Cambridge Business Association
A Ninety-Day Plan to Build a Data and Digital Strategy
Article

A Ninety-Day Plan to Build a Data and Digital Strategy

Marc Schuuring, Lucas Quarta, Aziz Sawadogo and Canberk Koral
Boston Consulting Group, 2022
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You’ve got a couple of important data initiatives lined up for your department, and so does every other department at your company. Progress is slow, or rather it’s fast, but still slower than it needs to be to compete in a rapidly digitizing economy. How can you speed things up? This Boston Consulting Group article suggests that every unit in the company – the IT side, the business side – come together and define the company’s broad digital goals, so each new initiative will support the development of the data use cases that will emerge in the future.

Summary

For speedy digital maturity, the business and IT sides of your company must come together to define company goals and coordinate data initiatives. 

Too often, a company hurtles toward digital maturity, never having defined the company’s digital true north. The IT and business departments are both scrambling toward a vague digital future, but on parallel paths. This slows progress and stymies value capture. To create faster digital transformation, sometimes a company has to press pause on existing initiatives, and bring both sides together to define the company’s digital “North Star.” 

The process of defining a company’s North Star will typically take up to 90 days. In order to create a cohesive plan, the IT and business units must work together throughout the process. Start with a detailed exploration of the company’s digital aspirations and possible use cases, followed by an honest assessment of the company’s data assets and technology architecture...

About the Authors

Marc Schuuring (Amsterdam), Lucas Quarta (Paris), Aziz Sawadogo (Paris) and Canberk Koral (Istanbul) are professionals with the Boston Consulting Group.

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