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CDO, CIO, CTO or CEO – Who will make connected services successful?

Capgemini
9 Jun 2021
capgemini-invent

In the past years multiple CDOs (Chief Digital Officers) were forced to leave their job after having struggled to successfully implement a digital organization within their companies that delivers digital products and services to the existing customer base.

It seems that it is extraordinary difficult to establish digital structures in “flintstone” companies that currently earn zero revenues with digital selling. Boards and executives tend to believe that a well-defined digital strategy and the establishment of a “digital team” (within a still non-digital company) will solve all those issues – but this is not the case! In the five blog posts of this series, we suggest better approaches for building up connected services by answering the following questions:

  1. Introduction & Problem Statement – Why do most digital service strategies never become reality?
  2. Organizational – What are the weaknesses of typical organizational set-ups and how could these be overcome?
  3. Technological – Which aspects need to be considered when building the technological backbone for delivering digital services?
  4. Strategy & Business Model – Which questions should a connected services strategy and business model answer to be realized and accepted by the market?
  5. Success story – What does the R&D (connected products) Operating Model of the next decade look like?

1- The Problem Statement:

A good digital strategy is often not enough to successfully provide digital services. Why is that? Strategies often only suggest directions but do not pave the way for implementation. Transformation requires a clear operating model that enables product to go live at the earliest possible time. Defining such an operating model should be included in the strategy-making. We see various reasons for even excellent strategies to fail, burn invested money and (even more importantly) leaving behind questioning management and desperate project leads as well as disappointed product & development teams. Over the next three articles we will tackle some of the most important ones, point out common pitfalls and propose ways to do better:

a. Wrong organizational set-up – no enablement to deliver fast and regular results!

b. No acceptance in the organization

c. Focus on sophisticated platforms – instead of quick MVPs and prioritized initiatives!

d. Lack of a detailed vision & roadmap – no feasible implementation plan!

e. No acceptance in the market – customer centricity is missing!

f. Wrong expectations from management (final products instead of pilots that are continuously improved)!

Before showing up issues related to technology and strategy in the third and fourth part of this blog series, we will first describe the organizational challenges we have observed to hinder an organization’s transformation towards becoming a digital service provider. Find out how to win over your whole company for the new service products and how to enable your employees to deliver quick results in the next part of the series!

Check the article published in Linkedin!

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