4 pathways to achieve digital transformation — with CIO as linchpin

Organizations in  CISR’s “future-ready” quadrant have pretty much figured out how to compete in a digital economy. They are low cost and innovative. They provide a great customer experience. They are modular and agile. They use data as a strategic asset, and their operating platforms are “ecosystem-ready,” Woerner said. “They are ready to plug and play, they are ready to partner, they have really figured out how to operate in this more networked world.”

Stephanie Woerner

They are also the exceptions. Most companies — 53% according to CISR research — operate in the “silos and spaghetti” quadrant. Their processes, systems and data landscapes are complex. They are product-driven rather than solution-driven. To cut through the complexity, they lean heavily on their people and “perform via heroics,” Woerner said.

“Industrialized” organizations, like their silo and spaghetti counterparts, are also not digitally transformed, but for different reasons. Their primary focus has been on becoming operationally efficient. They are making “great progress” in building plug and play products and services. They have service-enabled their core capabilities, or what Woerner called their “crown jewels.” They typically have a “great set of APIs” and are analyzing how best to deploy them. They have started to consolidate their data. And they have a single best way of doing things. Customer experience hasn’t been a priority.

Companies in CISR’s “integrated experience” quadrant do provide great customer experience, but typically not via a well-oiled platform. Instead their approach to digital transformation depends on putting a “wrapper around” their data and systems silos. “We call that a simulated customer experience. To pull that off, you have to have strong design and user experience,” Woerner said. Mobile is very important in this quadrant.