How top companies excel with digital and analytics


Six key areas to help senior executives manage a tech-enabled transformation

The competitive dynamics of digital and analytics put enormous pressure on incumbents’ strategies and operating models. Companies that apply advanced technologies and new ways of working generate more value than those that don’t. Capturing that prize requires executives to rethink and reinvent every aspect of their business, from strategy to operations. Read on to learn more about the elements of successful tech-enabled transformations.


Digital ecosystems—in which diverse companies use online platforms to integrate related offerings—are changing industry dynamics and could generate almost a third of global sales by 2025.

Strategy: The bold pursuit of digital’s value


A digital strategy can’t be incremental. Top companies make big moves to reinvent themselves for the digital environment.

Leaders balance their strategic priorities between digitizing their core businesses and creating innovative digital business models, including models built on digital platforms. They also up the pace of strategy setting, from old-fashioned annual planning to a continuous process that helps them respond more quickly to new developments.

Digital strategy: The four fights you have to win

A winning operating model for digital strategy

Top-performing companies commit as many resources to developing new digital businesses as they do to digitizing their core. 

Organizations’ digital-capital allocation in past 3 years, by objective, %

Talent: Assembling a digital workforce


Successful companies match their workforces to their digital priorities and devote extra effort to recruitment and training.

Leaders balance their strategic priorities between digitizing their core businesses and creating innovative digital business models, including models built on digital platforms. They also up the pace of strategy setting, from old-fashioned annual planning to a continuous process that helps them respond more quickly to new developments.

Digital strategy: The four fights you have to win

A winning operating model for digital strategy

Top-performing companies commit as many resources to developing new digital businesses as they do to digitizing their core. 

Organizations’ digital-capital allocation in past 3 years, by objective, %

Agile: How learning speeds delivery


New ways of working provide organizations with the pace and flexibility to fulfill their customers’ rapidly changing needs.

Leaders balance their strategic priorities between digitizing their core businesses and creating innovative digital business models, including models built on digital platforms. They also up the pace of strategy setting, from old-fashioned annual planning to a continuous process that helps them respond more quickly to new developments.

Digital strategy: The four fights you have to win

of respondents in agile units report a moderate or significant increase in overall performance since their agile transformations began.

On average, respondents in agile units are 1.5 times more likely than others to report financial outperformance relative to peers

Analytics: Enabling data to guide decisions


Effectively applying analytics and AI means building applications that translate data into real-time insights for decision makers.

Leaders balance their strategic priorities between digitizing their core businesses and creating innovative digital business models, including models built on digital platforms. They also up the pace of strategy setting, from old-fashioned annual planning to a continuous process that helps them respond more quickly to new developments.

Digital strategy: The four fights you have to win

Top-performing companies commit as many resources to developing new digital businesses as they do to digitizing their core. 

Organizations’ digital-capital allocation in past 3 years, by objective, %

Successful scalers 55%
All others 31%

Successful scalers are 2 times more likely to prioritize top decision-making processes and are 2.5 times more likely to establish decision-making rights and accountability.