All in digital e book_v1.1

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Why to read this book
This book is intended to give the bird’s eye view of the digital world with digital
economy and also to give the insight for the strategic approach towards digital
transformation. It is observed that many times the technology projects are
executed with a narrow perspective and shallow domain understanding. The
narrow approach and lack of consideration for business eco system often restrict
the realization of potential business benefits. To bridge that gap this book will help
in understanding the big picture of digital world, enabling business innovation for
enterprises and achieve the operational excellence leveraging the digital
technologies.
This book will be useful for business leaders, managers and also for management
and technology students. The book has two parts where Part A will be very useful
in giving the bird’s eye view of emerging digital world, digital economy and relevant
digital disruptions. Thus the Part A helps in better understanding of the context.
The Part B is more useful for business leaders leading the innovation,
transformation initiatives and digital strategy professionals.

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EIGHT THINGS THIS BOOK WILL HELP YOU TO ACHIEVE
Understand the impact of disruptions on industry segments, economy and society
in general
Know various disruptive models
Assess the emerging opportunities in digital world
Develop innovative business model in structured way with digital technology
Know the key components of digital economy
Define the digital strategy for digital transformation
Build the digital enterprise
Select the appropriate digital technology solution

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Foreword
In this age of intense competition, market disruptions and ever-changing
technologies, it is vital for businesses to have a winning digital strategy, which
contributes to a winning business strategy. It seems to me that two things in
particular have had and continues to have a tremendous impact on companies
and how business is conducted (along with tremendously altering and improving
customer experience): the internet and mobile technology. This book addresses
both these and gives a bird’s eye view of the digital world and helps managers
clarify important concepts in this area, visualize the impact of digital technologies
on their business, and gain a clear understanding about opportunities arising out
of digital disruptions. ‘All in Digital’, in fact, provides a strategic perspective on the
evolution of digital economy, digital disruptions, digital technologies, digital
marketing, emerging opportunities in the digital world, and digital transformation.
In addition, by elucidating how to build the digital enterprise, selecting the
appropriate digital technology solutions, and elaborating on digital innovation,
the book helps managers to be well on their way to understanding these concepts
and applying them within their companies, enabling them to gain a competitive
advantage.
With its lucid writing style and excellent graphics that guide the readers,
the book is easy to read and grasp. I am sure that mangers, business leaders and
students alike will find this book to be informative, helpful, and timely.
Deepa Aravind
Associate Professor of Management
Program Coordinator, MS (Management)
School of Business
City University of New York – College of Staten Island
22nd
September 2017

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To my loving and caring wife Renu
and
my lovely children Atharv and Ashvi

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Contents
Preface ..........................................................................................................................................................8
Concepts .......................................................................................................................................................9
Introduction ................................................................................................................................................12
1. What is Digital........................................................................................................................................15
Digital a business perspective.............................................................................................................15
Digital a technology perspective ........................................................................................................19
Summary.............................................................................................................................................22
2. Digital Disruption ...................................................................................................................................23
Disruptive models...............................................................................................................................25
Impact of digital disruptions...............................................................................................................28
Socio economic aspects of digital disruptions....................................................................................29
Summary.............................................................................................................................................31
3. Digital World ..........................................................................................................................................33
Emergence of digital world.................................................................................................................34
Digital made the difference................................................................................................................36
Summary.............................................................................................................................................39
4. Digital Economy .....................................................................................................................................41
Market Access.....................................................................................................................................43
Mode of exchange ..............................................................................................................................46
Infrastructure......................................................................................................................................50
Summary.............................................................................................................................................52
5. Digital Enterprise....................................................................................................................................54
Digital challenges................................................................................................................................56
Key considerations for designing the digital enterprise.....................................................................58
IT vs. Digital.........................................................................................................................................59
Summary.............................................................................................................................................60
6. Digital Strategy.......................................................................................................................................61
Strategic approach towards disruptions.............................................................................................62
Digital marketing strategy ..................................................................................................................65
Social marketing strategy ...................................................................................................................67
Summary.............................................................................................................................................69

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7. Digital Technology..................................................................................................................................72
Social Media Technology ....................................................................................................................74
Mobility Technology ...........................................................................................................................76
Cloud Technology ...............................................................................................................................78
Market Analytics.................................................................................................................................83
Internet of Things (IoT).......................................................................................................................88
Digital Application Integration............................................................................................................91
Summary.............................................................................................................................................93
8. Digital Innovation...................................................................................................................................95
Digital Innovation Framework ............................................................................................................96
Customer Focus ..................................................................................................................................98
Customer experience across digital channels...................................................................................100
Digital Operating Model ...................................................................................................................102
Industry specific digital innovation opportunities............................................................................106
Summary...........................................................................................................................................108

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Preface
In this age when the internet access with mobility has become an integral part of
our personal and professional life, we have become the consumer of information.
We are increasingly becoming dependent on digital technologies for social
collaboration, commerce, information and financial transactions. This digital
revolution has ignited the minds of industry leaders making them to think about
running their respective businesses in an innovative way.
We are passing through the phase of innovation blasts where the changes are very
frequent and unavoidable. Enterprise agility has become a key driving force for
sustenance and growth. The agility is needed to quickly align with the changing
industry dynamics and meet the exponentially increasing customer expectations.
The traditional IT is facing the challenge to fully cater the industry needs for
innovation and agility with enabling technology.
In such a scenario it’s very important that we have the bird’s eye view of entire eco
system and build upon existing technology stack or restructure the same for greater
agility and innovations. With that objective this book is written and it will give the
strategic perspective on digital disruptions, emerging opportunities in digital world,
evolution of digital economy, digital enterprise, digital transformation, digital
technologies and innovation.
A picture is worth a thousand word, with this guiding philosophy the book is rich in
graphical content which will help the readers to get more clear perspective on
complex issues.
I hope that the readers would effectively make use of this book to invigorate their
respective businesses or develop the innovative business models enabled by digital
technologies.
For any suggestion or feedback, the readers may like to send the mail at
j16a@hotmail.com
Anurag Johari
22nd
Sep 2017

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Concepts
AI : Artificial Intelligence is a way of making a computer, a
computer-controlled robot or a software to think
intelligently, in the similar manner as the intelligent humans
think.
Analytics : Business analytics refers to qualitative and quantitative
techniques and processes used to enhance productivity and
business gain.
API : An application program interface (API) is code that allows
two software programs to communicate with each other.
Authentication : It is a software process in which the credentials provided
are compared to those on file in a database of authorized
users’ , so that only authorized users only can access the
otherwise secured information.
Authorization : Authorization is a software process for granting or denying
access to a network resource.
Big data : This is a term that describes the large volume of data , both
structured and unstructured, that inundates a business on a
day-to-day basis.
Bitcoin : Bitcoin is the first decentralized peer-to-peer payment
network that is powered by its users with no central
authority or middlemen.
Blockchain : A blockchain is a public ledger of all Bitcoin transactions
that have ever been executed.
Cloud : This is an internet based platform providing delivery of
computing services like servers, storage, databases,
networking, software and analytics.
Cognitive
computing
: It involves self-learning IT systems which use data mining,
pattern recognition and natural language processing to
mimic the way the human brain works.
Digital : In the context of this book, digital is creating new business
frontiers, customer experience and also the capability to
execute the same.

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Digital
disruption
: The industry change that occurs when new digital
technologies and business models affect the value
proposition of existing goods and services.
Digital
Enterprise
: The organization that uses technology as a competitive
advantage in its internal and external operations along with
better customer experience.
Digital Strategy : A planned approach for achieving the larger business
objectives at enterprise, using digital technology and
providing uniform customer experience across the channel.
HTTPS : This is the secure version of HTTP, the protocol over which
data is sent between your browser and the website that you
are connected to.
IaaS : This is an instant computing infrastructure, provisioned and
managed over the Internet. It’s a form of cloud computing
that provides virtualized computing resources over the
Internet.
IoT : This refers to the inter-networking of physical devices,
vehicles, buildings, and other stuff embedded with
electronics, software, sensors, actuators, and network
connectivity which enable these objects to collect and
exchange data.
JSON : This is is a lightweight data-interchange format. It is easy for
humans to read and write. It is easy for machines to parse
and generate.
Lock in : This is a PaaS vendor created situation in which a customer
using a product or service cannot easily transition to a
competitor’s product or service.
Mobility : Enterprise mobility is the set of people, processes and
technology focused on managing mobile devices, wireless
networks, and other mobile computing services in a
business context.

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Notification : A push notification is a customized message or alert
delivered by a centralized server to an endpoint,
increasingly mobile device.
Omni channel : This is cross-channel business model that companies use to
improve their customer experience across channels.
PaaS : This is a technology platform allowing customers to
develop, run, and manage applications without the
complexity of building and maintaining the infrastructure,
which will be owned and managed by the cloud service
provider.
Personalization : Personalization is the practice of dynamically tailoring the
application or offerings specific to wants, needs or
preferences of each user.
RPA : This is an emerging form of clerical process automation
technology based on the notion of software robots or
artificial intelligence (AI)
SaaS : This is a software licensing and delivery model in which
software is licensed on a subscription basis and is centrally
hosted.
SOAP : This is a protocol specification for exchanging structured
information in the implementation of web services in
computer networks for data exchange in technology neutral
environment.
Social
commerce
: Social commerce is the use of social network(s) in the
context of e-commerce transactions.
Social media
listening
: This is the process of identifying and assessing what is being
said about a company, individual, product or brand on the
Internet.

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Introduction
The advent of smart phones in second decade of 21st
century has dramatically
altered the social behavior of individuals. The social media, which had already
become the main platform for social collaboration by the end of previous decade
itself, became a hot market place for products positioning and brand promotion
etc. E-commerce which was also a decade old gained the impetus with mobility
empowering the customers to order anytime and anywhere and also enabling field
force for delivery. The evolution of e-wallet with limited risk helped for its wider
adoption among the strata of the society which was keeping away from internet
banking. All these changes created an ideal environment for digital revolution.
Now when the adoptions of digital technologies have become a new normal in the
industry and the sizeable global population has become the ardent user of mobile
phones then the emerging digital world is a reality. The growth E commerce, digital
marketing, digital content and digital payment along with in the slow yet steady
acceptance of digital currency like Bitcoin etc., have created a digital economy in
this digital world. In this scenario the businesses cannot afford to remain isolated
from such changes. There is a need of digital strategy.
“Digital strategy is a planned approach for achieving the larger
business objectives at enterprise, using digital technology and
providing uniform customer experience across the channel.”
The digital disruption cannot be handled with marginal or incremental changes
within the enterprise and it requires a holistic approach for digital transformation.
However, with that approach several smaller steps can be taken in sequential
manner to complete the digital transformation processes. The digital strategy at
enterprise level will help in constructing a big picture of digital transformation and
help in keeping all small or large initiative aligned at enterprise level.
It must be kept in mind that the digital transformation requires a completely
different mindset and out of box thinking as this is very much different from the IT
enabled process automation. The aim of digital transformation is to make
transform the enterprise as digital enterprise.

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“A digital enterprise is an organization which leverages the digital
technology for competitive advantage, by solving internal and external
problems for better customer engagement and improved operational
efficiency, with higher profitability.”
To transform an existing enterprise into digital enterprise requires a strategic
approach which we will see in subsequent chapters. Before that we need to
understand the underlying concepts and context for better understanding of the
digital transformation strategy.

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1. What is Digital
Almost everyone is going digital but what does that mean? This is the question that
almost every digital expert does encounter now and then. The question can come
from business leaders or the people across the social spectrum. Interestingly there
are more diverse thoughts on the same than the concrete answer. Some business
executives think that digital is all about technology. Some others think that is a new
way of customer engagement ensuring their delight. For rest it represents some
kind of business model innovation. Such diverse perspectives and interpretations
often confuse the business leadership. These diverse perspectives reflect the lack
of aligned thinking and missing common vision in the direction where business
needs to go. This situation often misses the big picture for the leadership and often
results into multiple piecemeal initiatives. The piecemeal initiatives without a
larger strategy canvas depicting the big picture are usually completely
disconnected or largely incoherent. Such misguided efforts and resources lead to
missed opportunities, tardy progress, sluggish performance or non meaningful
start. The primary concern of the business leaders is not the academic debate about
the definition of digital but how the digital disruptions are going to affect their
business and how they can leverage the digital technology to tap the emerging
opportunities in the market space.
Digital a business perspective
Since business leaders are more interested in understanding the impact of digital
on the business and opportunities emerging out of digital disruptions, they are
keen to understand the business scenarios with big picture that what will be the
over all impact on their business and also the business scenarios where the digital
technologies can help them to exploit the emerging opportunities. This will require
the comprehensive review of their business operating model and analysis with
respect to digital disruptions. The scope of this comprehensive review should not
be confined to that what is there in the enterprise but should also be that what else
can be there in the enterprise. But all that can not be done without understanding
digital. Since there is no universally acceptable definition of digital, its advisable
that instead to getting stuck into academic debate on the definition of digital, it
would be more pragmatic to understand that what digital can do and how.

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Mckinsey1
has suggested that for be meaningful and sustainable understanding of
term digital, it should be seen less as a thing and more a way of doing things.
To make this suggestion more concrete they have given three attributes:
1. Creating new business frontiers in the business world
2. Execute a vision of customer experiences
3. Building capabilities that support the entire structure
Figure 1: Elements of digital a business perspectives
i. New business frontiers
Before embarking on the journey of going digital, the enterprises need to go into
self-discovery mode and explore the new business frontiers for themselves.
The enterprises need to be watchful about the changes happening within their
respective industry segment and their ecosystem. These changes can be political,
economy, social and technology relate. The new business frontiers can be in the
form of new products, geographical expansion, new delivery model, new resource
sharing model and a new trading model etc; or any combination of these. But
1 McKinsey Digital - (July 2015) http://www.mckinsey.com/industries/high-tech/our-insights/what-digital-really-
means

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each of them will require a change in existing operating model or will that require
a new one. Any idea to conceptualize a sustainable and growth oriented digital
operating model, will require some innovative thinking.
So being digital requires a comprehensive review of the way of doing business
and discover the new frontiers for value creation. The value creation can be
desired value within the offering or even perceived value in awareness and
acquiring the offering from customer perspective. The comprehensive analysis
will help in understanding the unmet customer needs, demands and
expectations.
For some companies the creation of new business frontiers can be exploring and
developing entirely new business in adjacent categories while for some others it
can be identifying the new value proposition or customer segments within
existing sector. In order to unlock the hidden value from growing sectors it
requires a leadership’s commitment for understanding of emerging opportunities
or threats from the deeper impact of developments happening within
marketplace.
ii. Vision of customer experience
This goes back to the traditional rethinking that how to leverage the new
capabilities to serve the customers better or in alternative way. Traditional
wisdom insists to use the customer feedback, surveys, customer queries and
customer service logs etc. to read the customer mind and assess their experience
during customer journey. But in digital age the customer experience is not limited
to the offering meeting the customer’s needs and demands. This is also expanding
to information and knowledge about the offering, ease of information access,
query resolution, evaluation of offering, other customer’s reviews and customer
support service. The analysis of the transaction data is able to give much deeper
insight about the customers and their buying behavior. This deep insight can be
effectively used to make more personalized offering and also running a highly
personalized customer awareness campaign for very refined customer segments.
The customer experience is effectively covering all aspects of multi-channel
customer interaction with the company. This is embedded with the belief of
mapping the customer touch points with best customer experience during

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interaction across the channels. This also requires extensive and innovative
thinking that how the digital capabilities can design and deliver the best
omnichannel customer experience. All customer touch points should be carefully
analyzed not only to discover customer needs, demands and expectations but
also that what else can be learned about the customers with the help of
transactional data. The transaction data is the data that will be generated within
digital operating model. There will be a future need of that outcome of
transactional data analytics.
Here it must be clearly understood that the above customer experience is not for
one off customer journey. It’s about the implementation of cyclic dynamics which
is continuously discovering, evolving and improving as per customer inputs,
products demand or customer loyalty with new business opportunities. Thus the
evolving customer experience must be embedded within the governance
framework of the company.
iii. Capability to support
The adoption of digital is not simply technology adoption. This will need the
change in mindset, change in way of thinking and managing the ideas of dealing
with disruptions. In the fast changing modern world, staying relevant and aligned
with market dynamics is a challenge. Yet that can be done if the enterprises are
proactively monitoring the market dynamics and planning accordingly.
There is a need of high agility within the enterprises. This element of digital is
more about the capability of the enterprise to be agile and fast with concrete and
meaningful implementation of the changes. The faster is the response to the
market dynamics, better will be the competitive position of the company.
The agility is all about the organization structure, collaborating and operational
processes and enabling technology. The digital capability is built on the
foundation of two elements.
1. Mindset
2. System and data architecture
Thus the above business perspective helps us to understand the digital as a way of
doing things in business. This explains that what can be done with digital and how

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that can be done. But here it would be equally important to understand the
technology perspective of digital because that acts as delivery vehicle for digital
business and marketplace.
Digital a technology perspective
The technology industry has largely accepted SMAC as the definition of digital.
SMAC stands for social (S), Mobile (M), Analytics (A) with big data and Cloud(C).
Now Internet of Things (IoT) has also been appended to that. Collectively these
technology components of digital have enabled the ‘Consumerization of IT’.
Figure 2 : Elements of digital as technology perspective
i. Social
This category of technology platform has become so prominent that no business
can afford to ignore it. Instead of considering it as a tool, we should understand the
need of the business to use the same. The digital business uses social media to
interact with the customers proactively and responsively. The customer journey
has the phases like Awareness, Engagement, Acquisition, Relationship and Loyalty.
The companies can share the posts on their new launch or upcoming offerings. This
will help them to proactively attract the customers even before the formal launch
of the offering. Similarly, social media discussion about existing offering will help

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the company to gauge the public perception and discovering the hidden market
needs. This will help them to improve the offering or design a new product to cater
the market demand. The social media platform works very effectively to interact
with the customers with a greater degree of personalization. Thus when the
company plan to use social platform to run their campaign then a multi-disciplinary
consideration must be given to overall customer journey and their experiences
rather than leaving it at the mercy of marketing and technology team.
ii. Mobile
Mobile has achieved the wider acceptance to access internet because of public
perception about mobile device is that it’s non-intrusive and non-interruptive. It
allows the people to go on with their real lives and it blends with their digital lives
in hassle free manner. The digital business can be carried normally along with our
own mundane affairs of the life rather than other type of business interaction or
transactions which impinge our real lives. The combo of social and mobile can be
seen as business collaboration and transactions without voice. This combo also
enables anytime anywhere business model.
iii. Analytics with big data
Analytics helps in performance monitoring of the business based on predefined
parameters. It helps in taking more informed decision and conduct business
scenario analysis. The analytics also helps in designing new offerings by giving the
deeper customer insight. Big data helps in gathering and analyzing the unstructured
data as well. We can get the sentiment analysis in statistical form based on inputs
received from social media feeds or the performance of various machine parts over
a period of time based on inputs received from IoT devices.
iv. Cloud
There may be different views on whether ‘Could’ is necessary part of digital. Up to
some extent, it is not. Yet there are lot of the tools and services involved in digital
which have unlocked the enormous business value as the part of cloud based
approach. Hootsuite, Azure and Cloudera etc. are the typical examples of the same.

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v. Internet of Things (IoT)
It's a concept that not only has the potential to impact how we live but also how
we work. This component of digital is a platform that enables the deployment of
applications which can deploy, monitor, manage and control the connected
devices.
Figure 3 : Internet of Things
Cisco IBSG suggested that the IoT can be viewed as network of networks and
suggested the above conceptual model2
. So with increasing number of devices per
person, there is the growing demand for their integration for easy and effective
management. The business can always find the innovative ways to use those
devices across the socio-economic spectrum like education, health, agriculture,
transport, infrastructure, defense, home, telecom, banking, insurance, surveillance
and so on.
Thus the reality is that IoT alone allows for endless opportunities and connections
to take place which many of them we cannot even think of or understand the
impact for present. Thus we can say that digital is not a technology buzzword in the
industry and in reality it’s a socio-economic change to define the business rules for
next decade or so.
2
Cisco IBSG April 2011

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Summary
 From business perspective the digital is
o Making new business frontiers
o Having a vision of customer experience
o Develop the cross functional capability to support
 From technology perspective the digital is
o Social media
o Mobility
o Analytics and Big data
o Cloud
o Internet of Things (IoT)
 Customer experience is about their needs and demands with respect to
offerings. The perception about the enterprises ability to engage and serve
them in hassle free manner.
 The digital operating model is
o organization structure
o Processes framework
o Data architecture
o Governance model
o Digital technology stack

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2. Digital Disruption
The second decade of 21st
century saw the rapid adaption of smart phones with the
deeper penetration of internet services to even remote areas and among mobile
people. These phones are no longer a device for mere telephonic communication
but also a mode to access information along with handling business transactions.
The rapid adaption of smart phone has reached to the level where the life without
a mobile seems to be unthinkable. This particular technology adoption alone has
created a massive market for digital business in the space of advertising, media,
banking, financial services, tourism, utility, education, healthcare, e-governance,
telecom, transport and so on. The mobile applications have given the boost to
mobility thus enabling the people with anywhere anytime business across multiple
channels. Ease of business transaction has not only changed the contours of the
traditional business model but also innovative many alternative business models.
Technology advancements are further raising the customer expectations in term of
further innovation as well as quality of service which eventually translate into
business innovation and operational excellence. The technology adoption is so fast
that any disruption seems to be outdated within a span of 3-4 years. Some may call
it as volatility while some other might see it as ever growing opportunity but the
fact is that neglecting those disruptions will adversely impact the business.
Another trend is proved power of social media. Emergence of social media has
provided a platform of information exchange with no boundary or constraints. Our
socio-economic collaboration and transactions have drastically been impacted in
the manners which were unimagined in last decade of 20th
century. If internet
made the world as global village then social media made is a close community
where advocacy and influencers have challenged the traditional promotional
strategies. Unlike mainstream media it’s not a one-way mass communication
platform thus the individual posts can influence the opinion of thousands of people.
This is another disruption to handle with. The social media is like a two edge sword
for the companies. If they use social media, then every dissatisfied customer using
social media platform may adversely influence many other potential buyers and if
they avoid using social media then they are at risk of skipping a large market
segment. Moreover, personalization of offering and context sensitive sales pitch

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multifold the market potential and branding opportunity. The wider industry view
is that the enterprises should see the social media as an opportunity rather than
any threat.
We need to understand that the digital disruptions do not impact the enterprises
in a narrow sense. The power of digital disruption is so much that it rather impacts
the whole enterprise in term of people, processes and technology. Sometimes it
creates even altogether a new operating model. Digital disruptions do make end to
end change in how we do the business. Digital disruption induced changes in the
enterprise do make impact beyond enterprise and alter the entire eco system. Thus
the new eco system forces other legacy players also that how to become a digital
player and remain relevant and competitive. The digital strategy can be ‘Disruption
for innovation’ or ‘Disruption to defend’ based on situation and constraints. To
achieve the enterprise level goals productivity and efficiency are key parameters.
The productivity can be harnessed with mobility and employee empowerment
whereas the efficiency can be improved through social collaboration leveraging the
social media.
Digital disruptions are not limited to mobility or social media only and Internet of
Things (IoT) is another area which has enormous potential to disrupt the way
business is being done. Compounded with analytics it further boosts the power to
impact the business landscape. The IoT is a key driving force for digital disruption
with enormous potential to innovate and create disruptive technology services,
products and even business models. The only consideration is that how to monetize
the IoT. Unlike pipeline type supply chain kind of simple model, the IoT based model
may be more complex and revenue sharing in nature. With the emergence of smart
cities and digital factories kind of concepts IoT is expected to be more integral part
of digital disruption. There will be more number of sensors and devices generating
larger volume of data and analytics opening new opportunities for the enterprises.
Managing the flow of data from IoT, its storage, security and monetization of the
same are the key challenges of digital disruptions.

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Disruptive models
Despite the challenges digital disruption is going to revolutionize the business with
business model innovation. Now the challenge before business leaders is that how
to move from running IT more efficiently to effectively driving the disruptive
changes in the business. There are many business models evolved around digital
disruptions and some of them are as follow.
Figure 4: Digital Disruptive Models
i. Freebie Model
Google, Facebook, Twitter etc. are the classic example of this model. This model is
based on the premise that the user is not paying for the product usage but the
user’s personal data and attention seeking advertising are harvested by offering
those free products / services usage that captures their data or attention through
advertising. Later on this data is commoditized and sold to other interested
customers in the industry.

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ii. Market Place Model
Uber, Google Play Store, iTunes, Flipkart, eBay and AirBnB etc. are the examples of
this model. Digital disruption for this model brings buyers and sellers of the
products / services together at a digital market place. The platform provider for
digital market place generates the revenue by means of transaction fees,
commission or membership fees etc.
iii. Freemium Model
LinkedIn, Dropbox and Spotify are some of the examples of freemium model of
digital disruption the users do pay for some basic products features / services
through their personal data or eyeball attention (advertising). But enhanced
features or full product / services usage will require premium charge. This model is
effective only where the marginal cost of extra units and distribution are lower than
advertising revenue or sale of personal data.
iv. Hyper Market Model
This is a variation of Market Place Model and here digital disruption is leveraged
on the power of the brand and scale. This model is generally adopted by very
powerful brands to crush the competition usually by selling at a price below the
cost. The selling price marginally below the cost makes it unsustainable for the
competition at relatively smaller scale. Amazon and Apple are the classic example
of this model.
v. Subscription Base Model
Apple Music and Netflix are typical example of this model. This model deals with
the products and services which are generally purchased ad-hoc but with digital
disruption those products or services are locked in and allowed the usage for a
subscription fees.
vi. Pay As You Use Model
The pay as you use model is a disruption to usual business by providing the access
to the goods and services which are traditionally available through purchase. This
is based on sharing the offerings (house, capital goods and car etc.) instead of

27
owning or renting for exclusive use. In this disruptive model those items are lender
to the borrowers for a commission. Zipcar, Peerbuy, AirBnB are the examples of
this model.
vii. The On Demand Model
This disruption is about monetizing the time and also selling the instant access for
a premium. This model targets the customers who have paucity of time and they
are ready to pay a premium on the offering on demand. Thus the instant access or
service delivery is the key for the success of this model.
App based cab operators like Ola, Uber along with app based freelance labor
provider Taskrabbit etc. are the classic example of this model.
viii. The User Experience Model
This model is meant for the high end customer segment which is ready to pay
premium for superior experience. Digital disruptions in this model are meant to
enhance the user experience. Tesla and Apple are using this model for their
offerings.
ix. Pyramid Model
This model is built around with numerous channel partners who work as reseller or
service provider or implementation partner for a commission. Microsoft, Oracle,
Dropbox and Amazon are using this model.
x. The Eco System Model
This model is about selling the interlocking of products and services within products
suits which enhance the value if more is purchased. This model makes the
consumer more dependable on entire eco system rather than on any individual
product or service. Google and Apple are using this model for digital disruptions.
Thus the above disruptive models are the abstraction of emerging new business
models across industries. Any new idea can be quickly scrutinized to identify the
most suitable model for the idea.

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Impact of digital disruptions
The rapid advances in computing power, connectivity, mobility, storage capacity
along with digital technologies have opened the new avenues of the opportunities
in term of operational excellence, diversification and business innovation etc.
However, during the hype cycle of technology adoption the speculation about the
impact of the disrupting technology suffers from extreme optimism or pessimism.
In 1930s the jet propulsion technology was developed and several countries were
experimenting with the then emerging rocket technology. Some of them were even
enthusiastically experimenting with use of rockets to deliver the mails and parcels.
The US in late 1950s even tried mail delivery via cruise missiles which is a comic
proposition by modern standards. Thus the enterprises must avoid over excitement
or dire impacts of digital technologies but harness the potential with operational
excellence or business innovation.
The enterprises should not only cautiously evaluate the potential impacts of
technology disruptions but also remain vigilant during their adoption within
respective industry segments. If we can look back past two decades then we can
see the multiple waves of disruptions which have completely changed the business
landscape of industries like music, film, video rental, publishing and travel etc.
However, the difference in the situations two decades before and now is that the
changes are much more accelerated than never before. The digital platforms are
enabling greater utilization of assets like vehicles, houses, public facilities like
parking and capital etc. by making them shared service. The users can pay only as
they are not holding the assets in dedicated manner. On the other hand, it also
become more profitable for the actual owner who give his assets on rent as per
user need as he can serve more number of customers. But all this is possible only
with the digital technologies where the customer and the service provider can
collaborate anytime and anywhere. These digital technologies are also enabling the
research for innovative offerings along with greater personalization resulting in
greater customer satisfaction. The enterprises are under tremendous pressure to
maintain the pace with ever exceeding customer expectations.

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In general, the digital platforms largely empower the customers more than past.
They can share the views on the products and services; influence the opinion of the
other buyers while making the informed decision about their own purchase. The
digital platforms have also created a virtual boundary less market place giving the
access to a much larger and dispersed customer segment. The digital platforms are
also impacting the buying behavior and pattern by using innovative and disruptive
positioning and real time intelligence.
Socio economic aspects of digital disruptions
The invention having the potential to cater the market demand result in successful
business innovation through technology disruption else the business follows the
evolution path. For example, the invention of airplane had the potential to create
the market demand for air transport and travel. This invention was done with pure
scientific approach. However, the disruption with more reliable aviation technology
enabled the business innovation in the form of airlines and aerodromes. The
market demand is driven by the needs and also by the desire for some change. In
social context the preferences do change over the time yet many do not change
rapidly. The adoption of digital technology will grow depending on the pace of
collective changes in the business ecosystem that how the income grows, demand
generated and how the both further drive the investments. In current scenario the
digital disruptions have altered the market and competition. The difference
between manufacturing and services is declining because the design, pre and post
sales service part of production are increasingly being bundled as value added
components.
Digital disruptions are enabling the enterprises to outsource more of their
production. The households and marginal or non-market entities are getting
engaged in market economy by sharing the access to their under-utilized assets.
For examples short term accommodation and app based cabs are based on shared
economy model and with digital disruptions have made inroad to market and also
altered the competition. The digital technologies advancements in the areas, such
as sensors, IoT, machine learning are opening up the areas like intelligent process
automation (IPA) or robotic process automation (RPA). But this area can be better

30
tapped with due acknowledgements of the limitations that perception, intuition,
social intelligence, traditional wisdom, thinking and creativity etc. can not be
automated as of now.
The digital technologies can enable the government to overcome the information
asymmetry while is often a common justification for regulation. This will help in
reducing the restrictiveness with regulations intended for consumer protection.
However, this will largely depend on the confidence in the information based on
quality and integrity of the data generated by using digital technologies. The pace
of adoption of digital technologies will definitely impact the regulations pertaining
to privacy, data security and fraud etc. This will require the comprehensive review
of existing regulations along with the need of new regulations.

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Summary
 Digital disruptions are
o Rapid changes in business and technology landscape
o Powerful social media has become the mass communication platform
that no business can afford to avoid
o Making deep impact on not only overall enterprise buy entire eco system
 Disruptive models are
o Freebie model
o Market place model
o Freemium model
o Hyper market model
o Subscription based model
o Pay as you use model
o On demand model
o User experience model
o Pyramid model
o Eco system model
 Digital disruptions are offering many opportunities but there is need of careful
evaluation of impact before technology adoption

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 The enterprises are under tremendous pressure to exceed the customer
expectation which requires continuous innovation in operational or business
model
 Digital disruptions are altering the market boundaries and competition thus
there is a need to make the enterprise more agile

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3. Digital World
In ancient time the society was largely confined to smaller pockets as travel and
communication were the biggest challenges for the common people. There used to
be long distance travels by land or rivers and sea voyages etc. but mainly for the
purpose of trade, military expedition or pilgrimages but only in the form of convoys
and common people without having the common motive with the convoy were not
the part of the same. There used to be individual travelers also who used to travel
in the quest of learning, education of spiritual fulfillment. But in the course of travel
all type of the travelers used to remain disconnected from their own society.
Figure 5: Evolution of communication and transactions
There was no concept of mobility communication with far off society. The only
possible option was sending the messengers. Even for communication between
two stationary people, remote signaling methods like smoke, drum and trumpet
etc. were used for synchronous communication while pigeons were used to send
the letters which was the early version of asynchronous communication. But there
was no transaction was possible in above scenario and it was done only in person.
Except the use of pigeon carrying the letter there was no other mean to convey

34
detailed specific message using the smoke, trumpets or drums as signals.
Moreover, the range of communication was only a few kilometers until the signals
were retransmitted to next recipients.
Then industrial revolution created the market opportunities in far off areas which
needed efficient, reliable and secure communication, logistic and financial
transactions. This market needs were catered with Post offices, Telephone,
Telegram, Railways and Banks etc. The remote payments became possible with
Money orders, Cheque and Demand drafts etc. whereas the goods could be
delivered as parcel or freight booking. Despite evolution with time in
communication area like fax, e-mail all of the above mechanism could not cater the
emerging market needs for anytime and anywhere and real time transactions.
Emergence of digital world
If the internet made the world as global village then the penetration of internet
armed with digital technologies have made the whole society as digital. The
emergence of social media has marginalized the mainstream media big data
analytics enabled us to scan the world wide online and social media both. Now
there is a boundary less market for offering the great opportunities. Many digital
education programs with high quality digital contents are available. E-commerce
has emerged as a credible alternative of retail. The creativity in art and graphics
space has received tremendous thrust leveraging on digital technologies. The music
and video industry has completely become digital. Global expansion and adoption
of mobile has made the access to digital technologies very handy as it does not
require any other paraphernalia to access the digital platform. The communication,
collaboration, commerce, trading and other business transactions are available in
anytime and anywhere mode. This has completely changed the business
collaboration among the internal as well as external stakeholders.
Thus the digital world is getting expanded in almost all walks of life and there can
be multiple perspectives to the same. However, every view point will have only a
limited abstraction of the digital world. Nevertheless, a very high level abstraction
of the world is given below.

35
Figure 6: Characteristics of digital world
The growth of IT has led to the Consumerization of information technology and
that is called digital. As mentioned above the digital world has following features.
i. Personalized customer experience
The digital offerings are giving the personalized customer experience to the
consumers. The personalization of offering is not generic in nature but very
specific to individual customer’s need. For example, an E-commerce platform
recommending the books to avid book buyers or a travel portal recommending a
tour package as per seasonal need and destination search.
ii. Omni channel
To improve the customer experience across communication channels the
offerings are made omnichannel where the customer switching over from one
channel to another does not lose the earlier interaction and the whole process
remains seamless. For example, if a customer using a web portal at laptop and
add one offering to the cart but does not check out. Later he uses his mobile

36
application then he can see the same cart with added package there itself and
he does not need to re-select the product and proceed with the purchase.
iii. Targeted Marketing & Sales
In digital world the marketing is highly focused and each offering is pitched to a
highly refined customer segment as it improves the sales efficiency. The highly
refined customer segmentation is done as the data captured from social media,
banking transactions, travel portals, E-commerce portals and Google analytics
etc. The above data with along with basic data like age, gender and location etc.
gives a deep insight about customers buying pattern, likings and preferences
which help in refining the customer segments and designing the new offerings.
iv. Product and business innovation
As mentioned above the analytics of customer data and transaction data along
with social listening and sentiment analysis provides an opportunity to decipher
the emerging customer needs and also to understand the potential of area of
interests in addition to monitoring the market trends. This information can be
effectively used for product and business innovation leveraging on digital
technologies.
Digital made the difference
Since the market landscape has changed and the traditional market boundaries
have banished the market player have been adopting different strategies to tap the
market potential. There are new ways to deal with digital age customer
management cycle which extends to Awareness, Attract, Engage, Acquire, Service
and Care. In addition to that the abundance data is being generated which can open
the gold mines of opportunities provided it’s rightly captured and skillfully
interpreted to take the decision. This real time data analysis is helping in
determining more refined customer segments, deciphering the customer needs for
each segment and to make more personalized offerings to each segment with
context sensitive advertising, so that it makes more deep impact on customer’s
mind and influence the buying decision. For examples while booking a ticket for
international travel a personalized offering for travel insurance with auto

37
computed premium will pop up and that is the best moment to make a sales pitch
and influence the buying decision. For customer engagement personalized e-mails
for specific offering
E-commerce is giving a tough competition to retail segment by offering the digital
version for retailer’s performance offering parameters like Availability, Visibility,
Education and Recommendation. In E-commerce the availability of the product is
handled by updated product catalog, visibility is though context sensitive
personalized offering or advertising, education is handled through features /
specifications comparison with competing products. The recommendation in
digital world is handled through user’s reviews and also by likes at social media.
The mobility has also altered the traditional sales and distribution model and given
the birth to direct B2B model between the manufacturer and retailers. The retailers
can directly register with the manufacturer and place the order. The manufacturer
will cater the order in collaboration with logistic partners. This model will help in
better tapping of the customer segment which is not so E commerce friendly.
Moreover, bypassing the layers of Distributors and Dealers will not only improve
the margin which can be split between the retailer and manufacturer but also
minimize the payment cycle.
The digital technologies have enabled the real time data capturing. This will help in
developing Smart Cities and operational excellence in Hi Tech, Manufacturing,
Telecom and Automotive sectors. The sensors can stream the real time data using
IoT platforms for further processing and analysis. This will help in analyzing the real
time data for monitoring and management of pollution, traffic congestion and
other civic amenities in smart cities. A smart car or smart home will give the users
a better remote control through mobile phone. In automotive segment the sensors
can be integrated for data capturing pertaining to performance of critical
components and later the same data can be used for preventive maintenance,
insurance premium computing or even design improvement. The IoT will also help
in using the self-driving cars. The digital technology offers a great opportunity in
the areas like process manufacturing where the manufacturing processes can be
automated with integrated and centralized process parameters monitoring and
control. In effect this will also help in better production planning and supply chain

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for consumable items. In the area of telecom the digital technologies can help the
operators in improving the assets utilization and the carriers can be benefitted with
revenue sharing model with all other businesses using IoT platforms for data
capturing from geographically scattered devices. Thus the modern digital world
offers following opportunities.
Figure 7: Digital opportunities
Thus the digital technologies are not contributing to the business models evolution
but have brought the revolution. Now conceptualization of digital enterprise does
not require any diagnostic and build a solution based on evolving functions, roles
and processes to efficiently operate the business. Now it requires completely out
of box thinking and designing a rather innovative operating model.

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Summary
 Digital world has
o Real time communication and transactions
o Boundaryless market, communication and transactions
o Virtual communities and social groups shaping the global opinions
 Internet made the global village then digital technologies have made digital
society
 Digital is Consumerization of Information Technology (IT)
 Digital market has following characteristics
o Personalized customer experience (CX)
o Omnichannel
o Targeted marketing and sales
o Product and business innovation
 There are the ways to engage the customers in Digital market
o Awareness
o Attract
o Engage
o Acquire
o Service
o Care

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 More refined customer segments can be defined with abundant transactional
data and near real time data analytics
 Digital world is offering the following opportunities
o Mobility
o Remote monitoring
o User experience
o Digital Marketing
o Digital enterprise
o Digital B2B
 Digital business does not require evolutionary approach and new digital
business requires innovation and out of box thinking

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4. Digital Economy
Digital technologies have been penetrating deeper our life on almost every day.
Technology enabled boundary less socio-economic collaborations have its
reflections on market, workforce and capital requirements. Now ordering the cab,
hotel booking, travel bookings, train status tracking, various payments, education
content, music and movies are available on mobile anytime and anywhere. People
can collaborate with the colleagues, friends and relatives using social media. On
social media they can like, share or update the status on specific offerings or
purchases. This will make other aware, influence or induce about those offerings.
This has created a boundary less society and market both.
Figure 8: Digital Eco System
The technological advancements facilitating the E commerce; business transactions
and service delivery have given the birth to a new type of economy. This economy
is built around the mobile workforce and customers making it virtual market place
enabled by digital payments. Innovations in digital space have been making
numerous business disruptions creating many new market opportunities. For
example, sentiment analysis based on social media feeds, social listening,

42
personalization, user experience, trend analysis and machine learning etc. are such
digital disruptions which are opening up new market opportunities.
Digital disruptions are also enabling the enterprises to improve operational
efficiencies. Social network has opened a new channel of customer interaction and
proactive identification of target customer segments. Every day we can notice one
or another new digital products and digitally enabled services. Digitally enabled m-
commerce has made many business transactions any time anywhere possible. All
these changes are shaping the digital contours of the economy. This is the evolution
of new kind of digital economy which will be driving the business growth for next
decade or possibly beyond. Deep penetration of mobile and social media in the
society offers a great poetical for the growth of digital economy. Any enterprise
ignoring this change in socio economic environment will be deprived of early bird
advantages. The digital economy is still in infancy stage as business models and
processes are evolving and best practices are yet to be identified. Nevertheless, the
potential of digital economy cannot be undermined and exponential growth in
adoption of digital technologies will provide the impetus to digital economy.
Figure 9: Components of digital economy

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Market Access
In digital economy the market is boundary less and online market access is anytime
and anywhere. This requires a new approach for disrupting the thought process of
the target customer base which is generally people available online most of the
time. A typical customer engagement model is Awareness, Interaction, Acquisition,
Delivery, Service, and Relationship. The same customer engagement model is used
with enabling digital technologies.
Figure 10: Digital Customer Engagement
i.Awareness
Customer awareness in digital age has changed from generic newspaper and TV ad
to highly personalized and contextual, geographically penetrated e-mails, social
media feeds and browser based pop ups. This model of digital marketing is more
effective in thought disruption rather than traditional approach. The advantage of
digital marketing is that it’s anytime and anywhere. There is no boundary to this
and also there is no time constraint. Being context sensitive and highly personalized
along with extensive relevant information helps the potential buyer to identify
one’s need and recognize the value of the same.
Consider a practical scenario that you are online booking an air ticket for some
overseas travel through some popular travel portal. Just after completion of the

44
transaction you come across a highly personalized offer for travel health insurance
covering the period of your overseas travel for given countries. Now analyze the
scenario that the travel health insurance offer came within the context of overseas
travel, at right time when you just booked your ticket confirming your intent to
travel and it was highly personalized as per your travel dates and destinations while
clearly stating the premium amount. Thus in effect as a customer you will be
delighted that the system reminded you about your genuine need at right time and
you will also recognize the value of the offering. Since it’s highly personalized so
that you don’t need to go to insurance agents, state your requirements asking them
to comeback with premium calculation and then you decide if you want to buy one.
With digital technology it’s in real time even at your mobile while you are relaxing
in your bed.
Take another example that you are traveling to a new city and have just completed
a business meeting with one customer and your next meeting is somewhere else.
In mean time you want to have lunch but on the way to another customer’s location
you don’t have any idea of some good restaurants. Your cab driver is also not able
to help. But you can find the one nearby using your mobile. This example shows
that it’s not only that the enterprises do seek the customers but sometimes its
other way round as well.
The customer awareness can be digitally promoted with brand building using the
social media. The companies can make context sensitive feeds in social media.
There is a reasonably higher possibility that using this awareness the prospective
customer is attracted for more specific offering.
ii. Attract
Attracting the customers to their products and services is the part of marketing
strategy of every enterprise. In traditional model of business, the customers are
attracted with advertising and promotion campaign etc. But the limitation of
traditional model was the advertisements in mainstream media or in the form of
pamphlets, billboards or road shows etc. cannot personalized for each targeted
prospective customer. In the absence of personalization of advertising the context
of making the sales pitch was also very generic in nature. For example, an

45
advertisement on energy drink in a newspaper would appear on the same page
where sports news is covered. But this is too generic context and has limited
potential to influence the buying behavior.
The digital disruptions for customer management have enabled the enterprises in
making more personalized offering in a most effective context. This makes a much
deeper impact on the customer’s mind and highly influence one’s buying decision.
For example, for a mobile based internet user the alert on data consumed followed
by an ad offering new data plans for the appropriate ranges of data usage from
the mobile operator is expected to make much deeper impact on the prospective
customer the mobile internet user in this case than ordinarily it would impact
through television or newspaper advertisement. In order to make the personalized
offering the enterprise will need more refined customer segments, sentiment
analysis, real time analytics, user’s location and the AI on buying pattern of the
individuals. The best thing is that we have disruptive digital technologies and tools
for each of the required area.
iii. Engage
An aware prospective customer who is successfully attracted towards the
offerings needs to be engaged. The prospect may have many queries to be
addressed and the resolution of those queries would influence his buying decision.
The queries can be standard in nature or specific. The queries regarding standard
delivery mode, available product models, specification, comparison and post sales
warranty and service etc. are standard queries which can be addressed in very
structured manner. For example, what are the product specifications, where to
buy or where to get repaired etc. can be addressed by sharing the information at
portal or at product brochure. But there may also be specific queries like product
suitability for specific purpose, bulk purchase discount, delivery option, extended
warranty, insurance coverage options and defective return or exchange etc. Such
specific queries would generally require manual intervention, internal
consultation and approvals before committing to the prospective customers.
Digital disruptions have altered the way the enterprise can engage the prospective
customers. The standard queries can be addressed using Product catalog, list of

46
dealers and service centers, FAQ, and chatbot and products comparison etc. Apart
from that the advertising feeds in social media may attract the prospective buyer
and a click by him can trigger a personalized mail to engage him. Alternatively, it
can also pop up a new window with context sensitive content and encourage him
for further interaction.
iv. Service
The modern trend is that the pre-sale and post-sale services are the bundled part
of manufacturing or service products design. In either scenario service delivery is
the part of the business. But most of the companies are providing the services
through channel partners who in turn manage their own field force. Thus the real
time communication and collaboration is the perquisites to meet the customer
expectations along with consistently maintaining the service standards.
The digital technologies have enabled the operational excellence of services
management and real time performance monitoring for the services delivered
anywhere and anytime. In E commerce tracking the order fulfillment status
beyond shipment or credit card payment for Cash On Delivery (COD) and its real
time update at customer contact center are the typical examples of operational
excellence and remote performance monitoring with digital technologies like
mobility solutions.
v. Care
High quality and efficient post sale services and optimizing the customer care are
the keys for retaining the market share. The former helps in winning the customer
confidence and trust the later helps in brand building and winning the customer
loyalty. Digital disruptions are there customer care area as well.
Mode of exchange
In any economic system the market place is the one where goods, commodities or
services are exchanged for money. Whatever we do buy we make a payment for
the same and if we do sell something then receive the payment for the same. If

47
we don’t receive the payment as money but some other item or service then it’s a
barter trade. But if there is nothing exchanged and the transaction is only one
sided means without payment or consideration then its either charity or donation.
This is the basis of market economics. Thus from economy perspective a
transaction is the exchange of values offered by the buyer and the seller
respectively. Thus at digital market place also has its own mode of exchange of
those values for the buyer and seller. This has two components of value exchange
namely payment and delivery of goods or services or commodity.
i. Payment
Disruptions in payment methods have significantly change the trade and
commerce in digital economy. Moreover, mobile banking and mobile based E
commerce apps have changed the trading business landscape. The society is
drifting towards cashless business. Recently the demonetization drive in India has
set an example that how the otherwise painful process mitigated the pain.
Figure 11 : Digial Payment Methods
All of above digital payment methods have evolved over a period of time. Initially
it was banking cards and POS followed internet banking and later on banks pre-
paid cards, e-wallet, mobile wallet , mobile banking, micro ATM, USSD and AEPS
etc. All these digital platforms are either owned by the banks or directly
integrated with banking applications to facilitate the payment through digital

48
channel. Any payment using banking channels require the user’s identity,
authentication and payment authorization.
Figure 12 : Generic digital payment process
The bank cards, user id and mobile numbers are used as identity across the digital
channels, PIN and password are used for authentication and answers to security
questions or OTP are used for authorization. Almost all the digital channels are
using the same flow.
Bitcoin blockchain
Another dimension of payment is also evolving in the form of digital currency
‘Bitcoin’. It may also be called as ‘Digital Gold’. Bitcoins are computer code that is
digitally signed every time it travels across internet from one owner to another.
This is an evolving, decentralized and modern digital currency. Bitcoin is a digital
‘cryptocurrency’ which enables digital payment in a decentralized peer-to-peer
(P2P) network. To a point the accounts and transaction trails can be tracked but
account owners are not necessarily known. Nevertheless, the investigators can
track down the owner whenever the Bitcoins are converted to regular currency.
There is no central authority or middleman that controls it thus it is powered and
approved by the mutual consensus among its users. In the absence of regulations,
it may not be universally acceptable. Nevertheless, the market size with of Bitcoin
transactions is continuously growing.

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Figure 13 : Working of Bitcoin system
Above diagram is the operational model of Bitcoin payment system. Bitcoin has
many unique properties which can be used by exciting users as they are not
available in any earlier payment systems. Bitcoin leverage on peer-to-peer
technology ‘Blockchain’ and operate with no central authority or banks.
Managing the transactions and the issuing of Bitcoins is carried out collectively by
the network. Since Bitcoin is open-source; nobody owns or controls Bitcoin thus
everyone can take part in business with Bitcoin.
The Blockchain prevents rogues from spending the same Bitcoin twice and the
miners are rewarded for their efforts by being gifted with the occasional Bitcoin.
As long as miners keep the Blockchain secure, counterfeiting shouldn't be an
issue.
Ethereum Blockchain
Similar to Bitcoin there is another popular cryptocurrency called ‘Ether’, on front
end. This digital currency Ether is used by open source, public network, blockchain
called Ethereum. The Ethereum blockchain that anyone can use as distributed
ledger. While Bitcoin is primarily used for consumer payment transactions, the

50
Ethereum blackchain is extensively being popular with corporate and nearly
hundred global corporate giants have already joined Enterprise Ethereum
Alliance (EEA). From operational perspective, there is a contract which is nothing
but an operating procedure agreement aiding efficient management of the
blockchain.
ii.Delivery
Post payment the delivery is a contractual obligation to complete the economic
exchange. The physical goods or commodity can be delivered through channel
partner or any third party. Generally logistic service providers are used as channel
partners to manage the delivery part of physical items.
But digital content in the form of document, text, image analytics or streaming
can be delivered directly at the device. The storage permission may depend on
the terms of purchase or subscription. For example, the kindle allows us to read
a publication only that too only at a single device per user id. It does not allow
storing the data thus restricting it for further sharing. Similarly, data, analytics or
market reports etc., are also subject to similar restrictions for transmission and
usage etc.
Infrastructure
For a growth oriented economy there is a need to growing market, demand,
supply, skilled workforce and capital for investment along with communication
and transport infrastructure. Since the fundamentals of the economy remain the
same, the digital economy also need all of them albeit in digital version.
For digital economy to grow there is a need to growing digital demand. This
demand can be triggered by digital consumers and digital customers. Here the
digital consumers are like the readers and viewers of online media and
entertainment whereas the digital customers the one who are online buying the
goods, services or data. This demand will create a pull for supply thus attracting
more suppliers or their offerings in digital space.

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There has been a consistently rising trend for digital demand and supply both. This
makes an ideal condition for new digital market places where the digital buyers
and consumers can trade with the digital suppliers. However, there has also been
another trend that in order to avoid the Law of Diminishing Marginal Utility, there
have been rapid disruptions in digital market. Even if those disruptions are injected
through enabling digital technologies, it requires business innovation to tap the
potential offered by such technologies. Since early technology adoption and
business innovation gives competitive edge, there is a need to keep the business
agile and progressive thinking and planning.
The growth of digital economy depends on appropriate digital infrastructure as
well. The digital infrastructure development will include increasing the mobile
spectrum enabling in expansion of digital consumer base with quality service
delivery. This will facilitate the communication and collaboration along with data
consumption. More and more digital users will create the demand for digital
content and services. Universal digital literacy can give the thrust to digital user
base. In order to cater the growing digital demand there is a need for digital supply
like local content and boundary less trade etc. But the supply can be ensured only
with appropriately skilled human resource. Thus the digitally skilled human
resource is an essential aspect of digital economy.

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Summary
 Digital economy has
o Virtual market place
o Mobile workforce
o Digital payment
o Digital currency
 Components of digital economy are
o Market access using social media and e-commerce
o Mode of payment using digital payment and delivery with mobility
o Infrastructure is digital technology enabled operating model
o Business operations with mobility, processes and knowledge
 New market opportunities are being created with digital disruptions like
o Social listening
o Sentiment analysis as per social media feed
o Personalization of offerings
o User experience
o Trend analysis
o Machine learning
 Digital disruptions also improve the operational efficiency
 Digital currencies like Bitcoin and Blockchain

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5. Digital Enterprise
“A digital enterprise is an organization which leverages the digital technology
for competitive advantage, by solving internal and external problems for
better customer engagement and improved operational efficiency, with higher
profitability."
Traditionally the companies have adopted technologies for innovation, higher
productivity and profitability. The IT industry did reshape the infrastructure and
enterprise operations largely with process automation. This is done for higher
efficiency whereas the digital disruptions and digital technology enabled business
innovations have revolutionized the industry. For example, in IT enabled the banks,
the customers do make online payment or submit online requests for address
change. All these processes were already there but IT simply automated them by
making those services available online. But digital technologies like mobility
applications and social media have enabled the business innovations like Cabs on
demand (Ola and Uber) and also shared accommodation like AirBnB. The evolution
of digital technology presents the opportunities as well as threats for all businesses
across industries. Process of aligning with changing customer needs, considering
the potential of these digital disruptions, most of the enterprises are adopting
digital technologies and that is also affecting the industry dynamics.
Many enterprises have taken the digital initiatives of varying size as they are fully
aware of the potential risk of being left behind. They are in process of reinvent
themselves as digital enterprise. A digital enterprise is an organization that uses the
digital technologies as a competitive advantage in its internal and external both
types of business operations. It is observed that the relatively old organizations
have the challenge to match the pace and agility of born digital organizations. The
startups are able to move fast and innovate the customer proposition very fast. A
report of Harvard Business Review3
has suggested that the following six keys for
success of a digital enterprise.
i. Personalized products or services
3
The 6 Elements of Truly Transformative Business Models, HBR Oct 2016

55
ii. A closed loop process enabling the reuse / recycling of offering
iii. Assets sharing
iv. Usage based pricing
v. A more collaborating eco system
vi. An agile and adaptive organization
Figure 14: Reference architecture for digital enterprise
For different industries and enterprises, the definition of digital enterprise may vary
but in general we can say that a digital enterprise is the one which leverage on
digital platforms for accessing the market, brand building, products
conceptualization and design, products and services delivery, managing internal
operations and using the analytics for optimization of above.

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Digital challenges
The adoption of digital technologies in focus areas alone is not going to make a
successful digital enterprise. There are a few challenges which need to be tackled
comprehensively rather than touching from technology perspective only.
i. Meeting customer expectations
The rapid pace of disruptions evolves the exponentially high customer
expectations. Moreover, the competitive pressure demands the digital enterprise
to stay ahead by offering the better customer experience. The customer experience
is to be delivered by deciphering the customer behavior, innovative thinking,
changing the mindset, using the right skills and leveraging the technology.
Figure 15 : Driving the customer experience
For better customer experience there is a need to understand the customer
segments, their behavior and buying pattern. All this can be achieved by using the
right kind of data analytics and expert data interpretation by the team comprising
the industry experts and data scientists. This whole process will require the
consolidation of customer master data along with consolidated transaction data.

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ii. Innovative interactive content
The digital enterprise needs innovative and interactive content as it will help in
attracting and engaging the customers. The content needs to be innovative to make
the customer aware about the offering and make a sustainable impression on the
customer mind. The interactive content will promptly engage the curious customer
without any manual intervention at this stage. The interactive content will engage
the customer by addressing one’s basic and standard queries. This will also give the
lead about prospective buyers. Thus the innovative and interactive content is an
important part of customer awareness, attract and engage phases of customer
management process of a digital enterprise.
iii. Catch customer attention
In internet age when disruptions and distractions both are very frequent and
catching the customer is a challenge. A digital enterprise need to make a context
sensitive and personalized offering to the customers to catch the best attention of
the customer. This will help in significantly influencing the buying decision of the
customer. For example, while booking an air ticket for international travel a pop up
offering travel insurances with personalized premium calculation, based on
destination and duration of stay, is more likely to influence the customer’s buying
decision rather than making a sales pitch in irrelevant context at any other time.
iv. Right alignment with market demand and personalization
The digital enterprise needs to be in right alignment with the market demand. The
market demand can be well understood with disruptions like social listening, well
refined customer segmentation, transaction data predicting the busying behavior
and using real time analytics for making the personalized offerings. For making
more personalized offerings, the well refined customer segments should be
appropriately mapped to the products and services as tailored for that particular
segments. Moreover, making the personalized offering in individual’s name,
catering immediate need of the customer would also help in market penetration.
v. Strategy optimization with wider digital technology adoption
The digital enterprise must ensure that the digital strategy is the integral part of
enterprise business strategy. A loose coupling between both may not yield the

58
desired result and even chances of strategy failures will also be high. When the
business strategy at enterprise level is being defined then it must be kept in mind
that where all the digital technology can be leverage for efficient strategy
execution. This will define the layout of digital strategy.
Key considerations for designing the digital enterprise
Before transformation of a traditional enterprise into digital enterprise, there are
key considerations which must be assessed. The following list of queries will help
in assessing the need and level of required digital transformation for any traditional
enterprise.
Considerations Queries
Need detection 1.What are the key economic drivers and how the current
technologies can challenge it?
2.Are there any new / emerging business models which
can better cater the needs of at least some of the
existing customers?
3.What it will take to take the sustainable lead in the new
/ emerging business models?
Validation of
business model
1.Whether disruptions are avoidable? Is there any way to
halt or delay the disruption?
2.What will be the expected growth path if there is no
change made in the enterprise?
3.How important is pre-emptive action in term of growth
and efficiency?
4.Do we really have time to wait? If is the industry’s
adoption level?
5.What options and capabilities we should focus as of now?
How close should they be to the core business?
Critical mass 1.Do we have any business platform giving us a base to
compete in the new model? Can we get one through
strategic partnership or collaboration?
2.What are the radical changes required to create a new
economic engine?

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Scale and maturity 1.What is a realistic aspiration in the new industry context?
2.Are we agile for continual self-disruption?
3.What role we can seek within the industry eco system?
IT vs. Digital
For efficiently handling digital disruptions and manage the digital transformations
accordingly, it’s very important to understand that IT and digital are very much
different. As of now most of the technology services providers are highly
technology centric and largely engaged in business process automation. From
human resource perspective the IT services delivery models are focused on
trainings focused on fixing the technical issues or providing the technology solution
for process automation. The digital disruptions are offering new opportunities for
business innovation, re-innovation or diversification etc. This requires a completely
new different mindset, operating model and eco system. This requires innovation,
agility and extensive collaboration with internal and external stakeholders. Most of
the time, it also requires changes in organizational structure. From human resource
perspective it requires soft skills like broader perspective, ability to construct big
picture and out of box thinking.
Thus it’s clear that IT and digital are different technology areas. Commonality in
underlying technology platforms should not confuse us that from enterprise
perspective both are same. From human resources perspective, migration of the
existing IT workforce from IT to digital is a big challenge because of technical
obsession of engineering talent. IT professional are generally obsessed with their
existing technical skills as they have already had invested enormous time in
achieving at that level of expertise. These disconnect between industry need and
talent availability is a big challenge in implementing the digital transformation as in
the age of disruption explosion, the technology excellence is a kind of mirage.
Nevertheless, for successful digital transformation the CIO should make a diverse
workforce including people from various academic backgrounds like accounting,
arts or management etc. This will help the team get a better view of the business
needs and also help in out of box thinking.

60
Summary
 Digital enterprises use digital technologies to overcome internal challenges
with better operational efficiency and exploit external opportunities with
better customer experience and personalization.
 Traditional IT is primarily focused on process automation and operations
support whereas Digital is more about business innovation
 The keys for a successful digital enterprise are
o Personalized products or services
o A closed loop process enabling the reuse / recycling of offering
o Assets sharing
o Usage based pricing
o A more collaborating eco system
o An agile and adaptive organization
 Key challenges for making a digital enterprise
o Exponentially increasing customer expectations
o Innovative and interactive content
o Catch customer attention
o Right alignment with market demand and personalization
o Strategy optimization with wider digital technology adoption

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6. Digital Strategy
“Digital strategy is a planned approach for achieving the larger
business objectives at enterprise, using digital technology and
providing uniform customer experience across the channel.”
If the enterprise has a business strategy and aligned to that an IT strategy with
digital technology, then the top management of the enterprise should not assume
that they have digital strategy in place. As explained in previous chapter that IT
strategy is not equal to digital strategy. From business perspective, this can be
explained as, the IT strategy is more of a superset of technology focused strategy
blocks like cloud strategy, mobile strategy and social strategy with limited customer
touch points. On the other hand, the digital strategy is an integrated technology
stack with individual technologies like social, mobility, analytics, cloud, IoT and big
data etc., delivering the uniform user experience across multiple channels in
anytime and anywhere mode. In addition to that the enterprises focus their
strategy on digital transactions based on automating and substituting physical
resources for digital which makes the users feel digital.
Figure 16 : Adoption of digital technologies

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The digital strategies are based on the enterprise’s approach towards disruption
and the experience. The experiences help the enterprises and customer both to
understand the disruption and the greater understanding pushes them for
technology adoption. This is the foundation of digital transformation and prime
mover of the digital world. To drive the digital transformation in planned and
structured manner the enterprises need the digital strategy.
The digital strategies usually create the virtual model of real world and define the
e-surrogate processes for physical processes. For example, in E-commerce the
product brochure, products comparison and online help is virtual model of display
in the show room assisted by the salesman. An e-shopping cart is like a physical cart
in a mall where we need to pay on check out. All such basic business models and
processes are the digital equivalent of their brick and mortar of respective
industries. Here is a word of caution as well. The e-processes are very generic in
nature. Similarly, these e-models along underlying technology platforms and
price transparency can be easily copied. All that gives a transient competitive
advantage and later with industry wide adoption makes it more general in
nature. Whatever is generalized that also be standardized and whatever is
standardized that will sooner than later get commoditized. Thus the digital
business models are always in compulsive innovation mode. More innovations
further enhance the customer expectations for new changes. The real time
analytics helps in assessing the emerging customer’s needs and design the offerings
accordingly.
Strategic approach towards disruptions
The business leaders do follow different approaches towards the disruptions. They
instinctively chose the approach as per their respective risk appetite. In general,
following are the enterprises strategy to disruptions.
i. Invest in disruption strategy
This strategy is most aggressive in nature and generally adopted to exploit the
opportunity offered by the disruption. Here the enterprises actively invest in the
disruptive threats including disruptive technologies, build human capabilities and

63
digitized processes. Some companies even go for acquisitions of the companies
with these attributes. This strategy is adopted by those companies which are early
adopter, have greater risk appetite and want to maintain a competitive edge. This
strategy is also adopted by the companies who want to leverage the disruptive
technologies to increase the market share. The strategies of Apple, Ola and
Facebook can be put in this category.
ii. Disrupt the current business strategy
This strategy is less aggressive yet like testing the water with calculated risk. With
this strategy the companies do launch a new product or service that competes
directly with the disruptor and leverage on the inherent strengths such as size,
market access, knowledge, brand, access to capital, and industry relationships to
build the new business. Based on the outcome of initial phase of implementation
the strategy is repeatedly calibrated during periodic review of interim
achievements. The banking and telecom companies largely follow this approach.
iii. Focus on niche segment strategy
This strategy is more defensive in nature and avoids disruptions. In this strategy
the companies avoid direct dealing with disruptive challenges. They do avoid
taking new initiatives in disruption related areas. Instead of that they prefer to
focus on more profitable other niche segments of the core market where
disruption is less likely to occur in near future. For example, the internet disrupted
the travel bookings in retail customer segments for traditional travel agents.
Internet brought in e-Travel portals and most of the retail customers moved to
those portals. Many traditional travel agents did initially choose to avoid internet
disruption and they rather focused on more niches like corporate travels and
complex itineraries.
iv. Redefine the Core Strategy
This strategy is for business innovation or diversification. With this strategy the
company builds an entirely new business model. The digital disruptive
technologies can enable the smooth functioning of innovative business model.

64
Such models are often built by the companies, with business diversification in an
adjacent industry where it is possible to leverage existing knowledge, capabilities
and infrastructure. For example, a motor sports company which hosts Formula 1
motor race events innovated its business model around existing knowledge,
capability and infrastructure by promoting the circuit as a venue for other type of
motor sports and rest of the area for exhibitions, conferences meeting and
tourism promotion events etc. The marketing, venue booking, support services,
campaign and promotions were enabled with digital technologies.
When the digital transformation is inward focused which means the intent is to
improve the operational efficiency then the following cycle of planning, execution,
monitoring, analysis and optimization is followed. We can identify the focus areas
for digital interventions for planning, execution, monitoring, analytics and
optimization.
Figure 17 : Digital transformation for operational efficiency

65
The data captured at one stage work as input for next stage and the historical
analysis of the stage wise data help further efficiency improvement at that
particular stage. In essence the operational efficiency is extensive data driven
which need digital technologies for data capturing, analysis and reporting. The
relevant attributes are explicitly mentioned in above diagram. The digital
technologies enable the end to end process automation along with seamless
integration with other processes. The digital transformation for operational
excellence also enables the knowledge management in the areas like customer
advisory, remote monitoring, process wide visibility and business analytics etc.
Digital marketing strategy
Today marcomms are more complex than ever before. The reason is that now we
have been in multi-channel communication environment. However, this challenge
also provides an opportunity to use those communication channels to potential
customers with more personalized message or offerings. The companies have
already identified the potential of multi channels digital marketing. Yet many
companies are doing digital marketing yet they don’t have a well-defined,
structured and documented digital marketing strategy. Some of those companies
in that category are successfully doing digital marketing but they are not able to
tap the potential of the market and missing many opportunities.
Figure 18 : Digital Customer Journey

66
Thus we need the digital marketing strategy for entire customer lifecycle. Without
a defined and structured digital marketing strategy we will remain directionless and
we will not know our own online market share. We need proactive social listening
to keep a close watch on the market trends and customer perception, feedback
and demands.
The above diagram is the generic blue print template for defining the digital
marketing strategy. The digital initiatives for every phase of customer life cycle can
be effectively utilized with strategic planning and execution. During attraction
phase the customers can be attracted through public relation and mass
communication through main stream media or word of mouth publicity. For the
purpose of engaging the customers the methods like online advertising,
personalized e-mail, social media feed, reviews, blogs and social posts can be used.
The purchase can be through direct order, e-commerce, channel partners or even
stores. The retention can be encouraged through review, feedback at portal or
community and forums along with knowledgebase. In order to promote the
offerings, there is a need of strong advocacy group which can be in the form of blog,
promotional event, webinar, post at social site and newsletter etc.
An effective digital marketing strategy is that which high conversion ratio for
successive stages of digital customer journey. Thus the digital marketing approach,
nature and type of offering along with the target customer base are the key
considerations for defining the digital marketing strategy.
Figure 19 : Three pillars of digital marketing strategy

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The marketing approach depends on the target customer base. It can be SMS,
personalized advertising through mobile apps or browsers or promotional
notifications through social media. But in practice the marketing approach depends
on the offering class and value as perceived by the customer. This helps in context
sensitive positioning of the offering which can enable the prospective buyer to
make an instant buying decision. In this over all digital marketing strategy the target
customer base the core of entire strategy planning.
Social marketing strategy
The emergence of social media and its rapid adoption has created a virtual social
market place of high market potential. Not many companies can afford to avoid
this market.
Figure 20 : Social Marketing Strategy

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In order to tap it effectively, the social marketing strategy should be a part of overall
marketing strategy which augments the traditional channels to attain the larger
marketing goals of the enterprise.
The above diagram of social marketing strategy gives the bird’s eye view of social
marketing strategy along with the relevant traditional channels so that the synergy
between traditional and social channel can be tapped to exploit the market
opportunities. For execution of the social marketing strategy it must be bundled
with traditional marketing strategy.

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