What does Digital Transformation mean?

Paraphrased from a Google Cloud articles -

Digital transformation drives foundational change in how an organization operates, optimizes internal resources, and delivers value to customers. 

Organizations choose digital transformation frameworks as a way to reimagine themselves staying competitive in their respective businesses and industries. 

The meaning of “Digital transformation” is broadening and evolving.

A 2018 McKinsey Global Survey found that 68% of respondents saw digitizing the organization’s operating model as the most common objective of digital transformations, and less than half said their target was launching new products or services or interacting with external partners on digital channels. 

Today, there is a growing difference between digitalization and true digital transformation — a critical distinction in an era where every organization is now a technology company in some, if not every, way. 

Responses from a Google Cloud survey in 2022 of more than 2,100 global tech and business leaders to the question: "What does digital transformation mean to you?" -

1. Optimizing processes and becoming more operationally agile
2. Improving customer experience through technology
3. Improving employee productivity through cutting-edge tools
4. Moving systems from data centers to the cloud
5. Outsourcing in-house apps and IT to SaaS providers
6. Be more like a technology company
7. Selling cloud services and/or becoming a technology platform
8. Establishing real-time data capabilities
9. Changing the culture of the organization
10. Improving security of systems and data
11. Becoming the best in my industry to do business with

Challenges with transformation are actually more about people and not tech. 

Large-scale, deliberate transformations require leadership to paint a vision of a future state that is compelling, and drive the culture to allow assumptions to be challenged and ideas to be pursued — inside and out.