It’s not too late to digitize – in more ways than one

A dual strategy to digitization is paving the way for successful incumbent companies.

The world is changing rapidly and so is the competitive landscape in many industries – largely driven by digitization. Many incumbent companies are finding out that in the face of threats from digital challengers, it takes more than just digitizing its core holdings to compete. A dual strategy of building innovative new digital businesses while digitizing legacy operations is helping top-performing companies to succeed.

Organic growth and a strong market position

This is backed up by a recent survey on digital strategy by McKinsey. According to respondents, digitized incumbents – companies that are more than 20% digital and are launching new digital businesses while transforming the core – are twice as likely as traditional incumbents to experience organic revenue growth of 25% or higher.

Digitized incumbents also command a 20% share, on average, of their core markets. That’s five percentage points more than what respondents at traditional incumbents report, and four times what respondents at digital natives do.

A long way to go

Despite these advantages, more than half of all respondents say that their companies have made no changes to their business portfolios because of digitization. And two-thirds say that their companies have not launched new digital businesses.

Are you in one of the latter two categories and ready to make your move? Get in touch with Pipol to discuss how you can start digitizing legacy operations right now.