IDC’s Planning Guides Provide Actionable Insight Along Every Step of Your Digital Transformation Journey

Planning guide modules allow IT leaders to focus on particular aspects of the transformation process. Modules are included free to clients of IDC’s IT Executive Programs or can be purchased separately.

Adaptation at Speed

As digital transformation enters mainstream, every business in every region and in every industry must rethink and reinvent itself at a very accelerated pace. Most IT organizations are not ready to operate at the speed, scale, and scope of the digital enterprise. CIO and IT executives must lead the reinvention of the IT organization.

CIOs are facing acute contradictions that they will have to bridge. Innovation happens at the edge and must be the result of co-creation between LOB, IT, partners, and customers. IT and business alignment must happen so fast that often IT may have to precede rather than follow the business. This is a mode of coevolution where both LOBs and IT must evolve together while interacting continually.

What:

This module will help CIOs and other high-level IT leaders remake the IT organization to create product-centric IT organization that uses product teams to focus on the business outcomes of IT services for customers, rather than solely on providing those services.

Why:

Applying a product (rather than a project) mindset helps create an organization and platforms that are adaptable and flexible but also secured, compliant, and resilient. Products can support a broader range of needs, customer value, ROI is spread across more initiatives, and the repeatability preserves lessons learned by teams, rather than being trapped in individual project silos.

How:

To undergo the required reinvention of the IT organization one needs to:

• Align Your IT Strategy with the Digital Transformation of Your Organization
• Create a Product Centric IT Organization
• Get the IT Organization into a Product Mindset
• Implement Product Teams
• Cultivate Product-Oriented Talent
• Establish Light Federated Governance

Flexibility

Many organizations are still running monolithic, antiquated systems that are rigid and fail to deliver on the digital business needs of today. Flexibility is key as organizations build a digital core with AI and advanced analytics capabilities.

The COVID-19 crisis has reinforced the importance of digital transformation and the central role of IT. Legacy or redundant systems represent both a barrier and an opportunity for urgent rationalization in order to save costs while enabling the digital enterprise.

What:

IDC recommends a framework based on capabilities for application modernization. CIOs and IT leaders will learn success criteria and KPIS in 7 critical areas, and walk through key steps in establishing a rationalization framework, processes, governance & priorities. Find the most effective ways to operationalize the roadmap and related processes.

Why:

The legacy portfolio of technology and vendors is often redundant but difficult and costly to upgrade, detracting from other more strategic modernization and DX objectives. A capabilities approach focuses on what matters for the business. It breaks down business challenges into digestible entities, removing emotional baggage and targeting outcomes.

How:

To undergo the modernization of your applications for the digital enterprise, your organization needs the following steps:

• Establish metrics that measure the effectiveness of your rationalization program
• Build your business case for modernizing enterprise applications
• Establish a process for modernizing enterprise applications
• Create a roadmap
• Evaluate Vendors for fit

What:

This module helps CIOs and other transformation leaders develop priorities, programs and use cases that support the digital vision, strategy and mission.

Why:

Having an understanding of capabilities for digital success and a roadmap to achieve them will make priorities clear and help focus resources where they are needed. Understanding, scoping, and planning digital transformation holistically is key to enable speed, scale, and agility for desirable digital enterprise outcomes.

If you have not already done so, you should have completed the Future Enterprise Maturity Model Assessment and developed high-level digital goals for your organization. This module focuses on planning techniques to implement those goals.

How:

Transforming to the future enterprise requires an enterprise-wide strategy. Developing a single strategy for the organization involves these steps:

• Determine which capabilities to develop
• Plan for your digital transformation
• Create Detailed Business Cases & Priorities

The Platform Battleground

Understanding and building a “DX platform” that can sustain, advance, and scale business and operations may be the most important decision leaders make for the next 10 years. The platform is the new battleground for innovation, developers, and marketplaces as the industry rushes to enable its customers with a range of platforms. Leaders must discover what their own platform should look like and ways to compete in the platform business economy.

What:

This module will help CIOs and IT leaders develop and define a platform business model. The core concept of a platform business is an open architecture — plug-in infrastructure that matches producers and consumers, operating with an overarching governance structure. Learn the most common approaches, key differences between traditional business models and platform business models, and determine which platform category or categories are the most appropriate. You’ll learn how to develop a data vision, plan your platform operations and governance and avoid “islands of innovation.” This module includes best practices and peer advice to help you avoid pitfalls.

Why:

The risk of not transforming in the digital era is to go out of business. IDC believes that the decision to redefine the technology platform to support the digital ecosystem-driven business models of the future will be the most important decision that the CEO will make in the next decade. A DX platform is vital future technology architecture to accelerate the pace of transformation and enable the rapid creation of externally facing digital products, services, and experiences. Organizations that can rearchitect for scale using the DX platform approach will be the most likely to be transformed and emerge as a Digital Native Enterprise/Future Enterprise.

How:

To undergo the development of a DX platform, take the following steps:

• Define Your Platform Business Model
• Plan Platform Operations
• Integrate islands of innovation

Plan and lead your organization towards a more innovative, start-up culture and learn techniques and ways to work with innovative tech start-ups.

The Future Enterprise is a Digital Native

Growing enterprises, regardless of age or industry, are striving to become “digital natives” in the way their executives and employees think, produce and operate. IDC defines a DNE as an entity that can scale and innovate magnitudes faster than traditional businesses.

What:

Helps CIOs and high-level IT leaders plan and lead the organization towards a more innovative, start-up culture and learn best ways to work with innovative tech start-ups.

Why:

Industry leaders and companies with the largest growth depend on their ability to innovate and disrupt existing business/ industries.

To stay competitive, organizations need to learn to innovate more rapidly, stay in touch with customer needs, harness real-time data and decision-making, and incorporate innovative technologies. This requires a more open, innovative culture that can provide alignment to strategic priorities, programs and processes.

How:

One part of becoming a digital native enterprise is changing your organizational culture to be more innovative or “start-up”, with these steps:

• Assess the Current Culture
• Create an Enduring Start-Up Culture
• Employ Innovation Strategies
• Work with Start ups

Effective approaches to legacy systems

Technology portfolio modernization and rationalization is the number one DX challenge for CIOs today. IT organizations need to create an IT modernization and rationalization plan that aligns with their overall DX strategy. Based on IDC’s research, 83% of enterprises are rationalizing their technology infrastructure; however, only 35% report that their approach to rationalization is effective.

What:

CIOs and other high-level IT leaders will find a framework for modernization and rationalization of infrastructure; including KPIs for each of IDC’s top seven success areas most critical to infrastructure modernization efforts. Key is developing a balance between legacy and modern approaches in a continuous transformation process for IT, given that few organizations can rip out all existing systems and start fresh. Peer advice and considerations for roles and processes, operation plans, data services, system build paradigms and infrastructure technologies are included.

Why:

Rationalization of legacy IT, both applications and infrastructure, is a critical prerequisite for successful IT transformation. IDC believes that from a practical and business perspective, modernization and rationalization enable IT to deliver innovative digital transformation products and competitive IT services at optimum cost. To better achieve economic and business benefits, CIOs need to focus on modernization, not just rationalization.

How:

To undergo the modernization of your infrastructure for the digital enterprise, the organization needs to take the following steps:

• Establish the metrics that measure the effectiveness of your infrastructure modernization program
• Develop a continuous process for IT infrastructure modernization
• Modernize IT infrastructure using newer “build and deploy” paradigms
• Reinvent talent and processes to reduce risk and accelerate the development and deployment of business applications
• Transform IT governance and operations