By the very definition of the word, not everybody can be a leader.

In the corporate world of digitisation though, the term takes on a different meaning. While businesses like Apple, Uber and Google are coined innovators for creating disruptive products, digital leaders are the organisations that adopt the products before their competition have even questioned the worth of them. They quickly see the value of the platforms, and have the internal infrastructure to accommodate their integration.

Now, recent studies reveal companies that continuously look to redefine their core business system, values and infrastructure are ultimately the more profitable of the bunch.

Statistical breakdown

The study, conducted in part by the Harvard Business Review Analytics Service (HBR-AS), took a global approach in identifying the advantages and pitfalls of being either a digital leader, follower or laggard. The differentiation between the three is simple; leaders are the first to adopt, followers trail behind after seeing its advantage, while laggards are the last to deploy new technologies.

HBR-AS found that digital leaders greatly outpace the field in the following:

• 73 per cent reported increased revenues, as opposed to 20 and 12 per cent of followers and laggards, respectively.
• 68 per cent realised better profit margins, as opposed to just 25 and 14 per cent.

The vast majority of digital leaders are yielding financial gain in part because they recognise which technologies serve their business model best, but also because they embrace the change it brings and restructure the organisation accordingly. Half of all respondents conceded they'll lose ground to their competitors as long as their company's infrastructure isn't interconnected.

Turn your company into a leader

One prevailing thought is that if a new digital platform is truly transformative, its benefits will be similar for all. But that's simply not true; early adopters are often characterised as having the best digital infrastructure to accommodate such quick and decisive transition from legacy systems to new technology.

The speed with which these organisations can integrate and deploy, for example, multiple private and hybrid clouds allows them to shed the negatives that are commonly associated with these types of decisions that have the ability to alter the business so drastically. These include lost productivity due to downtime and employees' learning curve, as well as costly upgrades that may need to be made.

Jay Scanlan, leader of McKinsey's Digital Strategy Practice, identified three main characteristics of organisations that are digital leaders:

1. Corporate and digital strategies are closely aligned.
2. Hierarchy in place that facilitates an agile workforce.
3. Enterprise infrastructure and human capital are qualified to incorporate new products and platforms.

In short, when the whole company supports integrating new technologies – rather than a single department – and the existing architecture is connected and able to accommodate the transformation, businesses are more likely to adopt the platform and less likely to stumble along the way.

The successes of digital leaders underscore the importance for organisations to start improving their digital infrastructure – whether it be on-premise servers or the cloud. Without it already in place, it's near impossible to reap the benefits early adopters receive from using the same platform your business will ultimately use just a few years down the line.

Many small businesses hesitate to invest in their enterprise architecture for a number of reasons; budget constraints and legacy hardware were at the top of the list of concerns given in the HBR-AS study. Managed services has emerged as a viable solution for these companies to have high quality IT consultants without having to hire and train an entire department.

Nearly 80 per cent of respondents to the HBR-AS study reported the biggest risk in corporate digitisation is not embracing it. Contact an ANATAS representative today to find how how your company can become a digital leader.