Digital transformation of IT operation from the perspective of thinking change

Introduction | With the introduction of the Digital China strategy, more and more companies are accelerating digital construction and gradually changing the original business model, which also makes technical managers face the same severe transformation challenges. In this issue, we specially invite Mr. Xu Bin, Vice President and CDO of CIFI Group and Tencent Cloud TVP Industry Ambassador, to share new thoughts on many changes in the era of digital transformation.

Guest profile

Xu Bin, Vice President and CDO of CIFI Group, and Tencent Cloud TVP Industry Ambassador. In the early days, he served the financial industry, mainly engaged in innovative e-banking business, and later turned to foreign companies. He has been deeply involved in retail, petroleum, energy, and chemical fields for decades. How foreign-funded enterprises operate. He used to be the vice president and CIO of Country Garden Group. He has rich practical experience in how Chinese private enterprises can rapidly develop their business in a short period of time and how to achieve digital empowerment. Based on his decades of industry experience, Mr. Xu Bin will share the IT operation in digital transformation from four dimensions: thinking adjustment, cultural and organizational change, structure management, and capacity building from multiple perspectives. Due to space limitations, this article will be published in two parts, the first and the second. The content of this article focuses on the adjustment of thinking in digital transformation.

1. Top-level logic of digitization and operation

When it comes to IT operations in digital transformation, there are two very interesting words that need to be clarified first, one is digital transformation and the other is operations.

(1) Informatization, digitization, and digital transformation, from simple delivery to assisting decision-making to promoting change

We have more or less participated in discussions and exchanges about digital transformation, and with the deepening of digital transformation, even our company's business management and executives are discussing what is informatization, what is digital, and what is called Digital transformation? Although these three are the same concept, there are still some differences in positioning.

Informatization refers to a construction path with the system as the core of interaction. It emphasizes how to quickly realize business requirements and how to make the business more effective through the informatization system. In the digital dimension, its positioning has undergone major changes, it has changed from a delivery unit to a decision-making unit. The core of digital construction is how to effectively acquire data, manage data, and create decision-making value for enterprises through data, thereby enhancing the competitiveness of enterprises. At this time, for the IT leader, his job has changed from a purely technical management and delivery to how to help the company make better decisions, and his capability model needs to change accordingly.

Entering the era of digital economy, it is not enough to just achieve informatization and digitization. What is more important is transformation, and transformation is change. Digital transformation actually helps enterprises to change through digital thinking and digital technology. This change includes changes in business models, business models, and even people's thinking patterns. In this process, IT leaders and digital leaders will undertake important historical missions. At this time, the requirements for IT leaders have changed a lot, and he needs to have a deep understanding of digitalization. You can also see that in some excellent companies that are at the forefront of transformation, the person responsible for digitalization may not only be the head of the department, but may even be the executive of the group. This is because in the transformation, it is often necessary to integrate different groups of resources to promote.

(2) IT management, from making weapons to helping win wars

After clarifying digital transformation, let's talk about business - the business of IT. You may be unfamiliar or strange to the word business. We used to focus on fast delivery in digital construction and informatization construction. Our satisfaction comes from the praise of the business for us, and whether the needs of the business can be quickly realized, everyone can Can't work overtime to bring the system online, can make the system not fail or not fail, these are the indicators that everyone originally assessed. But in the dimension of management, it is different, because management is the thinking of businessmen or entrepreneurs, it pays attention to how to use less resources to generate greater value.

Delivery thinking and business thinking are different logics. For example, we have installed many systems and implemented many functions. Are these functions useful? How is the daily life of the system, whether the effect is good, whether users like it or not, how many functions are not used very much, and finally become a waste. We need to analyze the value of everything we do to the business of the enterprise, and measure each The input-output ratio of a job.

In the process of promoting the digital transformation of enterprises, digital leaders and teams must change their way of thinking, jump out of the original pure delivery thinking, establish a business thinking, and change from a weapon maker to a person who helps win battles.

At present, excellent enterprises have seen the core value of digitalization to the enterprise. As the person in charge of digitalization, how can digital transformation be truly implemented through better thinking, ability building, and leadership building? In the company, this is a problem that everyone needs to solve urgently.

The following will share from the perspective of thinking, that is, what changes should be done at the thinking level when you are doing digital leadership and digital transformation.

2. Change of thinking to facilitate digital construction

(1) Avoid single delivery thinking

In digital construction, the most typical misunderstanding of thinking may be delivery thinking. Inside the enterprise, everyone thinks about how to realize business requirements faster and how to bring the system online faster. What problems will this delivery thinking bring? The first problem is that it will cause people to do a lot of things that should not be done. For example, after the system was launched, we found that user satisfaction was very low. Why? Because users are not involved, only the requesters from some departments are involved. Second, after the system goes online, the daily activity is very low. Many teams may not even watch the daily activity, thinking that the daily activity is a requirement of the to C product. This is actually wrong. To B also needs to pay attention to the daily activity. You need to understand what you are doing How many people are using it and have you helped them. Including many teams, the assessment indicator is SLA, but SLA data does not fully represent the user's good use. If the user does not use it, the SLA is very high. Therefore, delivery thinking is difficult to adapt to the requirements of future digital transformation. Pure delivery is more like a supplier partner. He does not care if you are doing it right or not, but only cares about getting things done to get corresponding rewards.

(2) Operational thinking: focus on input-output ratio

We must have a certain operational thinking. After the product is made, we need to pay attention to whether users like it, pay attention to their daily activity rate, pay attention to the utilization rate of each function, this is similar to the positioning of to C products, and further, we all I hope users like everything I do. Users will use it more if they like it, and it will be easier to generate commercial value if it is used more.

A lot of business thinking has been discussed in the previous article. Business thinking is to use fewer resources and smarter methods to maximize value. This requires us to improve our business thinking. Think of yourself as an entrepreneur, an entrepreneur, how can you use the smartest method and the least resources to create the greatest value at this time. In our enterprise, the measure of the input-output ratio is 1:6, that is, to assess whether one of our inputs can produce 6 times the output in the next three years. If you can do this, then your digital construction must be in the right direction, and it will be very efficient.

(3) Demand Management: Doing the Right Thing

So this is the first one, that is, to establish a business thinking, to consider the input-output ratio, and a very important point to consider the input-output ratio is demand management. Since resources are limited, we must put this resource where it is most valuable, and we must make this demand right. For example, last year our company had more than 25,000 needs in one year, and we made about 40% of it, about 12,000. However, if we analyze it in detail, such as using the principle of 28, it may not be the same. You don't need to do so much to generate enough value.

We do digital construction, just like investing in the real estate industry to buy land. Funds are limited. With tens of billions of funds a year, we can only buy 50 pieces of land. The location of each piece of land is critical. If you buy the wrong one , not only the rate of return is low, but also the sunk cost and opportunity cost are very high, because better land cannot be bought, so our digital construction is the same, there are so many resources, so how to use this good steel on the cutting edge is the best important.

This is a major difference from the original pursuit of simple customer satisfaction. Everyone should be good at saying NO to their business colleagues. You do not necessarily need to do this.

In terms of requirements management, high requirements are placed on the entire digital team, especially product managers. The first is to be able to think about problems from the perspective of the future; the second is to be able to think about what is appropriate to do at what stage from a global perspective. Third, you also need to have strong communication skills, you can't simply say no.

Really good demand management must be pre-positioned, and the method of demand management must be publicized to the management and business colleagues to reach a consensus with everyone. At the same time, the reverse pushes the business department to think more carefully and systematically about what requirements are the right ones when they put forward requirements. In the process of practice, we require the business department to put forward the value and the conditions for the generation of value while putting forward the demand, including how to support the organization behind it and how to support the mechanism capability, so as to realize this value. Otherwise, you only have a gun, and you have no corresponding marksmanship training. Soldiers who lack skills will not be able to win in the end, so demand management is also very critical.

(IV) Customer Success: Turning Empowerment into Enablement

Since you want to be rewarded, you need to help customers succeed. Only when the customer is successful can there be real returns. This is the core principle of input and output. I have talked more about digital empowerment, but it is far from enough to talk about empowerment, because empowerment is mainly about the good weapons and arsenals that I have given you. But if you can't win the battle with this weapon, it's actually meaningless. Therefore, everyone needs to move from empowerment to enablement, and you need to enable you to succeed. Therefore, in the process of practice, after you have done a good job in demand management, you may involve your front-line users earlier in the program design. In this way, product operation can be done well, so that before the system goes online, users who use this product in the future will have a very deep understanding of why they use this product, how to use this product, and how to generate value after using this product, so that they can really To know through this good tool allows you to win the battle. This is the real enabling.

Only when we and the user's value and interests are completely consistent, can we truly generate value. Therefore, after you build the weapon, you should tell your team how to use the weapon, how to train, how to build tactics, and how to use it with other teams. This is the direction of customer success, from simple empowerment to enablement , from a simple management of parameters and indicators of weapons to a management that truly allows everyone to win the battle.

In the leadership requirements of digital transformation, the change of thinking is very important. The core is that we need to change from the original single delivery thinking, operation thinking to business thinking. After the change in thinking, we will talk about the transformation of digital transformation in the next article.