“Every business today needs to be a digital business and every company needs to be a tech company or risk going out of business”
-Helen Fanucci, Customer Success Sales Leader, Microsoft
Digital Transformation continues to be front-of-mind for senior executives around the world. Once a desire, it has now become a need for all businesses to implement various aspects of digital into their strategies.
In this article we explore what Digital Transformation is and how to implement it successfully, taking insight from Microsoft’s Digital Transformation journey provided by Helen Fanucci at one of our summits.
Setting the industry standard higher than ever, GDS Summits provide industry insights, keynote speakers and panel discussions with fellow C-suite level experts to solve real business challenges.
A core focus of many of our summits is Digital Transformation. An unavoidable topic that has become the foundation of many pioneering companies in a digital-first world.
Skip to:
- What is Digital Transformation?
- Microsoft’s Digital Transformation Journey
- How Microsoft Uses Business Leadership to Implement Digital Transformation
- Listen to feedback
- Establish trust
- Culture is key
- The Future of Digital
What is Digital Transformation?
Digital transformation has been defined by IBM as incorporating digital into all aspects of business. This ranges from internal processes and operations to the products and services the business provides.
Specific technologies include use of the cloud, artificial intelligence and leveraging data to optimise decision-making and agility.
Transformation tends to occur following a market shift or disruption such as a new technology or the pandemic.
Whilst these events may act as a trigger, Digital Transformation requires continuous adaption and change towards a digital-first approach.
Read our article on The Key to Digital Business Transformation in 2022 to find out more.
So now we know what Digital Transformation is, let’s take a look at how one business in particular is implementing it.
Microsoft’s Digital Transformation Journey
Whilst Digital Transformation is common amongst businesses, being successful at it is another story.
Helen Fanucci, Customer Success Sales Leader at Microsoft provided some fantastic insight as a Keynote speaker at a gds event.
Fanucci highlights that success in Digital Transformation goes beyond simply embracing technology, but it all comes down to business leadership.
“Sales leadership, business leadership are really key indicators for success of digital transformation projects, and it has implications for sellers,” Fanucci says.
How Microsoft Uses Business Leadership to Implement Digital Transformation
Listen to feedback
An insight that Fanucci provides is that whilst it is great to stay ahead of the curve, your B2B customers may not be able to keep up with the rate of change.
Therefore, it is important to listen to your clients and create pathways for them to provide feedback.
Fanucci spoke about her previous role as the Global Sales Leader at Windows, where the product lifecycle of Windows 10 was reduced from the traditional 10 years to 18 months.
This was to remain competitive with the likes of Apple and Google. However, she found that many of Microsoft’s customers couldn’t update their operating systems in time.
“I started getting calls from sellers saying we just can’t move fast enough to update our operating system on our devices.”
Consequently, Microsoft extended the product lifecycle to listen to the needs of the market.
Fanucci went on to state that in this instance, the sales teams were invaluable in providing that pathway for feedback.
“Your sellers have unique insights into the competition, products and what may make your company more competitive.”
Establish trust
Fanucci highlighted the importance of acting consistently over time and connecting eco systems to establish trust.
In particular, Fanucci stated that while data breaches and cyber-attacks can happen, it’s how companies react and address those issues that can solidify this trust.
“That builds trust with customers, partners and trust with your own internal sellers,” Fanucci says.
When introducing its cloud-based product, Office 365, Microsoft had to introduce a new sales methodology as privacy and security became of concern.
In a recent closed door roundtable discussion, C-suite executives highlighted that zero trust, data security and threats still pose a challenge in organisations.
See the top insights from the roundtable in our Vodcast below:
Another modern threat comes from the rise in Deepfakes. These use software to replicate business leaders’ voices to influence employees and the public.
Microsoft is one of many companies that are now having to develop tools to detect these threats.
We delve deeper into this threat in a recent article, Friend or Foe, The Truth Behind Deepfake Business.
Culture is key
Fanucci states that if you want your sales team to do their best work, business leaders need to actively execute culture.
The goal here is to make your employees feel valued and Fanucci highlights that Microsoft have incorporated a lot of culture changes to facilitate this.
“Without changing behaviors and being able to do and think differently it’s really hard to move quickly as an organization.”
Fanucci emphasized that Microsoft focus on 3 things to change its culture:
- Growth Mindset– moving from a ‘know it all’ culture to a learn it all culture.
- Diverse and Inclusive– In order to come up with diverse ideas and create the best products, you need diverse people.
- Reinforce– The new culture needs to be reinforced by leaders within the business often.
Lastly, it’s important for organizations to communicate internally and externally.
“Communication leads to trust, and trust leads to collaboration and collaboration leads to innovation,” Fanucci says.
When you continue to communicate, listen and trust you can help guide your company through Digital Transformation.
Insight from Mckinsey supports Fanucci’s view. Jacques Bughin Director of the McKinsey Global Institute states that in order to achieve successful Digital Transformation, you need a digital culture.
Mckinsey conducted a study to identify the best aspects of culture to eliminate bottlenecks and enable Digital Transformation.
This was broken down into 3 areas:
- Support from the top
An active CEO or a Chief Digital Officer to oversee all digital activity will help to drive transformation forward. Leaders should shift from a top-down approach to becoming more of a coach, supporting digital implementation throughout the business. Check out our article on Digital Leadership to find out more. - Remove silos
By creating cross-functional teams to encourage interaction and collaboration, this will eliminate a detachment from internal innovation teams and customer needs. - Avoid risk aversion
Don’t be too scared to take risks, however it’s important to still remain cautious. A great way to take risks but in a cautious way is to run a series of small scale ‘experiments’ to test new digital changes.
“Companies standing still are the ones that lose the most from digital disruption”
-Jacques Bughin director of the McKinsey Global Institute
The Future of Digital
An important aspect of Digital Transformation is looking ahead to new technologies that may enable you to achieve your future business goals.
Thankfully we’ve explored what the next 18 years are set to look like in the world of digital for you.
Find out more about Blockchain, The Metaverse and AI advancements in our article, 2023 and Beyond, What’s Next For Digital Tech.
Key takeaways
To recap, Digital Transformation is something businesses need to adopt. However, its success is dependent upon the leaders within an organisation.
Taking Microsoft’s Digital Transformation Journey as an example, executives should:
- Listen to feedback from customers
- Establish trust when it comes to digital security
- Instil and reinforce a digital culture
About us
GDS Group hosts experts to help experts. We strive to provide an environment for our attendees that enables them to confidently lead their companies through major transformation projects.
For information on upcoming events, view our Technology Summits and Executive Events.
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