There are many paths to any digital transformation objective. This is both a blessing and a curse to those responsible. The blessing is that we have plenty of choices and options for elevating our organizations and improving the lives of our customers. But this is also the curse. Choosing broadly fragments limited resources and minimizes your impact. Choosing too narrowly may lead to missed opportunities. Choosing one thing may keep you open to future possibilities when resources and capabilities at your disposal may be different. Choosing another may shut the door completely or impose huge costs on subsequent initiatives.
Why tradeoffs in digital transformation? With every choice, there are implicit tradeoffs: strategic differentiation vs operational efficiency, time to market vs long-term TCO, vendor-lock in vs flexibility to incorporate emergent technologies. Even seemingly innocuous choices may materially impact the effectiveness and sustainability of your digital transformation efforts. To be successful, we must choose carefully and make wise tradeoffs. This is obvious in theory. In practice, organizations struggle with decisions on what to do now, what to postpone to later and what to completely omit. Tradeoffs made are in fact, seldom strategic. For any enterprise, diligently answering the following questions will lead to better outcomes.
What value will you create for which customers?
What aspects of your business will you digitize?
What level of digital sophistication will you pursue?
What technology & architecture choices will you employ?
How will you structure your organization, structure your teams and allocate resources to support your goals?
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