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Adopting a Digital Culture

Sep 1, 2020 | Article

Sample of cloud application

In an increasingly competitive world, businesses globally are looking to redefine how they deliver value for their customers. With the speed and scale of change creating challenges for even the most agile of organisations, extracting the maximum value from digital transformation has become a strategic imperative.

The cloud, artificial intelligence and sophisticated automation are some of the technology-driven factors supporting businesses to scale and innovate at speed. But true digital transformation is not just about technology – unless fostering a digital culture is a key element of your transformation plans, your business is unlikely to achieve the full potential of your digital transformation efforts.

Nurturing a digital culture within your company will allow you to align changing customer expectations with evolving organisational capability.

What is a digital culture?

In simple terms, digital culture is the marriage of people and technology. A London Business School report into leveraging digital culture as a competitive advantage defined a digital culture as “shared, underlying and deep-rooted basic assumptions, values, beliefs, and norms that characterise how an organisation encourages and supports technology use to get work done in the most effective way.”   

How does a digital culture support transformation?

The majority of digital transformations fail to deliver on their goals. Often, this is because companies assume that investing in digital technology will get them to where they want to be.

The reality is that successful digital transformation is not just about the effectiveness of technology. The businesses who get the most from their technology investment are the ones where leaders champion technology as a key component to the company’s ongoing success and paint a compelling vision of technology’s transformative potential. And of course, new technology will only support better organisational performance if it’s aligned with customer needs and reflects the way they want to engage with the company. 

At an employee level, organisations that successfully foster a digital culture provide their people with access to information, training and support to allow them to leverage emerging technology to work more collaboratively and productively. Unless workers are empowered to use technology to get things done – both individually and collaboratively – in the most effective way, the introduction of new tech won’t necessarily boost organisational agility and performance.

How does a digital culture empower employees?

When an organisation equips employees with the right technology within a strong digital culture, they’re able to work smarter, not harder. Importantly, they’re empowered to collaborate and innovate to solve problems and identify opportunities for improvement within their job roles, teams, and the wider organisation.

London Business School report found that companies with a strong digital culture have:

  • 5 times more employees who feel empowered
  • 4 times more employees who feel engaged
  • 3 times more employees who feel innovative
  • 2 times more employees who feel productive

Bringing people and technology together to unlock potential

Technology adoption is undoubtedly having a positive impact on businesses of all sizes, across all industries. Our increasingly connected lifestyles mean that customers expect to be able to get things done 24/7, not just during ‘business hours’ – with technology a key enabler of this convenience. However, automation, AI and other innovative tech solutions are only as effective as the people and processes that support them.

At Xetta, we partner with organisations to support digital transformation programs that deliver measurable and sustainable outcomes. We can work with you to tailor a solution that reflects the way you do business today and supports you to achieve your digital transformation aspirations.