4C WHITE PAPER
A MODEL OF SUCCESS:
How 4C can help power effective
digital transformation
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Executive summary
As technology advances, digital transformation isn’t just important
for companies to thrive; it’s a survival essential. How well firms adapt
will decide whether they succeed, or as the CEO of C3.ai put it:
“Companies that transform will be operating on an entirely different
level from their lagging competitors. This will be tanks versus horses.”
So, it’s no surprise that businesses want to
digitise and evolve; overhauling everything
from services and processes to company
culture. In fact, IDC estimates global
investment in tools that enable digital
transformation will hit $1.25 trillion in 2019
and rise to $1.97 trillion by 2022. But buying
smart new tech isn’t enough on its own:
digital transformation doesn’t come in
a box.
support. In other words, businesses need a
strategic partner with the right knowledge
and technical ability.
Recent years have seen a trust gap develop
between companies and consultancies,
mostly as a result of missed expectations.
When organisations invest in specialist
services they want evidence of effectiveness,
but many solutions haven’t delivered.
The 4C Success Model closes this gap by
making business objectives its driving
force. Not only does the approach begin
by tying transformation strategy to KPIs,
but it also continually tracks and optimises
performance against them.
Global investment in
tools that enable digital
transformation will rise
to $1.97 trillion by 2022
Covering four competencies – design,
build, learn, and evolve – the 4C Success
Model is designed to help organisations
navigate digital transformation in a way that
works for their specific business, and lay the
foundations for enduring success.
According to McKinsey, 70% of transitional
efforts fail. And the most likely cause of
these failures is lack of understanding. Too
often, companies see digital transformation
as just another update and assume that
once they install the latest software, the
job will be done. But permanent change
isn’t so easy to achieve: it requires a
full organisational shift and several key
ingredients -- including a strong delivery
strategy, in-depth expertise, and continuous
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The challenge:
Upgrading digital ability can bring many benefits. It enables companies to deliver for their
customers, keep up with competitors, retain their market positions, future-proof their
business models and open up more revenue streams. But to realise these advantages,
transitions must be durable and all-encompassing; and this isn’t always the case.
A recent McKinsey study shows
only 16% of firms feel their digital
transformations have improved
performance and fuelled long-term
change, while a further 7% have seen
performance uplift, but gains didn’t
last. It seems transformations are being
derailed by too little focus on two core
factors: purpose and people.
i. Purpose: what are we aiming for?
The habits of those who have made the
digital leap successfully are more strategic.
Companies start by assessing their current
practices and pinpointing where change is
required. This deep understanding is then
used to create a robust plan that outlines;
how digitalisation will meet customer
needs and enhance interactions, the goals
progress will be measured against, and
what shape execution will take.
Frequently, transformation is viewed as a
tech project; with the implementation of
new systems as the one and only goal. But
enhancing the toolkit is only part of the
process, not the whole story; organisations
must adjust the way they work, organise
and operate in general.
Companies that are disappointed with
transition results often have one issue
in common: they’ve overlooked the
importance of setting a clear vision. When
firms don’t identify what they want to
achieve and how they will do so, they are
aimlessly working towards an unknown
goal.
The outcomes of this logical
approach speak for themselves:
firms that meet important
requirements are up to three
times more likely to experience
effective transformations.
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The challenge:
ii. People: the agents of change
don’t get employees on board. Investment
in smart tools will be wasted if the people
using them don’t accept the need for
change. This makes it crucial to ensure
digital innovation includes everyone.
Organisations that have made it through
transformation place a strong emphasis
on communication and empowerment.
In addition to ensuring every employee
understands the advantages tech brings
to the business and their individual roles,
they give them the abilities necessary
to succeed in a more digitally advanced
business.
Joint research by Deloitte Digital
and MIT Sloan Management Review
reveals the main transformation issue
for most companies isn’t activating
tech; it’s adapting employee mindsets,
organisational culture, and the way things
are done. Businesses are coming up against
workforce-wide reluctance to move away
from existing methods and the individual
anxiety that frequently comes with change.
This problem isn’t unusual; significant
disruption of the status quo can be
hard to manage. But it’s also true that
transformation is harder when companies
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The solution:
Technology is still central to digital
transformation: McKinsey research shows
companies with the highest success rates
use more tech. But the power of any tool
depends on how it is used. Keeping digital
evolution going means taking a carefully
planned approach. Tools should be chosen
in line with real business needs -- not
whichever solutions are generating the
most buzz -- and implemented as part of a
wider change process.
This is what the 4C Success Model
offers. Instead of leaving organisations to
plug in, play and hope for the best, the
model creates an ongoing partnership
that earns trust and enables companies
to reach transformation goals. Working
closely together gives companies total
transparency and ensures an equal share in
the rewards. Meanwhile, the competencies
of design, build, learn and evolve
consistently maximise value.
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How does it work?
Companies don’t stand still and neither do their needs or their customers needs: solutions that deliver on key
requirements today may not cover the priorities of tomorrow. This is why the 4C Success Model is a continuous
cycle: constantly modifying each programme to fit changing business needs and growth.
Business Problem: Understanding the landscape / system. What are you trying to solve?
Business Objectives: What are you trying to achieve?
Objective 1
Objective 2
Objective 3
DEPLOY
PLAN
VALIDATE
BUILD
Analyse
Performance
Build your
model
Train & test
your model
Deploy your
model
Identify
problems
Objective
Monitoring
Feature
Road Map
Sprint Cycles
/ Build
Adoption
Services
BAU
Tailored programmes begin with building a
detailed profile. Before any work can begin,
it’s essential to understand each business
from every angle: including long-term
objectives and any challenges they might
face in achieving them, current strategies
and initiatives, trends in their industry, and
competitor activity. This makes it possible to
identify which tools and services will enable
companies to overcome transformation
obstacles, and move towards realising their
goals. Customised solutions then become
the starting point for ongoing optimisation.
Through continual testing, analysis and
adaptation, programmes set off on a
course to effective digital transformation
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and beyond, with performance constantly
assessed against KPIs to ensure solutions
drive the best results.
At every level, the model is underpinned by
four competencies: design, build, learn, and
evolve.
PROJECT GOVERNANCE
Features: What features are needed to develop the capacity?
PROGRAMME MANAGEMENT
CHANGE MANAGEMENT
Capability: What do you need in order to achieve these?
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i. Design:
If solutions are hard to use, staff will avoid
them -- and that means their chances of
delivering customer value are slim. Usability
is the foundation of programme design,
with the initial focus on creating a positive
experience for customers and employees.
With the basics right, solution design
can then be customised to align with a
company’s strategic vision, KPIs, adoption
issues, and training needs.
encourage development. But this doesn’t
mean design is fixed. Programmes are
crafted with change in mind, which means
they are always ready to rapidly adjust to
fresh trends, challenges and goals.
Using the detailed transformation map
this generates, companies can quickly
communicate plans across their organisation;
ensuring employees understand and
ii. Build
Build is all about following through on core requirements identified by design. Where
design hones in on barriers to transformation and determines the best solutions, build
provides companies with the capabilities needed to address their challenges and meet
business objectives.
Every phase of building follows a methodology informed by over 20 years of experience,
while tapping a varied pool of specialist skills and world-class tech. Formed of several key
components, the methodology aims to:
• Plan for delivery that will generate value as
early as possible.
• Build the features that will give organisations
the ability needed to achieve objectives.
• Validate that the programme is aligned to the
business problem it aims to solve, as well as
training users to make the most of systems and
educate others on effective usage.
• Deploy these features so end users can start
using them, fast.
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iii. Learn
Most companies appreciate the potential
of data as a revenue driver and collect it in
huge quantities. But the information they
hold isn’t useable. Spread across reports,
spreadsheets, presentations, and even
private folders, it’s not only hard to harness
the greatest asset of data — producing
speedy answers to business critical
questions — but also make sense of it in the
first place. This is where ‘learn’ comes in.
The aim of the learn competency is giving
employees at all levels the ability to make
smarter, faster, and better-informed choices.
And it does so by enabling companies
to pull their data into a single view that
provides instant access to descriptive,
diagnostic or predictive insight and fuels
real time action. The learn competency
is specialised in building interactive
and intuitive dashboards that show key
information in an accessible format while
also allowing end users to drill down and
explore the data in more detail. On top of
that, it uses the power of machine learning
to discover hidden trends in data, enabling
companies to more accurately predict future
outcomes and become proactive instead
of reactive. Closely linked to company
vision and success metrics, this aspect of
the transformation model paves the way for
more precise, streamlined and profitable
operations.
iv. Evolve
Transformation doesn’t end with solution implementation and
neither does the model. Evolve moves with companies as they
continue the process of change. Evolve is about offering nonstop
support to ensure adoption is running smoothly across the
workforce and improving results over time. Long-term objectives
and performance against business goals are monitored on a
rolling basis, producing an accurate understanding of progress
-- and whether programmes are on track. The granular insight
this evaluation generates makes it easy to spot where adjustment
is required to hit goals and identify opportunities for additional
tools or services to boost efficiency, and deliver ROI. The added
advantage is that organisational insight becomes deeper over
time, which means support teams can make more precise
recommendations for design, learn and build.
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Conclusion:
There is an increasingly urgent need for digital up-scaling. Companies must reimagine
their business models and tech if they want to stay in the race, let alone ahead of the
curve. But digital transformation takes more than sophisticated tech. Before companies
can update and innovate, they must know exactly where they want to go. And this
makes it vital to begin with a closer look at which type of transformation will suit their
particular organisational DNA.
The 4C Success Model helps them gain this understanding and use it to drive their
digital transition. Working in partnership with companies, the approach blends key
competencies and wide-ranging expertise to ensure every programme has a clear
purpose, and positive impact. Above all, the model is designed to fuel specific,
tangible, and measurable results with solutions that keep providing value long
after initial implementation.
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