Technology choices within the Digital Enterprise

By Onno Wasser

What is the essence of true digital entrepreneurship and what can you do as a company or leader to realize such a digital enterprise? Anderson MacGyver’s Digital Enterprise model offers a solution. Onno Wasser leads the Technology Guild within the consultancy firm. He explains how he connects to the digital ambitions of clients from his profession.

The Digital Enterprise model places the company within the context of the market and business ecosystem and then focuses on five essential building blocks: a strong customer experience, a robust operational backbone, a scalable digital infrastructure, shared data and ‘digital smartness’. In combination, these core components ensure a culture of continuous improvement and agility, allowing the organization not only to respond to change, but also to predict and capitalize on them.

Different starting point

A ‘fit for purpose’ IT environment has always been important. However, with the pursuit of a Digital Enterprise, the starting point sometimes changes. Companies are still busy solving pain points such as outdated technology, poor integration, or excessively high IT costs. With digital ambitions, this goes hand in hand with an enticing perspective: realizing distinctive digital customer experiences, new business models, optimal processes and interoperability within chains and ecosystems.

The role of technology remains largely unchanged. Both at the customer- and employee-oriented front end and in the backbone, IT must fully align with the strategy, activities and objectives of the organization. With modernization, rationalization, and/or improvement, you still work on a suitable target landscape based on an architectural vision, strategic priorities, costs and business value. Selecting and implementing IT solutions is also part of this.

Maintaining control

Depending on the nature and objectives of the organization, you can opt for standard solutions, customization and/or sourcing at both the front and back end. In practice, more and more companies are obtaining capabilities from the market that they do not have or cannot realize themselves – the digital infrastructure in particular lends itself well to sourcing.

Regardless of what exactly you outsource, maintaining and arranging control is fundamental. The idea that an IT supplier will solve everything for you is a major pitfall. For digital transformations, as an organization, you ideally need to free up your best people.

Whether you are solving a pressing pain point or working on new digital possibilities, it often starts with getting the house in order. From a stable foundation, you can work on further developing customer experience, operational efficiency and digital intelligence. Incidentally, these are and will remain large and comprehensive transformations.

In short: appropriate solutions, enabling technology and a scalable and open digital infrastructure are crucial. Click here to learn how you can transform your organization into a Digital Enterprise and take the first step towards successful digital entrepreneurship.