In March 2020, as the implications of a global shutdown of physical offices became apparent, executives responsible for digital initiatives went into overdrive. If your firm is already digitally advanced, it’s likely to be faring far better than less advanced competitors by now. But no matter where your firm is today on its pandemic-induced digital journey, you can apply new digital capabilities to improve operational agility, reduce costs, and accelerate revenue growth. For many organizations, there are way more opportunities than resources to bring them to reality. And in today’s cash-flow-challenged economy, you need to focus your scarce resources more than ever. And that’s where having the right transformation partner can make all the difference.

In the “Now Tech: Digital Transformation Services, Q2 2020” report, we look at 35 of the leading digital business transformation services providers. Forrester defines the digital transformation services category as: services providers bringing a portfolio of transformation capabilities to help clients harness digital assets, skills, and ecosystems to continuously improve customer outcomes, drive revenue growth, and increase operational effectiveness while minimizing risk from changing market conditions. In other words, these companies can help your firm accelerate away from your competition.

After tracking the services providers in the digital transformation (DT) market for the past six-plus years, it’s very clear to me that both the services vendors and their clients all define digital transformation slightly differently. That’s why this research breaks down the DT market into four areas of client focus:

  • Innovate and transform business models. Innovate at the intersection of experience and operations, creating new, disruptive businesses and products to deliver outcomes customers value in entirely new ways.
  • Transform experiences. Deliver easy, effective, emotional customer experiences that help customers satisfy needs and achieve desired outcomes.
  • Transform operations. Focus operations on things customers value while improving employee experiences and business process effectiveness.
  • Transform tech ecosystems. Build platforms and partnerships to accelerate and scale the business in service of customers.

Four Digital Transformations

The right partners will not only help you execute your transformation agenda — they’ll also help you shape the right agenda for your firm and prioritize initiatives based on their most immediate business impact. By contrast, a firm that’s not a good fit will tie up your scarce resources for months and leave your entire executive team feeling burned by DT.

Be very careful in how you select your strategic transformation partners.

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