Digital transformation with the 4C matrix

Digital transformation has become a major challenge in almost all industries and is now central to most businesses who need to react, who want to anticipate the future, or respond to the accelerating pace of change.

Despite the massive communication around it, especially since the pandemic, there is still lots of misunderstanding leading to misalignments inside companies. For some it’s about digitising processes, for others it’s about interacting with customers in new ways, for some it would be about technology while for others about new business models.

In this post I bring a new matrix as a starting point for 360° clarification. In upcoming articles I will elaborate into deeper details and connect to supporting materials that I’ve developed to accompany small to large organisations across various industries in Europe and the Middle East, such as training programs or workshops.

The 4C matrix in a nutshell

a 360° approach to digital transformation: create, connect, collaborate, capture more value
2021 © Frédéric Martin

Digital transformation is about business, is about people. It starts with people collaborating on ambitious schemes, with the obsession of customer in mind. In my model I reflect this by putting on the horizontal axis the collective experience (Cox), and on the vertical axis the customer experience (Cx). Note: while Cx is a common abbreviation, Cox is one of mine, it also stands short for coxswain, the guy steering in one direction on a rowing boat. So, I think it’s an interesting abbreviation to use here. Why experience on both axes? On the horizontal axis it’s about people and new talents joining to enjoy and transform the business, it’s about people working together wherever they are inside or outside of the the company. Without good people experience, no real transformation will happen but resistance. On the vertical axis, customer experience is the new game in the market. Selling to customers is becoming obsolete, customers want to enjoy nice experiences created by brands with them in the light, they may even want to be in the co-driving seat. Old time stand-alone concepts like sales or marketing should be replaced by brand experience translating into customer experience. At least they should be hidden in the kitchen. In the restaurant customers want to enjoy experiences and decide by themselves what they wish to consume. The two axes split the model into four quadrants. The bottom left is about new value creation augmented and tested with more digital, the bottom right is about practices and processes with more digital to deliver the value in faster efficient ways, the top left about digital interactions in the market, and top right about new models that will help capture more value from the market. In the middle, three core engines will facilitate the transformation: culture and technology enabling data as new ultimate value. It takes new thinking, new platforms, new methods.

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