Page 76 - AC/E's Digital Culture Annual Report 2015

Cultural business models on the Internet76disruption over the next few years at 8.51on a scale of 0 to 10. The benefits of this development are clear: companies that succeed in creating a digital competitive advantage outperform their competitors by 9% in sales, 26% in profits and 12% in market valuation (Westerman, G., Tannou, M., Bonnet, D., Ferraris, P. & McAfee, A., 2012).Consumption is driven by the experience economy that is based on pursuing memorable experiences.Furthermore, the past two decades have witnessed a major change in how users of products and services consume them. Indeed, at a certain point in the market’s evolution, goods became commodities, leading to the emergence of products which, in turn, underwent the same process, giving rise to the design and sale of services. Today, however, consumption is driven chiefly by the so-called experience economy (Pine & Gilmore, 2011), in which the key factor is customers’ search for personal and memorable experiences that are part of their lives, and in which sensations and emotions are essential.In this respect the business world must urgently and unavoidably consider how to approachthe present and immediate future and onwhich capabilities organisations should rely to generate digital products and services with a high experiential impact. These capabilities will be the dynamic sum of the digital competencies possessed by the professionals who create value within them, and therefore “the challenge of the digital transformation of businesses becomes thechallenge of the digital transformation of talent” (Magro, C. et al., 2014, p. 8). It therefore makes full sense to give thought to which digital com- petencies professionals must equip themselves with to weather this essential transformation.Any enumeration is evidently a simplification of reality, and it is very possible that not all the competencies enumerated below will be found in the same professional, just as the list may well not be exhaustive or may contain a certain amount of overlapping. On the other hand, it is also true that the competencies listed here are linked to different levels of responsibility andto different points in the value chain. In any event, what does seem undeniable is that it will be difficult for an organisation to address digital transformation successfully without extensively developing the skills that are listed here.Technical digital competenceAs obvious as it may seem, organisations cannot cope in a digital world if their profes- sionals do not have proper technical knowledge – a requirement that will grow as processes become increasingly based on technological resources. There are several types of knowledge, depending on what tier of the organisational pyramid and point in the value chain we are dealing with. Managerial staff must possessthis knowledge to the extent that they needto understand the technological information they receive from outside the organisation, and also in order to be able to make appropriate decisions about the technology they requireto perform their mission and materialise their vision. The rest of the organisation’s personnelThe digital competencies of organisations: the challenge of digitally transforming talent