The post-COVID economy is a digital-first economy. Customers and employees prefer to engage digitally and transact online. Enterprises have no option but to shore up their digital capabilities. They must invest in the latest digital technology and upgrade the software to enable seamless remote work.

Implementing new technology is difficult though. The enterprise and the workforce have to go through the pangs of change. They must unlearn old concepts, shed obsolete systems, and embrace the new. Success depends on effective digital leadership who can seamlessly orchestrate digital transformation efforts.

A competent digital leader has all the qualities of a good leader and the added digital fluency.

1. Strategic alignment of IT with business

Digital leadership is conventional leadership plus leveraging digital assets, to attain business goals. Digital leaders harness technology to make the business more resilient and responsive. They:

• Visualize strategies and plan new technology adoption, syncing with the overall business strategy.
• Analyze data to make insightful data-driven decisions. Digital leaders are especially adept in Big Data analytics. They use Big Data to target high-value customers, and extract other relevant business intelligence.
• Create workflows and business processes to roll out new products and services quickly.
• Encourage innovation to enable the enterprise to stand out from the competition.

2. Provisioning the right resources

Enterprises face a fragmented digital landscape today. Different departments and teams need various digital tools to excel at work. In today’s age of rapid tech advancement, such tools keep changing. An effective digital leader understands the needs of different teams and provides the right tool at the right time. Good digital leaders understand the nuances of the working of each tool and are adept at the practical implementation of these tools. They also factor in extraneous considerations, such as the ability of the enterprise to invest in new tools.

Best-in-class digital leaders:

• Ensures the optimal use of resources, such as cloud resources, software licenses, and other digital assets.
• Ensures the new technology gels in with the existing stack.
• Identifies where the business lacks digital skills and works to improve digital capabilities in such areas.
• Strengthen digital collaboration options of their companies. For instance, digital leaders take the lead to enable seamless remote work.
• Integrate security into the technology stack. Digital leaders identify the best security approaches. This may include advanced network monitoring, encryption, or zero trust models.

3. Implementing software right

One of the major objectives of going digital is to boost employee productivity and enterprise efficiency. The tools provided should be up to achieving such goals. Even the best software may falter if implemented haphazardly.

Without effective digital leadership, the enterprise often struggles to roll out software correctly.

Effective digital leadership:

• Takes care of the nitty-gritty of software implementation to ensure glitch-free working. The software becomes a powerful tool to do the job better, not a jarring obstruction.
• Integrates the new software with other enterprise software for seamless data transfer. Efficiency depends on the seamless flow of information across the enterprise. For instance, a field service software needs data from the CRM and accounts for optimal functioning.

4. Develop a digital culture

One of the critical responsibilities of a digital leader is to shape the digital culture of the enterprise. The default tendency among the workforce is to resist technology. Successful tech adoption depends on overcoming such resistance. Digital leaders have their tasks cut out to:

• Convince the rank and file of how information-sharing benefits them and the enterprise.
• Ensure enterprise-wide transparency. The effectiveness of digital systems depends on access to information. Piece-meal access to data distorts analytics and gives incomplete or even wrong information to the end customer.
• Eradicate silos. Most enterprise systems grow organically. Several departments set up shadow IT, which soon become entrenched as disjointed and opaque systems. Other factors, such as office politics, power equations, and traditional patterns of work, lead to the formation of silos. Silos rarely go hand-in-hand with digital business models. Digital leaders have to redraw workflows, to eradicate silos. At the same time, they have to ensure that sensitive information remains out of bounds.
• Make the rank-and-file employees aware of security risks, and embrace security best practices. Negligent users cause security breaches. Security tools cannot prevent cyber breaches if careless users allow entry to threat actors.

5. Proactive people leadership

A good digital leader is an excellent coach, guide, and mentor for all things digital. They remain updated on the latest technologies and lead from the front.

Key focal areas for digital areas include:

• Offering team members the support, resources, and information needed for effective performance.
• Spreading digital literacy. Reinvented digital-centric business models offer great potential but are also disruptive. The rank-and-file employees need competence in basic digital skills. The digital leader develops targeted training interventions to equip the employees with the basic digital skills, and make digital models workable.
• Having a clear vision to onboard the workforce and secure their commitment to digital transformation.

6. Boost enterprise revenue

All businesses operate with finite resources. The C-suite takes investment decisions depending on profitability and financial viability. It is not enough if a new technology is good. The technology should also make sense financially for the enterprise. Consider an investment in new field service software that speeds up resolution time. But if the business has to take a heavy loan for the same, the loan repayments may offset the gains.

A successful digital leader:

• Strives to optimize existing assets, through upgrades and other tweaks, before going in for a disruptive change. If a change becomes inevitable. The digital leader convinces the rank and file and the top management of the inevitability of change.
• Quantifies the benefits of new technology adoption and makes cost-benefit analysis. For instance, before upgrading the field service management suite, the digital leader will quantify key metrics such as an increase in first-time resolution rates and asset use ratio.

The 2021 Accenture study “Scaling Enterprise Digital Transformation” reveals a widening gap between companies that invest in digital assets, training, and strategies and companies that do not do so. Leaders who invested in digital transformation had 5x greater revenue growth rate than others. The future belongs to digital leaders.

Digital leadership can make or break a company. Influential digital leaders deliver competitive advantage. They allow start-ups and traditional laggards to leapfrog the competition and traditional behemoths. Digital leaders help these companies adapt to the new ways and retain market dominance.