Book Excerpt: Digital Transformation

Reprinted by Permission of the McGraw Hill Companies from Digital Transformation by Mary Pat McCarthy, Copyright 2000 by KPMG. Reprinted with permission. All rights reserved.

Visioning
Can you imagine developing a product with no clear idea of its size, shape and function set? Or, can you imagine creating a service without defining its content and scope? Well, you cannot hope to establish a winning e-business without a clear., succinct, statement of vision. To be sure, arriving at that vision is anything but an exact science, and one company's method may not work for another. However this is a critical first step. Toward that end, visioning can be done in-house or as a part of a consulting engagement. We'll take a look at both.

Imagineering,An In-House Vision Generator
In the UK, Orange might be best described as a mobile telephone company. But Orange has adopted "imagineering" as its way to identify and describe its "destination." According to an influential "imagineer" and member of its executive team, "We try to avoid thinking about how to project our current business in our current market. If we myopically think of Orange as a mobile phone company, that's just what it will stay. Instead, we think of what we do well and what our customers would like us to be for them. Ultimately, we aim to be their lifestyle partner. We are customer-led -- always walking in our customers' shoes. But sometimes (here comes the heresy), we have to take the lead, simply because today's customer does not know what she or he will want tomorrow, and it will be our responsibility to lead them there. Finally, we try to escape the tyranny of product development and, instead, think in terms of services and solutions."

A little more than two years ago, Orange created its Imaginarium, the members of which were charged with seeing their business in new and different ways. The members are called "ambassadors," and what qualifies them for membership is "the way their minds work." At Orange, "We recruit from Manchester to Mars."

A KPMG Vision Methodology
At KPMG, we too have developed and refined a process that has been very successful at e-vision generation. Before we describe it, though, we need to put it in the context of a complete e-business effort. Our approach to e-business strategy is an all-encompassing one, designed to develop an integrated enterprise from vendors and suppliers to customers, and focused around the b2b and b2c aspects of an organization.

As part of the process, we define and prioritize the business requirements, which allows us to validate and align the technical foundations of the company's current infrastructure.

We then develop a clear migration strategy and brand messaging with the goal of compelling the appropriate constituencies to take advantage of the e-business's infrastructure on the Web. The process flow begins with the e-vision, leading to the identification of the business and technology drivers, then culminating in the formulation of the e-business strategy. The e-vision is derived from careful consideration of customer feedback, benchmark data, usage statistics, competitive analysis, current forces and current capabilities.

Our objective is not necessarily for you to adopt our approach, but to recognize that the process is neither cavalier nor exhaustive.

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