Digital Transformation Is the Start of a Thousand-Mile Journey: MDeC & IDC

07 Aug 2015

MALAYSIA, Kuala Lumpur, 7 Aug 2015 – Multimedia Development Corporation (MDeC) and International Data Corporation (IDC) recently held the third CIO Survival Guide event to help business and IT leaders understand and cope with the challenges and opportunities digital transformation can bring to their businesses.

According to IDC, Digital Transformation (DX) will drive changes in enterprise business models and ecosystems by leveraging digital competencies. Business leaders today need to transform and lead digitally powered organizations that are not only adaptive to change, but able to predict and drive it.

“Digital transformation is one means of creating self-adapting businesses that can rapidly respond to change. These organizations will not only weather the coming storm, but also thrive on it. Malaysian businesses will need to make a stand as to how they will address the new and changing marketplace,” said Roger Ling, Research Director, ASEAN Custom Solutions, IDC Malaysia.

“We believe there is so much that the digital emerging trends; namely, Cloud, BDA and IoT, have to offer CIOs in providing creative solutions to customers and contributing to the overall growth and revenue of the organization. MDeC, as the driver of Malaysia’s ICT industry development and digital transformation, is committed in its role of assisting businesses to embrace digital technology business models via its MSC Malaysia and Digital Malaysia programs,” said Ms. Ng Wan Peng, the Chief Operating Officer of MDeC.

IDC’s Digital Transformation (DX) MaturityScapes Survey

In a recent study commissioned by MDeC, IDC leveraged its DX MaturityScape to assess organizations' stage of maturity in five key dimensions: Leadership DX, Omni-Experience DX, WorkSource DX, Operating Model DX, and Information DX. This study identifies the stages, dimensions, outcomes, and actions required for Malaysian businesses to digitally transform themselves.

Figure 1

Survey results from IDC’s DX MaturityScapes revealed:

• Digital Resister : 8.1% of organizations fall under the ad hoc stage, it does clearly represent room for growth and the untapped potential of digital transformation within organizations.
• Digital Explorer: Majority of organizations (63.2%) fall under the opportunistic stage. This means digitally enabled customer experiences and products tend to be inconsistent and poorly integrated.
• Digital Player/ Transformer: Higher percentage of organizations in stage 4 (12.5%) of the MaturityScape as opposed to stage 3 (10.5%). This means that there are already players in the market that see themselves as Digital Transformers.
• Digital Disruptor: Only 5.7% of the total business leaders are digital disruptor; the optimized stage. This represents organizations that have mastered the alignment of digital strategies with long-term business goals.

IDC believes most organizations will find themselves wanting with regard to managing and leveraging the five disciplines addressed in this study. Many organizations will attempt to transform through a series of initiative, targeting specific digital competencies while losing sight of the interplay and synergies that are needed for true DX. Organizations that master the orchestration of the five disciplines will thrive; those that don't will struggle to survive, added Ling.