A digital readiness report of organisations brought out by a Bengaluru-based learning and assessment solutions company, KNOLSKAPE, found that majority of organisations in India believe that their mission, vision and strategy are aligned with the digital world. As per the report, most of the organisations have included digital readiness in their strategy and execution roadmap in the last one or two years. The report also observed that even companies in traditional industries are augmenting their product strategies by leveraging digitally enabled experiences for better consumer satisfaction. Interestingly, the report says that there is, however, a gap between digital intent and execution by companies and only 40 per cent of the organisations agree to having all the necessary digital infrastructure (like applications, tools etc).
“When it comes to digital adoption, there isn’t a one size fits all approach for all industries. While defining their downstream strategy, organisations may take the marketing, services, or product route as the seat for digital strategy. For instance, FMCG firms are carving out their digital strategies to empower marketing and branding teams. Banks and NBFCs, on the other hand, are carving out digital-first product strategies to cater the needs of digital savvy millennial consumers,” Rajiv Jayaraman, founder and CEO of KNOLSKAPE told THE WEEK.
Jayaraman said that the ripple effects of successful digital disruption in one industry is typically not restricted to the industry alone but can be felt across others. “For instance, building on its data backed understanding of consumer preferences the food delivery app Swiggy has set up Swiggy Access, a central kitchen backed facility utilised by several restaurants. For restaurants that use this space, Swiggy helps them with stock planning, demand forecasting, preparation time and other edits. Like this, the company is becoming more than just a food delivery app company,” added Jayaraman.
Jayaraman also observed that management playbooks from the industrial era may prove insufficient to lead organisations into the digital age and this holds true for both traditional and new age digital firms. “Existing hierarchical, pyramid like organisational structures may have been built for maximising operational efficiencies in the industrial age but when traditional organisation make a digital transition the compartmentalised way of thinking and working may prove to be inadequate to enable a unified view of the customer,” remarked Jayaraman.
The report also points out that organisations in India too have recognised the need to hire digitally savvy talent, and 60 per cent of organisations surveyed say they are routinely doing so for critical functions. As per the report, 66 per cent of respondents agree that human resources department in their organization has clear and quantifiable goals for measuring the success of digital strategy. The report observed that digitalisation in HR involves leveraging technology to create exceptional candidate experience, embrace data agility to unlock new value. About 77 percent of the surveyed organisations have teams accountable for crafting employee journeys.
The research on digital readiness report was commissioned by KNOLSKAPE’s Centre of Expertise (CoE) and as part of the research, around thirty talent transformation leaders in India—CHROs, talent management heads, heads of learning and leadership development professionals from 15 different industry verticals were interviewed. The largest organisation in the research sample had around 200,000 employees whereas the smallest had about 300. The average age of the surveyed organisations was 27 years. About 63 per cent of organisations in the sample are publicly traded entities whereas the rest are privately held.