Thinking big with business
transformation
Six keys to unlocking
breakthrough value
2
The word “transformation” gets thrown around a lot
these days, but it can have different meanings for
different individuals and companies. In a world of
unprecedented disruption and market turbulence,
transformation today revolves around the need to
generate new value—to unlock new opportunities,
to drive new growth, to deliver new efficiencies.
All transformations require you to rethink how your
enterprise creates value today and in the future.
In other words, all transformations require you to
think big. Why? Because incremental improvement
is not enough to win in today’s exponentially
disrupted business environment. Your organization
requires sustained growth in the face of near
constant disruption, and sustained growth requires
agile reinvention. It’s not enough to win today. You
have to be able to continue to evolve in the future.
3
The big transformation pitfall
An effective business transformation
means your organization can survive
and thrive as you pursue new
innovation-driven opportunities that
emerge, as you respond to shifting
market demands, and as you navigate
evolving regulatory complexities.
You’ll want to proceed with caution,
however. Transformation today takes
place at dizzying speeds, requiring a
level of integration and alignment that
many enterprises are not prepared to
handle.
Because many initiatives that once
took five or six years to complete
are now being implemented in a
year or less, many organizations
now need to manage mountains of
information, compressed timeframes,
and countless decisions that affect
nearly all aspects of strategy and
operations. The risk of failure is
great, but companies that can pull the
disparate elements into alignment
can achieve bold objectives, now and
into the future.
Understanding the strategic keys
to achieving breakthrough value
In light of the potential risks, aligning
all of the elements to get business
transformation “right” requires more
than an A-to-B roadmap. It requires
an integrated approach linking
business strategy to transformation
ambition to executional discipline in
order to unlock breakthrough value.
Big questions lie ahead. The good
news is that we know some of the
answers already. They’re helpful keys
you may choose to use to make your
business transformation one that
can deliver the value you are seeking.
We’ve identified these six keys
based on hundreds of engagements
with some of the world’s leading
companies, and we’ve seen first-hand
how these keys can help unlock
value that’s both revolutionary and
evolutionary.
What is business
transformation?
It is the opportunity to
define a bold ambition that
goes beyond incremental
change—the opportunity
to rethink your business
and operating models to
deliver breakthrough value.
It involves strategic decisions
that affect where you’ll
grow, how your organization
operates, and what kinds of
performance improvements
you can expect.
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1. Begin with a strategy-informed
ambition
Leaders in business transformation
typically have a clearly articulated, well-
understood business strategy. Often
an organization’s strategic choices—
although understood tacitly by senior
leadership—are poorly translated into
downstream implementation choices.
The result? The dilution of value.
A sound strategy serves as the
foundation for a broad range of
enterprise-wide investment decisions,
resource allocations, and performance
expectations. It helps shape an
executable transformation ambition—
that is, the value that should come from
the transformation.
Organizations that have invested
in articulating their strategy can
translate strategic goals into a
bold yet realistic transformation
ambition that can be executed by the
organization. These companies have
a deep understanding of how their
organizations will create, deliver, and
capture value. That knowledge should
lie at the core of your transformation
ambition. Working toward strategic
clarity and consensus on the ambition
helps executives align their goals and
activities. It helps them more clearly
articulate desired transformation
outcomes, from a financial perspective
or from an operational perspective.
And it helps them adjust elements of
transformation strategy based on the
ability of the organization to achieve
those outcomes.
The BIG question:
How do we ensure that the
transformation goals and
objectives support our
business strategy?
5
2. Lead with capabilities
Leaders in business transformation
quickly focus and define the specific
enterprise capabilities that will help
achieve competitive advantage. In
reality, only a small number of an
organization’s total capabilities play a
critical role in helping the organization
find new ways to differentiate and
compete. Focusing on those critical
capabilities can help deliver greater
value, help leaders drive competitive
advantage, and help the organization
realize its business transformation
ambition.
Knowing where to start is critical for
unlocking value through a business
transformation. Prioritization allows
organizations to quickly evolve
to address immediate market
opportunities. It also allows them to
build discipline they’ll need to evolve
continuously, and it can help them
establish the new trajectory that they’ll
need to keep pace with disruption.
Ultimately, leaders should move
quickly past a “people, process, and
technology” definition of capability—to
one that represents a more holistic and
complete picture. For any capability,
it’s a definition that provides focused
support for the organization’s strategic
choices and touches on six dimensions:
mission, insights, integration,
processes, technology, and talent.
Here’s an example. A food and
beverage company wanted better
relationships with distributors and
retailers to drive growth. The company
determined that it needed to transform
three integrated capabilities.
Rethinking its customer engagement
capability provided a set of products,
insights, and services for distributors
and retail customers, tailored to
different segments. The company’s
market insights capability was
revamped to achieve a single source
of truth for driving information to
action. And the company’s portfolio
and brand management capability
was upgraded to create a tighter
link between customer pricing and
innovation decisions. By investing in
these specific new capabilities, the
organization was able to separate
itself from competitors and establish
a platform for future growth.
The BIG question:
What do we need to improve
and how do we improve it
to achieve transformation
objectives?
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The Deloitte Capability HexagonTM provides a comprehensive
approach to defining and designing enterprise capabilities
across six dimensions:

• Mission. The purpose of a capability, how it will operate, and
what value it will deliver. The mission is derived directly from—and
supports—the company’s strategy.

• Insights. The decision flow, information, and analytics that drive
informed and timely decision-making.

• Integration. Clear roles, decision rights, and policies that facilitate
integration within and across other capabilities, functions, and
partnerships.

• Processes. An integrated and efficient set of processes designed to
achieve the desired outcomes.

• Technology. The software, hardware, and tools required to enable
the capability.

• Talent. The competencies, skills, talent infrastructure, and workforce
planning that enable an optimal talent base to execute the capability.
This broader viewpoint allows organizations to frame and link
execution to the value defined in the transformation ambition.
MISSION
CAPABILITY
TECHNOLOGY
IN
SIGHTS
TALEN
T
IN
TE
GR
AT
IO
N
PR
O
CE
SS
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3. Drive to value
Leaders in business transformation
articulate upfront the value they expect
to achieve through transformation,
and they zealously monitor, measure,
and track value throughout their
transformation. Value should be the
thread that links your business strategy
and your transformation together.
Take time to be explicit about exactly
how you intend to create value. Then
establish strong, clear connections to
your execution plans.
A thoughtful value case becomes the
linchpin that links the transformation
ambition to capability design and
execution. It does so by defining and
breaking down the transformation
program into manageable initiatives,
each with specific target values mapped
to capabilities. A results management
office then drives all aspects of value
delivery by understanding (1) the value
of the program and (2) how to manage
trade-offs and dependencies to achieve
the targeted transformation value.
Failure to define the value expected
can create problems downstream.
That failure, in turn, can result in
backtracking to address issues that
should have been identified upfront.
For example, a manufacturing
company might overlook a specialized
distribution capability needed
to support a new, multichannel
business model. Similarly, a global
financial institution could miss value
opportunities available through
strategic tax planning. These aren’t
minor considerations. They can make
or break the effectiveness of your
transformation.
The BIG question:
How do we reinforce a
relentless focus on value
throughout the
transformation journey?
4. Build in sustainability
Leaders in business transformation
know that real value emerges over
time, through sustainable change
that endures. To put the right
capabilities, competencies, and
change-adaptive culture in place for
sustaining and growing the value of
the transformation, data is essential.
Leaders should use data-driven change
management solutions. Such solutions
should support a quantifiable,
analytical approach to managing
attitudes, behaviors, and engagement.
And they should be more than generic
solutions that fail to address the
unique challenges of the organization.
By fostering an adaptive organization
that embraces new ways of delivering
value, leaders can provide a foundation
to sustain value post-transformation.
They can engage and empower other
leaders within the enterprise to model
and reward new behaviors and equip
the workforce to make more effective,
analytics-based decisions aligned with
the business transformation ambition.
Leaders should work to embed the
change into the organization and build
the strength to continue to evolve as
new market opportunities arise.
For example, a consumer products
company created a new role to own
the transformed capabilities within
the organization. Individuals in the
role were responsible for moving a
capability from its current state to its
targeted future state, for delivering
the value cited in the business case,
for the supporting the on-going health
and continuous improvement of the
capability. This new role embedded the
change into the organization and built
a mechanism to sustain and grow value
overtime.
The BIG question:
Why is it important to
extend value beyond the
transformation—and how
can we do it?
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5. Be agile and flexible
Leaders today should be prepared
to continuously evolve through
transformation—because the business
and technology landscapes in which
they operate are continuously evolving.
Leaders should work hard to embed
agility, innovation, and a disruptive
mindset into every transformation
initiative.
Such an agile approach also can
help deliver quick wins and iterative
progress that align with the desired
transformation value. And an agile
6. Invest in program talent
Leaders in business transformation
recognize that the right leader and
right talent will make or break the
success of the transformation. A strong
program leader should have influence
and credibility within the organization
to make major shifts and shape how
work gets done. Assigning a respected
and capable business leader is critical
to establishing the credibility and
importance of the transformation to
the organization’s strategic goals.
Many organizations make the mistake
of not freeing up top talent to support
the transformation, since that talent
is focused on meeting near-term
approach plus agile solutions can
provide early bottom-line benefits
that can help fund transformation
execution. Another benefit of agility
versus a “big bang” delivery approach:
greater transparency and visibility into
progress—your actual “value capture.”
An agile approach also can support
your ability to manage complexity and
unpredictability, through development
processes that are iterative and
incremental.
It’s important for leaders to design their
business for a shifting end-state, taking
into consideration alternate market
corporate objectives. But business
transformation programs typically
require significant investment in
business resources to achieve the
transformation ambition, and the
return on this investment is often
directly proportional to the caliber and
dedication of the talent aligned to the
transformation.
This requires a dedicated
transformation leader—not someone
who has to pile transformation
leadership responsibilities on top
of his or her regular job. Why?
Because splitting duties can dilute
the effectiveness of the individual
in the regular role and in the new
scenarios and evolving technologies.
Throughout any transformation, they
will connect with peers, partners,
and thought leaders to challenge
their own thinking and anticipate
future disruptions that they turn to a
competitive advantage. As an example,
a retailer created an independent
innovation team to analyze disruptive
technology and understand the
influence of external market forces
on a multiyear transformation. This
approach helped the organization
build a sustainable solution designed
to remain relevant in an evolving
environment.
transformation leadership role. You
should keep leaders connected
strongly to focused roles. That
approach also can help you retain top
talent during the transformation so
you can redeploy that talent into the
business after the transformation—and
help continue the growth of value.
Be aware that “business transformation
leader” is not necessarily a career
destination, but rather an integral part
of a career development path. The
skills and experience that your top
transformation leader gains through
the transformation can be applied
directly to the transformed business
and help sustain the value of the
transformation over time
The BIG question:
Why are agility and flexibility
so critical to an effective
business transformation?
The BIG question:
What does effective
transformation leadership
look like?
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Own the disruption
It’s not enough to respond to disruption anymore. Leaders have to anticipate and own
disruption—with the agility and discipline that will help them differentiate and stay ahead.
Without clear vision and strategy to shape the execution, business transformation initiatives
can falter at even the most high-performing companies. These six keys to unlocking
transformation value, however, can help keep that from happening. The big idea is a simple
one: maintain clear links among business strategy, transformation ambition, and executional
discipline. Those links are essential for delivering the value you are targeting through
transformation. They can help you execute your design.
Let’s talk
Want to learn more about these keys to unlocking value and explore some of the big
transformation questions that should be on your mind? We should talk. Our global network
of professionals helps some of the world’s leading businesses successfully navigate big
transformation challenges each day—taking a customized approach to help position
our clients for ongoing evolution. We have a strong track record of results on business
transformation, and we can help you start unlocking value that matters for your organization.
Contact us to get the conversation started.
Contributors
Priya Ehrbar, Nathaniel Paynter, Tanya Raterman
Christine Anderson
Principal
Deloitte Consulting LLP
christinebanderson@deloitte.com
Karen Bowman
Principal
Deloitte Consulting LLP
karbowman@deloitte.com
Dan Kinzler
Principal
Deloitte Consulting LLP
dkinzler@deloitte.com

Todd Kovacevich
Principal
Deloitte Consulting LLP
tkovacevich@deloitte.com

Mark Pocharski
Principal
Deloitte Consulting LLP
mpocharski@deloitte.com
Transformation at work:
Efficient execution was vital to the success of
a newspaper conglomerate that needed to
rethink its traditional print publishing business
in a market evolving to digital media. The
company’s leaders needed to find ways to
grow the new business and shrink the legacy
business, while managing the transition
effectively. We helped the client reinvent its
business model and reframe its operating
model to support a digital strategy and to take
advantage of growing consumer demand. That
help involved transforming all aspects of the
news value chain and building new capabilities
in digital sales and content, production,
circulation, HR, IT, and finance. On a parallel
track, we also helped transform capabilities
that weren’t central to the new operating
model, such as reducing print home delivery
to three days a week and engineering a lower-
cost printing operation. Through this game-
changing transformation, the organization
was able to take advantage of disruption to
accelerate digital revenue growth.
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