company can organise itself to reflect the willingness to transform into the new structures, roles and ownerships that you will need to translate that future vision into a reality.

All of this should prepare you for an on-going operational reality of digital transformation.

THIS IS NOT JUST A MARKETING BOOK

For the past few years digital has been pretty disruptive for traditional marketing. The arrival of new types of digital media has forced marketers to think about interactive ways of communication and dialogue with customers. There have been many studies, books and conferences about this evolution. This is not another book in that series. Digital transformation is not just about transforming your marketing approach, it’s about turning your business around to deal with the challenges and new opportunities that digital is bringing to the market. We’re entering a new phase where all internal stakeholders are involved. Digital transformation is a journey for the entire company.

It’s no longer about just marketing transformation, it’s about business transformation.

This book is a reworked edition for 2016. It contains several new chapters, based on our experiences in the many Digital Transformation workshops we’ve given since the first edition of our book. We want to thank our clients for giving us the opportunity to apply our methodology and our readers from over 35 countries for their feedback.

Dado Van Peteghem