Modern enterprise organizations are vestiges of the Industrial Era. They were created, built and organized in and for a different time. This includes the physical and logical manifestations of our enterprise organizations: buildings, capital investments, organizational structures, policies and procedures and, bluntly, most everything about how the typical enterprise organization works. But more importantly, it also includes the very essence of our organizations: their culture. This is why the vast majority of digital transformation efforts will fail. A successful digital transformation is not, in fact, a technology-driven endeavor. It is first and foremost a cultural and organizational transformation. Digital technology is merely the catalyst.

The digital era places demands on enterprises that run counter to most of the well understood operating paradigms of the past. Multi-year planning cycles are being replaced with dynamic strategies. Product cycles, both in terms of development, as well as in terms of marketability, have shorten dramatically. Competitors are emerging at a more rapid rate and from unforeseen quarters as barriers to entry fall. Most industries are seeing all of these things happen right now. In order to successfully make this transition and cope with these pressures, organizations must ready themselves to become what is called the “digital enterprise.”  Those organizations that are successfully making this transition are doing so by developing capabilities in four specific Dimensions called the Digital Enterprise Readiness Framework.

Four Dimensions of Digital Readiness

To successfully transform into a Digital Enterprise, an organization must exhibit readiness across these Four Dimensions or risk failure.