Where Are The Examples Of Successful "Digital Transformations?"
Posted by BenSchoolingsworth@reddit | ExperiencedDevs | View on Reddit | 5 comments
Hey everyone, I've worked at an insurance company for about a year and a half now, and the entire time I've been there, leadership has been touting the "Digital Transformation" we are supposedly undergoing, and how we need to do this to stay competitive and whatnot.
While I admittedly have a narrower perspective than coworkers who have been around for decades, it seems to me that the reality is this:
1) Leadership is just pumping out a lot of corporate rhetoric with not much action behind it. 2) We have done some re-orgs that just shuffled people around while retaining the same crappy engineering culture and command and control leadership style that we allegedly want to get away from.
I can't imagine my experience is very uncommon, but I'm curious to hear what others have experienced in their organizations. Particularly, I'd love to hear about some successful "digital transformations". While the leadership in my organization could be doing a better job in many aspects, I think shifting an entrenched organizational culture must be massively tough. So, I'm intrigued to learn how it has actually been done before.
Looking forward to hearing people's thoughts...
ResolutionHungry3170@reddit
Honestly, one of the main reasons we rarely see “clear” examples of successful digital transformation is because most companies never define or measure what success actually looks like.
Without a baseline or maturity scoring, it’s hard to say whether things got better or just different. At Digitopia (the platform I’m part of), we work with companies to assess where they actually stand in areas like tech, people, and execution — and just doing that often reveals why transformation feels stuck.
Once teams align on what needs to improve and how progress will be tracked, results become more visible and meaningful. Until then, it’s mostly buzzwords and vague goals.
We’ve seen retail clients go from below-average maturity to becoming digital leaders in their industry — improving customer satisfaction and gaining serious market share in under three years. In manufacturing, one client reduced production delays by over 40% by fixing data flow issues between planning and operations teams. They also automated reporting processes that used to take days and now get done in minutes. These weren’t huge tech overhauls — just well-targeted actions that came from finally understanding where the real gaps were.
These outcomes didn’t happen overnight, but they started with getting real about where they stood.
Carob_Chance@reddit
Digitopia is a scam
Extra_Marketing_5486@reddit
Plenty, especially in education. One great example is Mafatlal Technologies. They’ve worked with schools across India to digitize entire administrative operations — from admissions and student records to alumni management — using modular, AI-powered ERP systems.
What makes it successful is their exclusive focus on education. They’re not offering generic solutions — everything’s designed with school needs in mind.
Their approach is a solid case study in how digital transformation should be done:
FredSmith9999@reddit
Large companies and businesses definitely need to modernise and keep pace with competitors.
However, I hate the term "Digital Transformation." It's meant to mean something, but it's just management consultant jargon.
What is meant by "digital"?
In the purest sense, it just means numbers (or fingers :-) )
In a technology sense, it generally means something to do with computing.
In a consultant sense, it could mean anything from moving to cloud native applications, mobile/internet front end/portal, breaking "monolith" into microservices, shifting from legacy tooling/processes to application (computer) based tooling, switching to a common toolset for all of your teams/resources, moving to scrum/agile (!) or ALL of that and more.
What it sometimes means is aiming to do things more quickly and efficiently (i.e. removing the bloat from the process and costs.)
However, what it typically is interpreted as is a reduction in headcount from the lower end of the workforce. (Reducing the number of people you have is the quickest/easiest way to cut costs.) It does come with consequences, but it acheives the short term goal.
Real transformation is reviewing what you do and how you do it, changing your processes to be more efficient (end to end) and most importantly upskilling your workforce (having the right workforce with the right skills) to be able to deliver and react quickly.
Imagine having an underperforming sports team... If you had management consultants in, they would cut the team in half to save costs, and shrink the pitch, rather than train the team to perform better, give them the tools to support that training, and teach them in the latest/cutting edge methods. Its the lower end of the workforce that utlimately delivers value for a business, so that's where the focue should be.
Also, digital transformations never end - technology moves on. And if a transformation was seen to be completely successful, what would the management consultants be able tsell you next time?
Rsmith201@reddit
7 Examples of Digital Transformation That Inspire Businesses to Evolve
Read in detail about this digital transformation examples.