Build for Change: Revolutionizing Customer Engagement through Continuous Digital Innovation

Foreword

So much has changed in the business world, particularly in the past 20 years. Two changes are particularly relevant to this book. First, thanks to the ubiquity of technology and the reach of the Internet, the power of customers has reached dramatic levels. You will see many examples of this phenomenon in the pages ahead. Second, companies can now fully digitize their processes to the point where the enterprise can and must undergo a full digital transformation. It is the only way the enterprise will accomplish the seamless operations so vital to success. But as this happens, the enterprise must focus on how, through both high tech and high touch, it engages customers and responds to their expectations.

This book lays out the path to accomplishing that result.

There will be several challenges along the way. Past approaches to systems development have left companies frozen in technology, unable to respond to both opportunities and the demands of customers. Companies cannot solve this problem by simply buying apps or software as a service. Technology and process must be more tightly integrated in the work of digitization. That integration will require that the divide between the information technology (IT) and business communities goes away. As this happens, the organization itself will undergo change.

That change will include how people think of their own work: how work is performed and customers are engaged; the pace of work and the rate at which operational change can ...