What Are the Main Dimensions of Digital Transformation? Case of an Industry

Abstract

Being a socio-economic lever, the digital transformation presents several opportunities to companies of any sector. Nevertheless, aspiring to digitalization, companies are faced with several challenges, the main one is, the digitalization process. In lack of a digital strategy, companies tend to equate digitalization with IT integration, which implies confusion between the digitalization process and the IT integration process. The paper's aim is to question this observation, and call for a reorientation of company's digitalization vision from technology to strategy. In this paper, we contrast a study on the dimensions of digital transformation, supported by a survey on the strategic orientations of digital transformation, and the practices on the ground of this transformation, in order to highlight; the widespread confusion between digital transformation and ICT integration and the limitations of an IT-oriented understanding of the digital transformation.

A Triaxial Model for the Digital Maturity Diagnosis

“…Indeed, and as explained in the previous section, it is common in the professional environment to restrict DT to ICT integration, which implies that any initiative to assess the existing preceding such transformation, is limited to the ICT diagnosis. The case presented in the following has been studied in-depth in paper [9], and confirms this observation in the context of a Moroccan industry.…”

“…We encourage companies to adopt this vision in order to seize the economic opportunity of DT, to thwart a general trend, from the debate on DT that we consider problematic: the media craze and the focusing on technology leads to lose sight of the concrete economic utility of DT. In the paper [9], we explain that companies tend to think of DT from the only perspective of improving the cost-profit ratio, focusing solely on the introduction of ICT into existing processes. Rather than radical, multidimensional changes, companies make small-scale attempts by IT adopting.…”

Supporting the digital transformation of SMEs — trained digital evangelists facilitating the positioning phase

“…Over 75% (23) of respondents indicated that the DigiSWOT tool was not difficult to fill in after the DigiMaturity tool was completed (Q3). Of the respondents, 60% (18) felt that it was easy to find digitalization improvement ideas, while ten (over 30%) responded neutrally, and two (~6.7%) felt that identification was difficult (Q4). Of the respondents, 60% (18) indicated that the components of DigiTriangle did not limit innovation in digi-ideas, while eight (over 26%) responded neutrally, and four (over 13%) responded that DigiTriangle limited innovation (Q5).…”

“…Ograen and Herciu [17] found 787 DT papers published during 2003-2020; more than three-quarters of the articles were published in 2019 and 2020, and 47 papers had "SME" as a keyword. DT is a rich concept, not just an IT issue [18]. Pihir et al [4] reviewed DT literature in 2019 and found the top three publication domains: computer science, business or economics, and engineering.…”

Digital Transformation in MSMEs in Indonesia: The Importance of Commitment to Change

“…This stage is related to the existing digital conditions of a particular company. The evaluation should be multi-dimensional, as some studies advocate (Zaoui et al, 2019;Zaoui & Souissi, 2018. At this stage, it is essential to go through an evaluation to reTlect on the company's digital maturity and question how efTicient the adopted processes are.…”