Commercial and Social Institutions across the world are rapidly embracing digital technologies to utilize emerging new opportunities as well as to cross over the limitations and barriers in the “New Normal” – a situation created by Covid 19 & other factors.
The level of their Digital maturity varies widely. While some firms are in advanced stage, some are just thinking about enhancing their website or digital marketing strategy.
As we all know, for any new business initiative to be sustainable and achieve its end objective, it needs to be integrated with the broad business strategy and come within the broad Organizational Governance mechanism.
As the Key objective of embracing Digital technologies and Digital transformation by a business is to “Reimagine its Business model”, the Governance procedures that supervise/monitor the Business model should also be re-imagined.
While there has been much progress made in this knowledge area of “Digital Governance”, I wanted to share some basic insights on an Integrated Digital Governance Model, to make it simple for beginners and firms that are mid-way in their Digital transformation journey.
Following are the key dimensions of an Integrated Digital Governance Model:
- Phygital Ecosystem: As the “Reimagined Business Model” is mostly a Hybrid one, i.e., Phygital (Combination of Physical/real world components and Digital components), the holistic integrated Governance model should consider both the Physical governance (in a new light) and the Digital Governance aspects.
- Holistic Nature: While the Embracement/Implementation of Digital technologies can be in a phased manner, the broad Digital Strategy, Roadmap, and the Governance should be designed holistically, considering the broad Organization Direction and Digital journey.
- Components: An Integrated Digital Governance involves designing/overseeing Digital Policy, Standards, Principles, Data Integrity, Security, Risk Management, Resilience & Empowerment among others.
- Coverage: In addition to covering the Organization culture, Core & Strategic Physical Assets, Organization Resources, the Integrated Governance should also include the Digital Assets, platforms, Digital ecosystem, Data, Digital Agents/Bots, Smart machines & Security.
- Structure: The Integrated Digital Organization Structure along with the Roles and respective Authority, Responsibility & Accountability should be clearly laid out. This provides more clarity in terms of the Digital Assets/Artifacts lifecycle management (Conceptualization, Creation/Acquisition, Configuration, Application, Upgradation & Scrapping).
- Brand Image: The Governance mechanism should ensure that the Unique Brand Identity & Experience, Brand Values are reflected across Customer, Stakeholder & Market interaction channels (i.e., Omnichannel).
- Compliance: It should ensure that both the Physical and Digital Business Etiquettes & Legal/Regulatory compliance for the Online & Offline world are met.
- Lifecycle: The Governance mechanism should also evolve, as the Organization matures digitally – moving from one stage to another.
- Merger & Acquisition: In the current situation, where the potential for firms to merge with each other or acquire other firms is high, a unified Digital Roadmap & Vision should be first laid. A Unified Digital Governance can then be used to maintain or facilitate this unified Digital Vision of both firms.
Wish you good luck in your initiative to setup an Integrated Digital Governance model for your Organization/Institution.