Managing Digital Transformation - getting businesses 'future ready'

Digital transformation is a key trend in business – no more so than now. Here Professor Dave MacKay outlines what it involves and how a new executive education course will help.

We’re excited to announce our latest offering in executive education at Strathclyde Business School – a new short course in digital transformation which aims to get businesses ‘future ready’.

Digital transformation is a mega-trend changing how governments, organisations and individuals live and work around the world. Digital transformation is the integration of digital technology into all areas of a business, and changes how you operate and deliver value to customers – rethinking business models, becoming more agile. Some businesses have had to adapt to new digital challenges rapidly to ensure their business could cope this year with the huge shift to online services as a result of Covid-19 – perhaps there were supply chain issues, perhaps there were differences in customer expectation - but it would undoubtedly be better to do this in a controlled and informed way; to plan properly how to evolve your business.

We believe our new module will help you on your way. Crucially, digital transformation now features at the top of the priority list of both opportunities and threats for organisational leaders. However, strategic responses remain highly varied as management teams struggle to understand and harness the possibilities of digital transformation – pandemic or not. How you approach digital transformation as an organisational process can give varied outcomes but we believe our initial short course called Managing Digital Transformation will help you make the right choices for your business. Whether you’re in an SME or part of a large corporate organisation, our latest course should help you to navigate and understand what digital transformation is all about and how you can make digital innovation work for your business.

This first six week module kicks off in March and will be delivered via our live virtual platform allowing you to gain a high quality on-campus Strathclyde experience wherever you are based in the world - an important factor, given the restrictions many of us are living under right now as a result of Covid-19. These are supplemented with live sessions led by experienced industry leaders and professors from Scotland’s top business school.

Throughout 2021 we will in fact be offering a number of programmes on the theme of Digital Transformation. As well as Managing Digital Transformation, these will be: Digital Marketing Strategy; Customer Engagement in a Digital World; Mastering Digital Technologies; Leading digital – innovation, culture and delivery; and Designing Digital Strategies for Business Transformation.

Each programme will be scheduled over a six-week period and completion offers a certified programme of CPD study in the chosen subject area. Ultimately, doing all six modules plus Completing Digital Transformation Practice and a final project would lead to an MSc in Digital Transformation.

It’s a flexible portfolio though - you can select just a single certificated module through to a complete MSc in Digital Transformation within a year. Doing three of the modules would see a Postgraduate Certificate being awarded while all six will lead to a Postgraduate Diploma.

Each online programme integrates continuous assessment, rather than laborious essay completion at the end of the study period. Our live sessions are held during selected evenings and weekends to avoid disrupting your work schedule. Another aspect which makes this a truly flexible course is that you can join at any point in the year to do a solo module or perhaps the first module on your MSc journey – the good thing is you don’t have to decide which path to take straight away either.

So what will our first module, Managing Digital Transformation help you with? It will help ensure business executives are ready to successfully contribute to, or lead, an organisation’s response to digital transformation, Managing Digital Transformation will challenge you and develop your ability to fully respond to key questions such as:

· What are the strategic implications for organisations of digital transformation and what does it mean for my organisation?

· How should organisational change and technological innovation drive results in digital transformation initiatives?

· How can we get my organisation ready to respond to digital transformation?

 We’ll be leading you through key technological advances powering digital transformation, including aspects such as elastic cloud computing, big data & analytics, the internet of things (IoT), artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning. Social implications for work and life are examined, and examples explored as to how digital transformation is already reshaping nations, sectors, organisations and individuals.

At an organisational level, strategic enablers and barriers to digital transformation are reviewed, and key dimensions of digital intensity and organisational change capacity are discussed. We will examine options for engaging with digital transformation – through technological, open, strategic and platform modes of innovating. We will then bring these insights together and consider how to appraise strategic readiness to response to digital transformation.

None of us could have predicted Covid-19 or how its spread around the world would have affected businesses large and small and we can’t predict the next challenge for our business but one thing we do know is that making your business as future-ready as possible, as agile and ready to embrace change as possible, will be essential to its future success.

Please click here for more information on Managing Digital Transformation or email exec.education@strath.ac.uk