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What is digital transformation?

Page 5 of 10 - Digital at the core: a 2030 strategy framework for university leaders

About this guide

  • Published: 4 November 2020
  • Updated: 4 November 2020

View full guide as a single page

Contents

Digital at the core: a 2030 strategy framework for university leaders
  • Foreword
  • Background and benefits
  • How to use this framework
  • What is digital transformation?
  • Leadership
  • Staff
  • Business model
  • Investment
  • Acknowledgements

About digital transformation

‘Digital transformation’ may feel like the trending business buzzword of the moment, so we should pause along our journey for definitions and context.

Digital transformation:

  • Is the cultural, organisational and operational change of an organisation, industry or ecosystem through a smart integration of digital technologies, processes and competencies across all levels and functions in a staged way
  • Leverages technologies to create value for stakeholders, and to enable greater agility and resilience in the face of changing circumstances
  • Is not primarily about technology adoption. It is first and foremost about transforming the mindset and culture of an organisation to ensure that technology can be deployed as a multiplier of impact

Similarly, digital transformation should not be conflated with prior technological shifts, which focused on digitisation (moving from analogue to digital formats, for example paper forms to webforms) and digitalisation (deploying technology to attain transactional operating efficiencies, or localised benefits).

The three D’s of digital transformation

Creative Commons attribution information
Infographic: Differentiating digital transformation from digitization and digitalization
©Betsy Tippens Reinitz via EDUCAUSE Review
CC BY-NC-ND

Text version of the digital transformation process

Digitisation

Changing from analog or physical to digital form

  • Step 1: Digitise information
  • Step 2: Organise information

Digitalisation

Using digital technologies and information to transform individual institutional operations

  • Step 3: Automate processes
  • Step 4. Streamline processes

Digital transformation

A series of deep and coordinated culture, workforce and technology shifts that enable new educational and operating models and transform an institution's operations, strategic directions and value proposition.

  • Step 5. Transform your institution

There is no single path to digital transformation, as the strategy, methods, and technology deployed must be tailored to the unique vision and values of each organisation.

“There is no single technology that will deliver “speed” or “innovation” as such. The best combination of tools for a given organization will vary from one vision to another."

Behnam Tabrizi, consulting professor, Stanford University

In higher education, digital transformation may require leapfrogging an accumulation of many prior waves of models and IT systems that are now obsolete.

The mindset for digital transformation

Creative Commons attribution information
Illustration of the mindset for digital transformation
©Bret Taylor via The transformation playbook

Text version of the mindset for digital transformation

Customer-centricity is essential to move from "renovate" to "transcend".

Renovate

How do we optimise our existing operations?

Evolve

How do we put our student, alumni and staff in the center of our organisation?

Transcend

How do we create stakeholder value in new ways?

Placing the experience of students, staff and other stakeholders at the centre is an essential waypoint on the path to digital transformation.

Digital transformation is not a fixed destination with a static end state. Its objective is to help create a highly dynamic organisation with institutional capacity for agility, resilience, rapid innovation, and growth. As institutions move toward this objective, all of their stakeholders reap the benefits of this newfound ability to overcome past barriers that, in some cases, have stood for decades.

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