Open B2B platforms: The next evolution of digitalization and how to prepare

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All of us have been flooded over the last few years with a lot of news, information, opinions and marketing using, in one form or another, the term “digital”. So, it makes sense to stand still and reflect: What are the patterns we have been seeing, and what can we take away for our specific situation for the future?

This paper discusses the development of digital platforms to support entering a platform-enabled business as part of a company’s digitalization. I’ll start with some general thoughts on digitalization and then describe three classes of platform business (electronic marketplaces, closed platforms for long-tail goods mainly in the consumer space and open business/value platforms mainly in the business space). Then I will describe a step beyond traditional platforms.

The paper concludes with a tangible example (based mostly on already existing and communicated elements) of how a traditional discrete manufacturing company might approach such an open-value platform business to thrive in a completely new, digital world. A world where platforms turn into ecosystems exchanging and creating value. A world in which soon, as the McKinsey Institute predicts, 32 percent of all global business will be done (leaving “only” 68 percent for the traditional economy).

Background on digital transformation

Gartner defines digitalization as “the use of digital technologies to change a business model and provide new revenue- and value-producing opportunities; it is the process of moving to a digital business.” Of course, this involves much more than lifting and shifting an existing way of doing business “as is” into a digitally enabled world. Don’t get me wrong — it might be a tremendous advantage to sell items such as books, video, apparel or even machines online (for example, as in the 1990s) or via a mobile channel (circa early 2000s). And even better if product recommendations and evaluations are available “independently,” provided in social media (the 2010s).

Today it seems nearly inevitable that enterprises will actively participate in online channels and social media to avoid getting swept out of their business. But we also know that doing online banking with browsers on mobile phones is not to be confused with real mobile banking (also around the late 1990s, mainly in Africa), and we know that if you are late to embrace the “digital future,” you might quickly be out of business. Case in point: The now defunct, at-home movie and video game rental company Blockbuster declined an offer to buy Netflix, which later had to reinvent itself before becoming a category leader. Or your business might severely suffer like Barnes & Noble, dwarfed by Amazon after once declining an offer to collaborate. These stories are well known and are already in the past, but they are still repeating every day with other players.

Table of contents

Background on digital transformation 2

Platform business 3

How to potentially move an active production company into a digital world 10

Conclusion and recommendation 11

About the author 13

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We know that digitalization can and should be a combination of several things, for example:

• Digitally enhanced products

• An intriguing user experience, seamless across all channels

• Quick and high-quality business processes at low cost — often fully automated

• A so-called “digital core” — the sum of a technical but also organizational and intellectual agile basis for quick implementation of anything to be offered in business

• Business model innovation in the way we provide services and get paid — today often in cooperation with business partners — to jointly offer customers unrivaled value

All these elements must be woven together to enable and accelerate the continuous digital change life cycle, as we are pushed by our own organization as much as from competition inside and outside our traditional markets. The digital change life cycle is forcing on us an ever-increasing speed to implement new business models, products and processes. More frequently these business models are across traditional industry boundaries, in a world that offers — unlike the past — an asymmetric information advantage to the buyers.

Platform business

So, what is happening today? You often hear “the future is platform business.” And some claim that “if you are not playing on the right platform, you soon may be extinct.” This is like Blockbuster or, even worse, Kodak, which originally invented digital photography without bringing it to market, eventually killing their company.

Early platforms = Marketplaces

We remember platforms that created industry change and certainly are here to stay. For example, there was Apple with its iTunes platform transforming the whole music industry by implementing a new way to pay for and consume music. And there was also Amazon, which changed the way books are sold. In 2018 Amazon had 50 percent market share of printed books in the United States and Barnes & Noble had 20 percent; but Amazon had 84 percent of e-books, greatly outpacing Barnes & Noble, which only claimed 2 percent of these products.

Amazon also changed the entire retail business not only by entering and dominating one category after another, as well as by “surrounding elements” such as optimized warehousing and delivery, but also via opening their shop platform to third-party businesses. To a large extent this still falls into something we discussed in the ’90s as “marketplaces.” People and businesses that want to buy something meet at/on such a marketplace or platform, and people and businesses that want to sell can use the platform for transactions.

Digitalization is much more than doing your business in digital channels.

Early platforms thrived on economies of scale and user experience.

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Such platforms provide economies of scale. We can economically handle the “long tail” for a much broader offer of existing but difficult-to-find goods. And we certainly got a superior user experience — not only in the interfaces we use (online/mobile/speech) but also with additional services such as product information, return policy, quality assurance, recommendations, breadth and depth of offering, price and availability. But with these early platforms and marketplaces, the products, to the largest degree, remained the products that were already available — even though the way we bought, sold and consumed them changed dramatically. Furthermore, the focus clearly remained on business to consumer (B2C).

Closed platforms (often in the consumer space)

Later, new platforms emerged, such as Uber in the transport business and Airbnb in hospitality. Both are consumer-oriented “platform businesses” based on additional elements that we will visit later; however, they try to dominate their market by remaining a closed platform, controlling who offers goods and services on their platform. Also, Apple iTunes or the Amazon online shop have long been in the consumer space, and both have remained a closed/owner-controlled platform, keeping their customers by increasingly breaking earlier “business compromises” (the usual contradictions, such as offering both world-class quality and the lowest price at the same time). But Apple and Amazon still were selling what already existed, even if the items were sometimes difficult to find for the buyer.

Offering something that didn’t exist before — with all overlap and gray zones — is what differentiated Uber or Airbnb, which “created” something completely new. While cars and rooms existed physically, these cars and rooms did not exist as an available offer for the public to buy or use. This is a key difference from the long-tail in retail or music businesses such as Amazon or Apple: With their goods, the search and transaction cost might have been so high that no business reasonably could be done — although in theory, you could buy all of these books and music somewhere and at some price.

Without Uber and competitors, there are fewer transportation possibilities, and without Airbnb and competitors, there are fewer places to stay — and no possibility for the asset owners to monetize them in a relatively simple way. In this way, Uber and Airbnb created a business model leveraging a market that did not exist before.

These newer platforms have several distinct properties:

• They are “asset light” for themselves, leveraging via the platform assets that somebody else owns/provides. They greatly reduced entry barriers (e.g., buying a taxi license and a car, or even more complex, developing real estate, hiring people and opening a hotel). This enabled them to scale up quickly.

• Being an asset-light electronic business based on a modern “digital core” allowed them to offer lower prices and often a better and more uniform globalized customer experience (such as standardized user interface and payments solutions, feedback on quality, user preferences) than their incumbent competitors, which in turn allowed them to accelerate their growth. They became the winners by exploiting the platform effect of increasing marginal returns (i.e., the more parties participate, the greater the value for all participants).

Later platforms enabled companies to increase their offerings to include unused assets, creating new markets.

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• Of course, these platforms also disrupted the value chains in their respective industries. Being the interface to the users of their respective services, both platforms disintermediated the consumers (ride takers, room renters) from the real-world providers of these services (car owners, room owners). Uber and Airbnb built their brands and business at the expense of the incumbents being bound to their heavy assets and associated cost. They also created the platform for the many so-far “private” people who had neither a brand nor a possibility to even offer such a service.

However, remember this: These business models are not without competition, as they can be quickly copied (for example, Lyft or Didi for Uber, and HomeAway or Booking for Airbnb). These companies that don’t create or have complex products thrive from scale, price, choice and convenience — not, for example, on their own intellectual property that even might be protected by patents. Airbnb and Uber are examples of platforms that created a new market in a consumer-oriented, scalable, relatively simply business model: They sell to consumers with the intention of gaining market/category dominance by integrating as many partners (providers and consumers) as possible while staying closed to competition.

It’s also interesting that the largest of these platforms started to sell what they learned themselves, such as Amazon providing payment services outside of the Amazon marketplace and offering easy-to-access, secure and hyper-scaling computing capacity via Amazon Web Services (AWS). Today, instead of trying to dominate product categories via defining who is on the closed platform, a new set of platforms comes in — more open platforms that are playing in the business-to-business (B2B) space and inherently have greater complexity due to transaction models, continuous relationships, and a more equal power situation among the participants (Figure 1). There is also the increased need for reliability with the expected transactions, including volume, business criticality, and legal and regulatory requirements.

Figure 1. Development to open, complex B2B2x platforms. This allows the creation of new ways of consuming offers enabled by interaction/cooperation in open-value ecosystems.

Services based on Industry 4.0 platforms

(i.e., predictive maintenance, ensure

production output)

Flexible multi- manufacturing

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“Crane as a service” in B2B2C or B2B2B

Offer internal skills to mostly B2B market

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Google Cloud

Platform businessessuch as Airbnb, Uber

Complex tool rental (such as transport

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Shopping platforms with third-party

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Early online shops such as initial Amazon,

Apple iTunes in B2C

Today’s marketplaceswith add-on services

(payments, installation) such as Amazon, eBay

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Without its own protected intellectual property, platform businesses are prone to be copied while racing to market dominance.

While massively growing, companies developed internal skills that could be marketed as separate businesses.

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Platforms open to competitors and coopetition, creating value ecosystems (often in B2B space)

Digital transformation is not only about embedding digital into products (e.g., sensors for adaptation to environment, reporting condition or tear). Digital transformation is also more than offering seamless usage of interaction channels (such as one’s own shops, branch offices, tied/free agents, representatives) that are enhanced by internet- or mobile-based sales and services, for example. Digital transformation also goes beyond increasing customer experience and satisfaction, and optimizing internal processes, organization and technical core/IT.

First and foremost, digital transformation is about enabling completely new business models, leveraging all these elements and combining them into something new that has not been available previously but is an answer to a business compromise (i.e., something such as “high quality, only at a high price” that is against the wishes of most existing or potential clients but could not be overcome by any market participant so far).

In this respect, digital transformation is about forming business ecosystems or value networks that, according to the McKinsey Institute, enable an improbable value proposition such as largest inventory, fastest delivery, greatest customer experience and lowest cost — and all of this, simultaneously. Such platforms do not necessarily define their participants upfront but rather provide open platforms based on standardized ways to interact. For example, to sell multimodal mobility (move from A to B using train, car, plane, bicycle, scooter, etc.) while potentially adding healthcare (within the transport mode) and even real estate services (e.g., office space) along the way.

Many of these new value ecosystems can start as relatively simple, and we all know them from the consumer world. For example, Amazon is combining retail with payments/ insurance and installation/customization services. Another example is car-sharing, where original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) no longer sell their cars but rent them “as a service,” handling distributed availability, service and repair in the background.

Compared to existing traditional car rental, the superior value proposition these companies offer is to simplify the rental process, increase overall financial attractiveness and provide convenience with often free-floating fleets such as one-way rentals and closeness. Concerning openness, the recent merger of Mercedes car2go and BMW DriveNow to become SHARE NOW is a perfect example of competitors doing business on one — even a joint — platform. But also, in B2B there are already several platforms in the Industry 4.0 environment: Siemens (MindSphere), SAG (Cumulocity), or GE (Predix), and several others from Bosch, SAP and the hyper-scalers (AWS, Google, Azure).

On top of being offered by players that are mainly in B2B and open their own deep, market-differentiating intellectual property (IP) to partners, one of the main differences is that these new platforms are designed as open platforms. This is necessary for at least two important reasons: First is the industry structure in which one player rarely dominates the lion’s share of the market. Many customers use several suppliers’ products (e.g., for production machinery). For customers’ overall process optimization, these products often must be interconnected — which can be enabled by using open standards.

Business ecosystems offer “improbable,” superior value propositions.

Open business platforms create value for buyers by combining “products”/ services even from competitors.

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Second, the products and services these companies offer rarely are a one-time transaction such as buying apparel or a book. In fact, their products often are used for a decade or even longer. During this time these products need maintenance, support or parts that must be provided, often guaranteed by sales contract and sometimes even regulation. Such timespans require openness to connect even a market participant’s own old products to its own new products, or to allow new players to enter to enhance or combine the old machines or services with new ones. Such platforms and their ecosystems should allow more flexible, reliable and heavily automated cooperation while following industry and technology trends — spanning time and markets and creating a business ecosystem.

Beyond traditional platforms

An ecosystem as described in the last paragraph already could go beyond “just in sequence” (with fixed suppliers for parts and logistics of these parts) to realize flexible manufacturing networks. In these, the capacity of the worldwide production facilities of different suppliers can be optimized, taking into account the international logistics chains in between. Of course, this may seem a relatively farfetched vision — while you shouldn’t forget contract manufacturers such as Magna, NEVS and Foxconn. But in the end, it is “only” about using platforms to organize something in today’s less standardized physical world that already happens in heavily standardized goods such as energy trading or telecoms network switching.

What about the platform being the product, or transforming the physical product itself into a platform? What about a meta platform, a platform of platforms, or turning the own business into a platform business where selling the platform is the business model? We have already seen parts of this. First, Amazon’s AWS is selling the exact same technical platform of their retail platform as a business, further enhanced by new services for business applications. Second, via its Heroku platform, Salesforce offers not only to create and run one’s own applications, but also to monetize them to third parties.

Or let’s assume that a system integrator does co-create a software product with its customers, but then both put this on a platform and sell it to third parties (already happening with DXC Technology and selected customers). Or a platform of platforms when — as a simple example — cloud storage of any existing provider(s) can be accessed and managed via a “cloud storage concentrator,” adding services in space optimization (via automatic compression and saving only one single version of files that many users store) and maybe automatically moving data between the different providers to optimize storage cost depending on their pricing and your usage pattern. Does this seem far away? This already exists — at least in pieces.

Let’s think this further into the physical world that open B2B platforms service. Today we have a lot of standardization in everything we use “as a utility” (water, electricity, telecoms and also compute power and storage). This standardization comprises physical elements such as the size of pipes and their threads or the electrical plugs and sockets — although this isn’t perfectly uniform on a global level.

So, let’s assume that standardization of physical products moves forward. In the automotive industry today, component suppliers provide larger functional parts of a car to different OEMs, and some OEMs standardize their products with module concepts. Why not extend this standardization to allow “fluid product design and

Business value systems must span time and markets over long periods based on standardization.

Standardization allows for scale and enables companies to achieve utility-like products in many classical industries.

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usage” in the following way: Decompose the product into different functionalities with standardized connections and interfaces to enable using different providers for every part of the overall product. Each of these parts can be tendered separately on a platform so that different companies provide modularized parts to the overall product — perhaps individualized for each client. The final product may not even be the car anymore, but the transportation — using, among other means, a car.

This idea of the modular product can be even further decomposed in time — first searching for a solution for a customer requirement to define what should be produced (best idea/solution to a problem) and then separately tendering who produces the solution (best implementation of the idea) — with “solution” again being potentially decomposed in time or across the value chain into initial production and later, operation and service. Already, this partially exists in contract manufacturing or even when looking at the car-ride platforms — so the idea isn’t as futuristic as it initially might appear.

In a full-fledged scenario, we might use standardization and modularization of products from creation, usage/consumption and “second usage” (as a whole or in pieces) until disposal of products and services — in three dimensions (Figure 2):

1. Along the value chain and life cycle of the product or service

2. Along the different parts and components of the product, such as in an exploded view drawing

3. Along the life cycle of product use

In such a world, business platforms will develop not linearly along the value chain or a customer journey; they will develop in all three dimensions to leverage the full potential of new products and services, new players and conglomerates along the value chain of the physical product, and its use with adjacent services.

Figure 2. Decomposition: Three dimensions of leveraging digital business platforms for new business value platforms. The example shown is for mobility based on decomposition of today’s automotive industry set-up.

Different combinations of products, up to

new productsDifferent components

of a product

Value chainand life cycle of a product

New mobility ideas

New fluidmobilityconcept

Joint develop. of new social

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MiningCo-creation of best material combination

Co-creation ofnew repair

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R&D for new cars

Co-productionconglomerate Co-production Sales

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Customer-centric after-

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R&D for newfinancial concept

Co-dev. of new financial

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Fluid develop. of new

financial app

New mobilityfinancial

platform launchPay permileage

Standardization and decomposition in physical elements and in time allow for differentiation of existing products and modular combination of new/enhanced products.

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But let’s go back a step. Let me describe two simpler examples where digital technologies enabled new ways of doing business by leveraging relatively simple platforms; both examples use some of the ideas previously mentioned.

The first example is tendering of gearbox housing for a German premium car manufacturer. Gearboxes are relatively low-tech injection-molding parts, but they still must comply to the technical specifications, such as sustaining a certain pressure. The idea realized was to do an open tendering without giving the gearbox specifications to all competitors. A platform was created to turn the tendering process into an interactive process, with ever more details provided to the still down-selected bidders.

The platform’s process provided the tender participants increasingly more of the gearbox specifications. Additional information (for example, the needed quality, exact specifications, quantity, and time to produce and deliver) allowed the participants to confirm their interest in bidding, refine their technical solution and, of course, narrow down their bid ranges. Compared to the more traditional process, giving away little information in the beginning and tracking/securing the information distributed in every round with blockchain enabled the manufacturer to have an efficient and effective tendering process with many more, also not-yet-certified/known potential suppliers — while better protecting IP, as bidders dropping out early only had a small part of the specifications.

Another example was the relatively simple business of renting tools such as professional hammer drills, small crawler excavators or mortar mixers. As simple as this sounds, the business model of a startup was not viable. Customer requirements posed an economic challenge in several ways: 1) the pre-condition of having the expensive tools “in stock” in reasonable quantity; 2) keeping track of which of the tools were in and which were out, and where and when they came back; 3) the need to service the tools; 4) the need to deliver larger tools such as a small excavator for large gardening; or, for example, 5) the need or desire to potentially get property and/or liability insurance due to the potential damage you can do with an excavator.

Overall, all these requirements increased the cost to a degree that the whole service was neither attractive to clients nor to the startup. However, bringing all these processes to one single platform — enabling fully automated tracking/managing of the stock, allowing smart contracts with transporters and insurers, i.e., leveraging a digital platform integrating different players for different services in secured, low-transaction-cost processes — made the business model work while allowing new insurers, transporters and tool providers to join the platform to achieve geographic spread and scale.

So, what might be an “in-between” comparing the fully global, multi-producer-consumer, flexible production network with the relatively simple examples of open platforms discussed previously? Let’s look at a nearly real-world example.

Modern digital platforms can help to protect IP despite opening up and enabling otherwise unattractive business models.

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How to potentially move an active production company into a digital world

This example involves one of DXC’s customers. But while most of the things described here are public information, not all steps are completed, and some “missing links” may not be realized yet. Still, these potentially missing links do not require any newer thinking, massive technology changes or other business investments.

The basic idea might be described as “crane as a service,” and it might be more interesting to focus on which elements support realizing the vision rather than including every detail in this real-world example. As described here, crane as a service is completely new, not available today to any customer “out of one hand.” Crane as a service will remove many business barriers, for example:

• High up-front investment (e.g., buying a crane)

• Missing onsite/in-time knowledge (trained/certified drivers, repair/service knowledge)

• Missing flexibility (for example, different phases of building a house on a forested hill might call for timber cranes, forklifts, truck-mounted and/or fixed loader cranes and a combination of such products, parts and services from different parties — often economically separated.)

• Missing time (weather conditions, promised completion date, etc.)

Let’s explore how this be can realized by enhancing products, creating an ecosystem and finally, changing existing industry logic. The first step might be to change the business model like the existing car-sharing models. Despite selling (or already leasing) a crane to a customer, we can rent a crane to customers for a short time. Our DXC customer already offers this for lifting platforms, enabling the crane provider and customer more transparency, efficiency and documentation of usage data.

However, you also can change the rental model to a more business outcome-oriented, as-a-service model, charging for the end result rather than for the time the crane was available. For this, you leverage the already existing digitally enabled cranes, which provide you with information about the work that has been performed (e.g., usage duration, movements, load). And you can not only measure how much the crane was used and for what type of work, but also, whether it was used as prescribed, to limit wear and tear. In addition, and maybe more importantly, you can collect data for predictive maintenance or product improvement.

The second step in approaching a full crane as a service could be adding services described in the tool rental business example: Bringing the crane to the place of work and insuring against different risks on a construction site, for example. You might also provide the crane driver or operator. For this last step and for scaling, of course you need a new technical platform to integrate partners — including providers of cranes that are not yours, insurance partners, people rental for crane drivers and construction/work site security services.

To increase flexibility, you can do more — exactly as our customer did by inventing several product improvements. First, he invented a new flexible crawler crane that allows separating the moving platform from the actual crane. To take this one step further, standardizing the hardware connection of platform and crane with other crane producers might multiply the options for combining products, their usage

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and business models. (Note: This represents an implementation in hardware of what Siemens, GE and others do on the machine-to-machine communication in their Industry 4.0 platforms).

Second, our client invented a new control system for the crane. Instead of being trained in how to move which articulators to bring the crane boom tip to the requested place of work, the new “smart boom control” allows drivers to directly steer the boom tip. The specific movements in the crane’s articulators, which are difficult to train and specific based on the geometry of each model, are generated automatically. This is not only more convenient; it also increases business flexibility, as this innovation makes it much easier to find and train crane drivers.

Furthermore, you can equip your crane with various additional sensors, such as to prevent some other part of the crane from destroying itself or the environment while you’re focused on watching the moving boom tip. Parts of this idea also already exist — for example, defining allowed ranges of crane postures depending on the load carried — to prevent tip-over or damage to the crane.

In addition, and already existing, you need some IT solutions (apps and backend) such as a fleet monitor for the crane fleet dispatcher or an operations monitor for the crane operator. You might also have a billing application for the “aaS” business model — based on the technical parameters described above, but also all classical price models. For predictive maintenance, the already existing virtual reality applications can simplify and speed up servicing — up to the point that less specialized mechanics might be able to repair something at the work site. And if repair is not possible, an integration into the supplier and partner network with smart contracts to deliver/transport a nearest-by spare part to the work site helps to restart operations as quickly as possible.

But there's more: Applying virtual reality (VR) might enable you to avoid needing a crane operator to be onsite at all remote operations — at least in certain application areas. The VR models can also be used to simulate parts of a digital twin, preventing collision with the environment, overload/tipping, etc. However, as a side effect, no operator on the crane means no operator cab, providing other advantages such as higher workload, often advantageous geometry, etc.

With these elements, you have the basis for a network of business partners that combines their intelligent hardware, services and flexibility. With this, you can create a superior experience in convenience, security, flexibility and cost, one that is not available today — all due to leveraging all partners’ expertise, scale and interoperability.

Conclusion and recommendation

Unlike retail marketplaces, with their relatively small and stable set of leading players in consumer-oriented platforms, no clear leaders have emerged yet in the open B2B platforms. This is not surprising given the many different specialized players leveraging their IP for market leadership in a narrow business area. However, even if they are very specialized, open B2B platforms today are gaining traction. As in the consumer-oriented space, to play the platform game well, it is important to understand the technical (product hardware and IT/process software), organizational and sometimes also contractual/legal implications and difficulties.

Transforming a traditional manufacturing business to thrive in a digital world comprises many potential steps that often can be done independently of each other.

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After a platform is established, the “exponential benefit of growing” or increasing in marginal benefit will take place. If your business is not part of this platform/eco-system, it quickly might become too late to catch up to your competitors’ progress on this exponential curve. You might be excluded from high margins or even business access and end up like a Blockbuster or Kodak — going from market leader to market leaver.

The only real way to learn something is to explore it and do it. The good thing about digitalization is that this learning is not necessarily an investment providing an insecure payback. There are several patterns that provide competitive advantages for themselves — before any full vision of a digital platform business will be realized — relying on adapted products and services within an open and flexible partner network. These patterns include, among others:

• Equipping current products with digital elements, including sensors, actuators, communications, mobile apps and their IT backend

• Offering additional customer interaction patterns for communication/transaction/usage, but also buy/lease/rent/use

• Making changes to the product for easier usage, cooperation and combination with adjacent products (e.g., via standardization in product and IT for combining different cranes with different chassis)

Therefore, all these things are useful for more than evaluating if, when and which platform will take off. Doing and learning prepares a business to be able to quickly join and also fully leverage a potential future “must-be platform.” Learning via exploring and doing is already providing economic value and creative competitive advantage: The investments’ return enables more investment.

We have two general recommendations that have proved to make the difference between digital leaders and often less successful followers: First, despite creative experimentation that involves numerous independent digital pieces, you always should follow a unified digitalization strategy that incorporates the need to continuously adapt to sudden technological and market changes. An interesting way to do so may be decomposing your current products and services in the three dimensions described in the “Beyond traditional platforms” section of this paper and defining what to do with whom to create a better solution for your customers. And while you experiment in some areas, always have the full picture in mind so you can leverage progress that others may make to help you fulfill your vision.

Second, digital is not a question of installing a chief digital officer (CDO) or creating a digital subsidiary or venture arm. Digital touches the whole enterprise — from board to worker; from research to aftersales, administration and IT; and from processes to organization. Digital is about the knowledge and skills of the employees and a learning culture. You must embed digitalization everywhere in your organization, products and services — not only in some separated parts — and you need the culture to allow for learning from experiments, with calculated risk.

Each component of a digital journey prepares a company for playing successfully in a new value ecosystem world — but still should create value in itself as investment payback.

Digital transformation needs an overall strategy and touches all parts of the company.

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Overall, structured “learning by doing” within an overall vision or game plan means preparing to operate in a whole new business environment with an interconnected world of physical products and their usage. It’s a world that can be well described as a flexible ecosystem representing a “trusted value network” based on standardized equipment, data exchange and data leverage, and services provided by different partners — handled via an open, fully automated platform.

About the author

Dr. Martin Eldracher is head of consulting for the North and Central Europe region at DXC Technology. His work with customers focuses on strategy and digitalization, enterprise architecture and portfolio management — all three, critical angles to understanding platform business. Prior to joining DXC, he worked as CEO Eastern Europe for a leading systems integrator, managing director and head of CRM for several internet agencies and also held roles in strategy consulting. Martin holds a diploma in computer science and an MBA from the Technical University of Munich, where he also earned a PhD doing research on planning the movements of industrial robots with artificial neural networks.

Learn more at www.dxc.technology

About DXC TechnologyDXC Technology (NYSE: DXC) helps global companies run their mission critical systems and operations while modernizing IT, optimizing data architectures, and ensuring security and scalability across public, private and hybrid clouds. With decades of driving innovation, the world’s largest companies trust DXC to deploy our enterprise technology stack to deliver new levels of performance, competitiveness and customer experiences. Learn more about the DXC story and our focus on people, customers and operational execution at www.dxc.technology.

© 2020 DXC Technology Company. All rights reserved. DG_2732a-21. April 2020

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