Following several years of digital transformation in most companies, a large number of firms are finding that the desired effects are not yet sufficiently materialising or that key digitalisation steps are still missing.

Why is that? The reasons are varied and often differ depending on the industry and company. However, an important aspect is cited by many business owners when asked about the reasons for previously unsatisfactory digitalisation successes: there are a great many approaches and concepts for implementing specific digitalisation issues (such as individual customer apps, automation of individual processes, modern analytics applications, etc.). Such isolated solutions generally bring initial successes, but do not lead to a comprehensive and ultimately more successful transformation of the business. However, there are few holistic and overarching approaches as to how to successfully lead a company with existing customers, established products, experienced employees and processes that have evolved over many years consistently into the digital era.

This paper demonstrates how such a comprehensive Digital Business Transformation can succeed beyond isolated digital point solutions. To this end, it is useful to examine the starting position of most companies and the existing digitalisation expectations of various stakeholders. Building on this, a typical target vision is developed, followed by an explanation of how to achieve this target vision by means of a digitalisation roadmap and the associated implementation methodology. During implementation, both the technical IT side and the necessary enablement and „bringing along“ of the workforce are important. The one will not work without the other.