Digital transformation with purpose: Making the shift towards balanced business models

While many companies are well into their digital transformation journey, it’s been widely reported that relatively few organizations are truly thriving or succeeding. Consultancy Inc.Digital, for example, cites only 18% of organizations as digitally thriving and consultancy ClearPrism has found that “fewer than 12% of companies capture more than 85% of economic profit in any industry.”

Difficulties in execution aside, digital transformation is clearly an ongoing journey, not a destination, but how many organizations have a truly clear picture of where they want to go? What’s the end game for their transformation? Is it customer obsession, revenue growth, cost reduction, process improvement, greater competitive differentiation, accelerated innovation, increased market share, improved shareholder value, all of the above, or perhaps something more?

As companies continue to work on their digital transformation initiatives and to make steady progress, it’s vitally important to re-visit goals and objectives along the way. What may have seemed the correct vision and strategy just a couple of years ago, may now be only part of a larger picture that organizations and the C-suite now need to consider and actualize for future success.   

Many of today’s most powerful business models put the customer at the center and drive scale by offering an incredible value proposition that’s simply too good to resist. Amazon’s ecommerce model gives customers the ultimate in price, selection and availability – something Amazon calls the “holy trinity” and something the company has applied over the years to successfully grow their business and beat out the competition. Uber’s ride service gives customers ease of use, convenience and real-time visibility. The same can be said for Airbnb and the list goes on. While this customer-centric model has built many of the tech giants that we know today, some see growing inequality and a policy failure, and raise the question of whether we have the balance correct for the many stakeholders involved in our business ecosystems and for the broader economy.

Is the exchange of value between all stakeholders proportionate or are these business models skewed in favor of customers and investors at the expense of employees, partners and the social good? This is now part of the larger picture that organizations need to consider and embrace for future success. Since we live on a planet with finite resources, considerable climate and pollution problems, and with AI continuing its inexorable journey of automation and optimization, it will be vital for corporate business models to be more equitable in the exchange of value for the benefit of society.

There’s now a growing number of organizations who are adding purpose to their digital agendas. You can see this reflected in their mission statements.