Dicitas: Digitalisation transforms business ecosystem

Consumer demand and lower cost profiles are driving a move towards digitalisation. According to Dicitas Consulting, businesses need to treat their digitalisation process as a transformation of the entire business, and not as a siloed process.

In the 2015 edition of its 'Digital Predictions’ survey, Dicitas Consulting, a consulting firm based in the Benelux, explores the trend of digitalisation in the business world. The consulting firm finds that the transition towards digital continues and shows no signs of altering course. Of the survey respondents, 20% agrees that digitalisation is here to stay. Over half (60%) place it as likely or very likely, and only 20% see it as not so likely.

The survey highlights that the transformation towards digital will be a business-wide process, affecting anything from R&D investments and streamlined processes to skills upgrading and even KPIs – with companies needing to make the transformation a priority if they are to survive.

The drive for digitalisation stems from two needs. On the one side there is a need to meet evermore demanding customers’ expectations. On the other side there is the need for businesses to improve their cost profiles with digitalisation expected to reduce the cost of business ownership and operations by 30% through smart machines and digitalised services.

The changing landscape towards digital ways of working is likely to require businesses to change their company-wide business strategy according to 94% of respondents. 22% of respondents are certain and 22% suggest this to be a very likely scenario.

Businesses not only need to hire ‘Chief Digital Officers’ to help them move their focus towards end-customer journeys and processes, the whole business will require new ways of working. According to a recent Gartner study, by 2018 digitalised businesses will require 50% less business process workers and 500% more workers skilled in digital.

One aspect of current business structures relates to the way in which many have created silos, with 15% of respondents certain that to succeed digitally, these silos need to be broken down. Another 15% see this as very likely. Only 25% of respondents feel that silos do not need to be broken down for the digitalisation to work.

A danger the respondents raise is the incorrect interpretation of digitalisation itself as a silo, where the ‘digital’ aspect of a business is focused on by only a small part of that business. 38% of respondents declare that digitalisation should be part of the wider ecosystem of businesses, while 24% finds this to be very likely the case, with a mere 5% saying it is not so likely and none that it is not the case at all.