Digital-first CEOs plan to drive at least half of their income from digital products, services, and experience by 2027, ahead of the market average of 39%.
Driven by their experiences from the Covid-19 pandemic, these business leaders have changed how they think about the relationship between business and technology, and in how they approach the next digital transformation (DX) era – from scaling digital to running a viable digital business.
In its latest report, “The Digital-First CEO: A Pathfinder for the Digital Business”, IDC defines a digital business as value creation based on digital technology, which entails:
* Automated customer-facing processes and internal operations.
* Provisioning and delivery of data-driven products, services, and experiences.
* Multi-party orchestration of ecosystem collaboration, co-creation, and co-innovation.
* Attraction, augmentation, and continuous development of a digital workforce.
“A new breed of digital-first CEOs has emerged. We expect to see CEOs strategically use technology to compete and stay relevant to their customers, ecosystems, and employees, with the goal of increasing their digital share of revenue,” says Linus Lai, chief analyst and digital business research lead at IDC Asia/Pacific.
The study also shows that digital-first CEOs are focusing on essential capabilities such as empathetic customer experience (CX), digital trust, and a hybrid-first workforce as key building blocks of a digital business. This includes technology investments in CX applications, security tools, business process automation (BPA), artificial intelligence (AI), and employee experience (EX).
“For digital-first CEOs, the technology architecture is the business architecture,” says Lawrence Cheok, associate research director for digital business research at IDC Asia/Pacific. “These investments are aimed to better enable direct customer relationships, contextual on-demand services, joint value creation through digital ecosystems, and ultimately, a leading digital share of revenue.”