"Inflationary use" is the first reflexive thought at this combination of terms. Yet there is a relevant development behind it for every company. In general, digital transformation can be divided into two directions: 1. digital transformation of business processes, 2. digital transformation of business models. Especially the first variant has been known to us all for decades as "the paperless office". Coming from paper-based document flows, more and more processes have been migrating to the digital world for many years. The effect was more efficiency, lower costs, easier archiving, simple searchability and finally access from everywhere. The resulting digital treasure trove of data in an ERP tool, for example, led to analysis results that could only have been discovered by chance from paper-based documents and were available digitally at the touch of a button or automated at any second.
Now, digital transformation of the second kind is a not-so-old phenomenon and is gradually overtaking all industries. When a business model is digitally transformed, it sometimes even heralds the end of the analogue/physical business model. For example, when was the last time you went to a video store? In this case, it is not just the transfer of a previously analogue process in the same form into the digital world, but actually a partly complete change of the business model that goes hand in hand with it. Stationary retail and its digital counterpart, online retail, are related in name, but in terms of content they have completely different challenges. Of course, the categories of challenges are similar - logistics, marketing, etc. - but the content is completely different. Search engine marketing and shop window presentation, store delivery and atomised parcel shipments are very different problem areas at the detailed level.
It isprecisely in the digital transformation of business models that the real mental challengelies. "More of the same" or "just a little different" is not enough. Disruption is the consequence - the attack from an unexpected side that completely changes or replaces a market. Comfort zones no longer exist. So how does one react to this? Attack is the best defence. If you know your market well, you also know its weak points. Thinking from the customer's point of view, these are precisely the ones that lead to disruption. Marketing-savvy people will know the 4Ps: Product, Place, Promotion, Price. If I rethink these categories in 4Cs, then it becomes Consumer, Convenience, Communication, Cost. A simple trick to realise that the customer-supplier relationship is becoming democratised and that digital business transformation is all about understanding your customers better and addressing their needs better.