Ram Charan - The Digital Leader: Finding a Faster, More Profitable Path to Exceptional Growth

RAM CHARAN AND RAJ B. VATTIKUTI

FINDING A FASTER, MORE PROFITABLE PATH TO EXCEPTIONAL GROWTH

Copyright 2022 by Ram Charan and Raj B. Vattikuti. All rights reserved.

Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.

Published simultaneously in Canada.

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Library of Congress CataloginginPublication Data is available:

ISBN 9781119900085 (Hardback)

ISBN 9781119900108 (ePDF)

ISBN 9781119900092 (ePub)

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Dedicated to the hearts and souls of the joint family of twelve siblings and cousins living under one roof for fifty years, whose personal sacrifices made my formal education possible.

Ram Charan

This book is dedicated to the practitioners who drive digital business change; your dedication is an inspiration.

Raj B. Vattikuti

The everchanging nature of technology and the proliferation of data has been the catalyst for the extraordinary growth in the demand for digital business. Companies are literally reinventing themselves at an increasing rate and frequency. Those companies that embrace this new paradigm will find success; those that don't will fall further and further behind.

We want to thank the practitioners who contributed to this book. They understand that companies are dealing with complex challenges and struggle to implement needed change on their own digital journey. They are industry experts working with companies across the globe helping to simplify business and technologies that bring speed, scale, and outcomes. We created this digital playbook to provide the guidance, approach, and realworld examples to help others achieve success in their own digital business transformation.

A special thanks to Anil Allewar, Zoran Bogdanovic, Dennis Carey, Paras Chandaria, Badhrinath Kannan, Anuj Kaushik, Gautam Makani, Jayaprakash Nair, Jac Nasser, Raghu Potini, Ignacio Segovia, Minoj Singh, Anil Somani, Krishna Sudheendra, Raj Sundaresan,Vipul Valamjee, Srikanth Velamakanni, Sivanandam Venkatasamy, and George Zoghbi.

We also want to thank James Sterngold for turning our ideas into text, Geri Willigan for her contributions, and our editor Zach Schisgal and the Wiley team for their guiding hand throughout the process.

You've heard the dire warnings to companies that have yet to incorporate digital technology into their business. Digitize or die is shorthand for the simple truth that you cannot compete for long against companies that are using algorithms and machine learning when you are not. The other players will be better than you at understanding and delivering what customers want, better at pricing, better at widening their margins, and better at generating cash.

The imperative to digitize is clear, yet what we hear in countless conversations with senior leaders of highperforming companies around the world is that adopting digital technology is too expensive, too disruptive, and takes too long. Some companies have spent tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars trying to become a socalled digital business with little to show for it; they are losing faith that the benefits will ever materialize. Then there are others who still don't know how to start. Even mounting evidence that digital technology can take your company to great heightsas it has for some traditional businesses as well as startupsis often not enough to get a company to move.

The good news for laggards as well as those who are kneedeep in costly and frustrating efforts is that the technology industry itself has crossed the Rubicon. Making your company digital doesn't have to be a big bang that upends the entire organization at once or is a neverending cash drain. It is now faster, cheaper, and easier than ever. It can be implemented in small pieces, each of which delivers measurable results that in turn can fund followup projects that are easily linked together.

This is newly possible because in the past few years, a cottage industry of small vendors has emerged that is taking advantage of advances in machine learning and artificial intelligence. Many of these vendors employ people who are not just technically astute but also have business savvy. They are highly skilled in providing the precise applications of ML and AI a client company needs to address its pain points. What they accomplish is not merely digitizing the businessmeaning converting information into 1s and 0sbut digitalizing the business, meaning combining relevant data with algorithms designed to quickly deliver the critical business outcomes the company needs.

These developments make digitalization eminently doable. The amount of cash you need to get started is manageable for almost any company. And if you home in on the right places to start, the benefits will materialize much sooner than you think possible.