Daily FT, 99X Forum to share key insights to corporate digital transformation

The Daily FT in partnership with 99X Technologies will host a top level CEO Forum on Tuesday 2 February to share key insights to corporate digital transformation. 

Titled ‘Customer Driven Digital Transformation’ the CEOs Forum over breakfast will focus on how to inject ‘digital thinking’ into the corporate DNA and truly embracing a digital-first strategy.

Expertise will be shared by the Scandinavian-based Netlife Research, which will draw upon real-life case studies of European organisations that they have digitally transformed through strategic digital investments and adoption of new technologies, to show the magic that digitising can work on the bottom line. 

Over the past few years, the term ‘disruption’ has been used exhaustively in describing how businesses should forge ahead and reach out to customers in this boundary-less, interconnected era. 

CEOs are told that they need to act ‘disruptively’, that organisational thinking on the whole should be innovative and ‘disruptive’. It’s being repeated because disruptive strategies have successfully transformed industries globally, but what does it really mean? 

Simply put, disruption stems from digitisation. It is companies that have had broad visions for mixing digital and physical for the first time, through strategic digital investments, who have become global innovators. Examples of industries that are being digitally disrupted are all around us – TV, news media, recruitment, travel – these are all getting disrupted by players who have embraced digital platforms. 

Uber, the world’s largest taxi company, owns no vehicles. Facebook, the world’s most popular media owner, creates no content. Airbnb, the world’s largest accommodation provider, owns no real estate. On the other hand, the fate of companies that have failed to embrace this digital transformation of enterprises is nothing new to us – bankruptcy, failure, fading into oblivion. Kodak, Sun Microsystems, Nokia and more have now become dead companies that hold a cautionary tale for all of us.

Yet to truly embrace this digital ambition, ‘online’ cannot merely be just another channel within the corporate structure, separated from the core business. It needs to be embedded into business strategy and organisations need to adopt a ‘digital-first’ approach – this is where the future of a company lies. 

The wave of mobile has accelerated this rampant digitisation. People who previously had no access to the internet or social media are now going digital thanks to mobile, moving entire marketplaces to the digital space. ‘Disruptive’ companies have hopped on this bandwagon and are utilising even more services to anticipate what a customer might want and act on it, using smart design and data mining, before the user even clicks a button.

Such digital-first organisations have understood the vast impact customer experience has on shaping their digital transformation. The mobile wave has cemented the absolute necessity to digitally connect all goods and services to the now tech-savvy end-consumers. Companies that nail the winning combination of digital done right and innovative customer experience are those that will win in the interconnected global marketplace.

Unfortunately, establishing a digital environment within corporations, especially those in traditional, hierarchical industries, is far from easy, which is what makes digital transformation such a challenge. 

The Daily FT-99X Technologies Forum n 2 February 2016 at the Cinnamon Lakeside, from 7:30 a.m. to 10 a.m. will focus on precisely this. For more information, please visit www.digitaltransformation.lk