Digital Value Creation

I discuss the challenges in the future of digital transformation in manufacturing and the automotive industry. My guest is Dharm Sadasivan, VP of Marketing of Thirdware. Having spent a quarter of a century digitizing and automating the manufacturing industry- he has unique insights into the challenges in the industry.  

I had an amazing session with Vinnie Mirchandani on the future of digital.  Vinnie is an award-winning analyst, author of several best-selling books on technology and its impact on society and business.  We discuss topics like the evolution of digital transformation and how the current crisis accelerated the adoption of digital. We explore the differences in how technology innovation moves in diff...

As businesses return to normal - the question of consistent value creation with digital is again top of mind. One way to look at the difference between leaders and laggards is what key levers they use to keep projects generating value.

Digital transformations don't fail for lack of data scientists or technologies , the issue is often lack of digital strategy or leadership .  As businesses hire and train digital talent like data scientists - many companies now wonder if they need to train their executives as well leading digital transformation . As businesses look at digital disruptors and they start to emulate their tools a...

As one PE investor put it: digital projects fall into two categories:  digital disruptions , that create value and  digital distractions that destroy it.    Projects with clear value cases and strong alignment with strategic KPIs are taking off.  The ones that are struggling typically have no clear business case and no process in place to track EBITDA attainment

Companies doing digital pilots are increasingly falling behind their peers executing digital transformations at scale.  For the laggards, there is a risk that the digital gap is widening without decisive executive action.  Running pilots and not scaling is like betting against digital transformation.  And that bet, I believe, is too risky to make.

Digital transformation is rapidly changing all three levels of private equity value creation.  Many PE firms are already betting on what I call the digital value creation trifecta along the traditional value creation drivers - multiple expansion , operational value creation , and even debt repayment . First, let’s take a step back. For those new to private equity, there are basically 3 ways PE fir...

Many businesses change their value creation plans anticipating the new normal. Some trends influence their assumptions: - digital products over physical products  - virtualizing physical infrastructure - shifting project investments from maintaining the old business model to enabling the new - increased working capital to accommodate buffer stock due to supply chain disruptions - more shifts to di...

In my experience, there are 3 questions every project team needs to answer to succeed.  In times like this digital transformation projects are under a lot of scrutiny .  Many great projects fail and can’t deliver compelling value to the board.  There are many ways to close a performance gap. Many believe digital is compelling but others will feel otherwise.

Will we see fully automated AI driven enterprises in this decade? I think we are getting close…   As more and more processes get automated, we see the building blocks of completely autonomous companies. Automation becomes more cognitive and AI-based.  With intelligent algorithms fewer and fewer exceptions require human intervention.  Soon, no more interventions will be needed at all. Machine learn...

Noone has the answers on what to do in the current disruption.  How do companies compare notes and what are they learning from each other? My insights from discussions with private equity firms and their portfolio companies over the last few weeks.

During the disruption digital transformation is accelerating for many companies. Tactical projects are sidelined and companies that are watching the digital transformation from the sidelines are increasingly left behind.  My discussions on digital transformation in private equity circles shifted significantly. For many PE firms, digital transformation became a lot more pressing and short term.

The current crisis massively accelerated digital transformation across sectors. Projects that would normally take months or a year to complete got done in weeks. For some businesses, it meant taking advantage of the growth of healthcare and e-commerce, for others digital meant the survival of the business.

In the last few weeks, I noticed that the private equity digital playbook is changing, What initiatives are given priority in a crisis? When I started with private equity value creation it was 2009, the height of the last recession. This was the time when private equity firms got more hands on with their portfolio companies to help them through disruption. For most firms, this was the first time t...

There are many innovations emerging in this crisis to help manage business disruption and help overloaded workforces cope with the demand. Physical and software robots find new applications as some innovative business models emerge.