How can chief operating officers succeed in driving, growing and transforming their businesses with digital technology?

More than half (56 per cent) of chief operating officers (COOs) in Asia ranked transformation as a top priority for their organisations. This compares with the global average of just 39 per cent. What is more important is, 62 per cent of the Asia-Pacific (APAC) COOs think ‘change projects’ will become one of the areas they spend most of their time on, according to Banque Nationale de Paris (BNP) Paribas Securities Services. COOs overwhelmingly recognised the importance of collaborating closely with other departments for successful transformation. Over half (52 per cent) said they wanted better partnerships with information technology (IT) departments. The Boston Consulting Group’s (BCG’s) research shows that only 30 per cent of the organisations achieve successful digital transformations. Despite very encouraging statistics in the BNP survey that digital transformation ranks highly on the agenda of COOs in Asia, the very bleak statistic in a BCG’s research shows that the failure rate for digital initiatives in organisations is high. It begs the question for COOs of aspiring organisations looking to embark on a strategic digital transformation initiative: Why is the success rate so low for something so strategically important to organisations? Given the above context, this paper attempts to first explore the reasons why digital transformation initiatives are so challenging and the reasons why they fail. Secondly, it seeks to explore how COOs can raise their odds of succeeding in their transformation agenda by focusing on a few critical factors and fostering closer collaboration between the technology teams and the business units.