Companies wanting to take advantage of the true benefits of technology need to stop thinking of IT as an enabler of existing processes and rather see IT as the foundation of completely new customer experiences. Pascal Matzke, Forrester Research vice president and research director, explains that traditionally, businesses have used technology as a bolt-on to optimise existing processes. The most obvious example is in the automotive industry. “If you look at how cars are made, almost everything that was done by people 20 years ago is now being done by machines, but the customer experience has barely changed,” he comments.

“You can customise your new car so that every vehicle that comes off the production line is unique, but the design process has not changed fundamentally in some time.  You are still getting what the car company wants to give you.” Embarking on the digital transformation of a business turns this thinking on its head: it’s all about understanding what the customers want and then delivering that. “CIOs, who should be the drivers of this digital transformation within a business, remain trapped in the role of enabling existing  processes rather than driving the July 2016 brainstorm 45 strategy of transforming businesses into ones that will be able to compete effectively with new and more agile competitors, says Matzke.”