Customer-focused strategy more key than digital transformation hype

Digital transformation is no savior

In tech marketing, digital transformation has become synonymous with staying alive by purchasing the latest technology a vendor is hawking. But survival does not require a metamorphosis, and new products do not guarantee success. After all, technology is only a tool that helps a company carry out its strategy to win and up-sell customers.

Therefore, companies should ignore the marketing of fear and zero in on a customer-focused strategy. Knowing one's customers will steer business to new technology that helps to create products and services buyers demand.

Consumer companies, for example, have invested millions of dollars in software that lets them interact with buyers in their favorite virtual hangouts, such as Facebook and Twitter.

Mobile devices have become the PC alternative for many people, so companies have developed technology-supported sales strategies for smartphones and tablets.

Manufacturers are executing on a customer-focused strategy when making internet-enabled products that deliver services and gather valuable information on usage that can be applied to future upgrades. By 2020, half of the Global 2000 companies will have businesses dependent on their ability to create digitally enhanced products and services, according to IDC research released this week at the analyst firm's Directions conference in Silicon Valley.

Companies are also using advancements in technology to build extensions to their core businesses. Corporations have partnered in constructing clouds that provide industry-specific digital services. For example, General Electric has developed with partners an industrial analytics platform called Predix.

Those types of industrial collaborative clouds are turning onetime tech buyers into suppliers that compete with technology providers. By 2020, three-quarters of Global 500 companies will deliver digital services through industrial clouds, according to IDC.

Enterprises worldwide will spend $2.1 trillion by 2019 on technology and services that help them adapt their businesses to trends like mobility, cloud and big data analytics, IDC predicted. All this activity represents evolutionary changes in business that keeps core principles intact, while shaping strategies to reach customers and boost revenues.

Instead of worrying about digital transformation, companies should attack these heady times with fresh ideas and not get distracted by the tech industry's scare tactics to drive sales.