Digital Strategy Does Not Equal IT Strategy

Mark P McDonald

Harvard Business Review Blog, November 19, 2012 

Mark argues that Digital strategy should go beyond mere automation of processes, but should rather seek to take advantage of the essence of the digital channel – uses the example of Royal Caribbean cruise operator

“Imagine the potential for lines when 5,400 people on a single ship want to eat dinner, see a show, or take an excursion. Rather than making lines more endurable, Royal Caribbean sought to eliminate them. How? By implementing different combinations of digital and physical resources across the twenty-six processes where passengers could potentially experience a line. The company used shape recognition cameras to determine restaurant capacity and made the information available to passengers within their natural behavior flows. They used smart cards to turn the process of offshore excursions into one as simple as walking into an office building. The result is a digital edge based on combining digital capabilities rather than merely replacing clipboards with iPads”

http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2012/11/digital_strategy_does_not_equa.html