Most CEOs understand the potential upside of a digital transformation. If they can get it right, their companies can be more efficient, more agile, and better able to deliver innovative products and services to customers and partners through multiple channels. About 70 percent of executives say that over the next three years, they expect digital trends and initiatives to create greater top-line revenues for their businesses, as well as increased profitability.1
There are tangible risks associated with these efforts, however. Traditional companies want to behave like start-ups, but they usually don’t have the technology infrastructures or operating models to keep up
with companies that have been digital from the start. Their shortcomings can have consequences. Traditional companies undergoing digital transformations may continue to build ever-more- complicated IT systems, deploying new features or patches and fixes on the fly to meet immediate needs without any clear road map or consideration of future IT needs.
Indeed, an in-depth survey we conducted with Henley Business School on enterprise-architecture management revealed such patterns among companies pursuing digital transformations