Business Transformation

There is a new imperative in business. Our technology partners, the traditional IT department, and the CIO all need to be customer obsessed.

How does this look? What should we focus on?

• Technology enables dramatic business transformation. Customer-obsessed digital businesses exploit digital technologies to create new customer value and increase operational agility in service of customers. Companies that understand how to master these challenges are driving digital transformation to become digital predators. Forrester predicts that by 2020, every business will be either a digital predator or digital prey.
• Customer–led business value drives technology investments. Tech management organizations must understand, manage, and communicate technology’s role in delivering customer-obsessed outcomes like digital customer experience. Technology executives responsible for service design and delivery must minimize the cost of MOOSE (spending to maintain and operate the tech organization, systems, and equipment) for ongoing operations, deliver the agreed quality of service, and shift investments to customer-obsessed innovation. Only 14% of budgets for new IT initiatives and projects support sell-side business operations. This must change. Our typical infrastructure is way too costly, taking budgets away from technology investment in our business.
• Tech organizations must manage the customer–obsessed digital transformation. To transform to a customer-obsessed business, the CIO needs a road map for focusing technology investments on the four customer-obsessed operating model principles. To help organizations in this transformation, the CIO and other C-level executives must intentionally apply these principles to technology investments, creating better customer outcomes and profitable growth.

This is the age where digitally empowered customers are driving firms to become customer-obsessed, digital businesses. ~Eveline Oehrlich, Forrester Research