psd hosted a breakfast meeting at our Queens St. head office for over 30 executives who wanted to understand & debate how to approach digital transformation in their organisations.

The topic of Digital Transformation is clearly one which has been a challenge for most organisations. Some companies have embraced digital early as a route to grow or disrupt; others have been slower to change and in some cases are just beginning to plan the changes they are going to make.

The breakfast was a great opportunity for guests from a wide range of industries to understand the backdrop to digital transformation and discuss a number of proven strategies to identify the most effective route to change.

It was clear that there is not a one size fits all approach and companies’ approaches differ greatly depending on their size, sector and the drivers for change.

The topic of Digital Darwinism brought much debate with examples of companies which were early adopters of digital and had benefited from this through to those who had already missed the opportunity and indeed no longer existed.

There were a number of common factors across those companies that had thrived as a result of embracing digital with one of the key factors being the need for senior sponsorship to drive through change. There was a strong feeling from the assembled audience that without executive ownership at board level the barriers to change were sometimes insurmountable.

It was an impactful presentation which prompted a great deal of debate and led to a number of our guests remaining with us to discuss the different challenges they were facing.

I would like to thank Digital Works for their presentation and all our guests for their input. We have been fortunate to receive excellent feedback and will be arranging a second breakfast in June for those who were unable to attend in May.

The topics covered during the session:

An overview of the market dynamics complex challenges business’ face responding to the opportunities / threats of digital.
An understanding of how to approach digital transformation and some of the questions that leaders need to ask themselves.
An appreciation of the challenges and progress of the UK’s digital transformation and your company’s current situation.
An understanding of how other industries and sectors are approaching digital transformation and innovation.

Event Partners

Digital works Consulting are a leading specialist consultancy focused on digital transformation working with both mature and high growth businesses affected by the pace and complexity of digital and behavioral change. Their clients include: Mastercard, Royal Mail, Ooredoo, Cereal Partners, CPP, Virgin Media, Ebay, Paypal, Kalixa and Jaguar LandRover.

Learning Points

The session ran well past the 1 hour mark as the debate was lively & many great learning points were shared:
Digital strategy has to be defined at the very top of the organisation & the vision needs to be communicated to all levels many times
Must be an appetite for risk, fail often but fail small
It’s not about the technology at all! It’s about the end goal & the stakeholders
Getting the right people into the right roles is key to a successful transformation project, retrain / re-skill or replace.

Comments from delegates

Thanks for organizing such a great and successful event! I’d love to be included in the future events as well.

I very much appreciated the invite. Good debate & a complex topic, well presented.

I was impressed by Sid / Richard and thought it was a stimulating session. It certainly laid out the broad transformation scope/challenge/opportunity well!