How are you Digitizing Your Company's Capabilities?

Online food orders placed by McDonald’s customers (about 64 million per day!) go directly to a digital service that routes them to the correct restaurant. Restaurants receive the digital orders at the optimal time based on the geolocation of the delivery drivers. McDonald’s digital capability requires no interaction or coordination between restaurants and the various digital channels. This capability includes physical assets (deep fryer equipment and kitchen display systems) and human labor (cooks and food delivery handlers) along with software. Moreover, this capability allows McDonald’s to enter new markets within 24 hours.

Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria, S.A (BBVA) offers its customers Accounts API, a digital asset that exposes customers’ account and transactional data to internal designers of BBVA’s digital experiences (e.g., web and smartwatch apps) as well as external third-party providers upon customer request. BBVA also offers its customers Auto Loan, which enables car dealers to close sales efficiently without requiring customers to visit any BBVA branch. It also offers Mortgages API to enable home financing and Checkout Financing to enable buying products either online or in physical stores.

Researcher Gabriele Piccoli shared these examples from his report, “Digital Resources and the Agile Organization,” in discussions with Advanced Practices Council members. These examples allowed Advanced Practices Council members, all senior technology and data executives from companies in a wide range of industries, to develop solutions to their challenges and opportunities. One member conceived of developing a digital capability strategy in pharmaceutical laboratories; another in specialty building materials distribution.

Piccoli explained that identifying digital capability strategies may be the first step to gaining agility and execution speed, but it’s far from the last. Successful execution may require changes in business architecture (self-standing digital resources, product vs. project mentality); IT capabilities (digital resources orchestration, monitoring, and creation skills); and technology (digital infrastructure, refactoring of monolithic applications, specialized tools).

Companies intent upon increasing their agility, responsiveness, and execution speed are beginning to embrace digital resources. Since opportunity favors the prepared, Advanced Practices Council members were eager to adopt digital resources strategies to maintain and gain competitive advantage.