Digital Transformation rides the wave

All and everywhere digital transformation is present. But digital transformation does not only mean using smart phones all over the place or zoom around all day long. It can have a much deeper impact on the way value chains are organized.

In this book the authors take a look at different industries and aspects of digital transformation.

• How does it impact the business model?
• What is required in the culture to make it happen?
• What are the impacts on organization and management?
• What do you require to really launch a value creating initiative?

Yes, you may focus on aspects of process optimization, increasing the inner operational efficiencies. And yes, you will lay a foundation for further digital options by automating and digitizing internal processes.

Example digital processes

For example Allianz, one of Germany’s larges private health insurers has spent several years in digitizing the claims handling process. But now they achieve a stunning performance. Two days ago I pushed the collected bills for 2020, scanned as PDF to their portal. Yesterday I received the detailed confirmation of payback including a sound documentation. That’s efficient! That’s gorgeous! Well done.

This approach saves costs (guess not just a lot but even more). And it  increases customer convenience (at least for me this experience has been very positive). It makes things to be done better and more efficient, which already is great. But it does not yet create new business revenues.

Example digital products

Enriching products or services with software capabilities will increase the room for interaction and might bear the potential to create new platforms. The idea is to create a digital service  that adds value to the customer experience, accompanies the product and / or leads to a new usage experience. Will it be the route optimization for the truck driver, the fertilization planning for the farmer or the face recognition based virtual beauty counsellor. Assessing you customer journey, you will identify many touch points that bear a suitable approach to generate a value creating  experience for your customers leading to convenience and binding. Here the real innovative change begins.

Just image a cooking pot. A boring thing available in masses in any kitchen. Vorwerk had a different view. They saw the potential to create an interactive solution to support the customer and help with additional services beyond providing a pot. Access to receipts, scheduling of cooking steps etc. transformed a plain pot into something interactive, valuable and, sometimes, even loved good.

Vorwerk might not yet have discovered the full potential of the platform business. At least even as a customer I am not aware of ordering capabilities included with the receipts platform. The idea of charging a recurring fee for the use of the portal might be a limiting factor for additional up and cross-selling. But this is just a strategic decision about the  value chain position and the business model.

Learn more about Value Spots and the value management in the eBook (German version click here).