Best practices for digital transformation based on a systematic literature review

Abstract

Purpose

Digital transformation (DT) projects are complex and often unsuccessful. While researchers have suggested many guidelines and best practices on how to successfully roll out DT projects and how they are spread among a large number of scientific papers. The aim of this paper is to synthesize these guidelines into clear overviews.

Design/methodology/approach

A systematic literature review was conducted on both Scopus and Web of Science to search for papers suggesting DT guidelines or best practices. In total, 150 papers dealing with DT and guidelines were fully analyzed.

Findings

Eight main DT guidelines were found and each one was expanded with several best practices on how to implement these. The results are eight tables giving an overview of the commonly agreed-upon best practices for each DT guideline.

Research limitations/implications

These overviews are useful for both researchers and practitioners, to guide future work and to be inspired respectively. This paper calls for more research on how these guidelines are followed in practice, how these differ per industry and what their impact is on the overall success of DT projects.

Originality/value

The synthesis of DT guidelines organized into an accessible format has not yet been conducted before, and can serve as a seminal pinpoint for future research.

Introduction

Digital technologies have a massive impact on our society. Companies must constantly innovate to keep up with the current possibilities and trends, a process commonly referred to as digital transformation (DT). This concept has acquired many definitions over the years that differ both in scale and depth. Some commonly used definitions include “a process that aims to improve an entity by triggering significant changes to its properties through combinations of information, computing, communication, and connectivity technologies” (Vial, 2019, p. 1) or as “the continuously increasing interaction between digital technologies, business, and society” (Van Veldhoven & Vanthienen, 2021, p. 11). The powerful ways in which digital technologies change the competitive landscape requires good executive sense and awareness to quickly transform the opportunities into competitive advantages (Bonnet & Westerman, 2021). This has become crucial as the rate of change is increasing and thus the rate of opportunities.

Companies struggle with rolling out DT projects successfully. Not only are these projects strategically difficult due to their size and complexity (Schneider & Kokshagina, 2021), but also they are paired with technological (Fuchs & Hess, 2018), cultural (Diener & Špaček, 2021) and behavioral challenges (Saarikko, Westergren, & Blomquist, 2020). This results in a high failure rate estimated to be between 66% and 87.5% of all DT projects (Libert, Beck, & Wind, 2016; Wade & Shan, 2020). Therefore, researchers and leading companies are exploring the best practices and guidelines that can aid companies in their transformation. This is difficult because the scale of change is so large resulting in many different business aspects that need to be covered. Yet, detailed DT guidelines for managers are lacking (Hess, Benlian, Matt, & Wiesböck, 2016).

In this paper, we aim to create a practical summary of these guidelines. Not only are the guidelines currently spread among a large number of papers, but there is also a significant lack of how these guidelines can be put into practice. Most guidelines rest on a certain level of abstraction such as “be agile” without clear communication on how a firm can become more agile (Peter, Kraft, & Lindeque, 2020). We conducted a systematic literature review to retrieve the commonly agreed-upon best practices and categorized them into eight main guidelines. These were verified with seven interviews with DT experts before we continued with the further analysis of the literature to retrieve more information on how these guidelines can be followed in practice. The result is an overview of the typical practical guidelines as per main guideline. It is important to note that this work is not meant to be exhaustive but rather as an overview of commonly suggested guidelines. It can aid managers in dealing with DT projects through inspiration, action points or scenario sketching.

In the next section, we go deeper into the meaning of DT and the problems surrounding the guidelines for DT. Then, we explain the systematic literature review methodology in section three. The results are eight tables, one for each main guideline, summarizing the best practices we found in the literature. We discuss the findings in the next section and conclude the paper in the last section.

Background

DT is not a new concept. In fact, the first occurrence of the term was in the year 2000 by Patel and McCarthy to describe e-business (Patel & McCarthy, 2000). However, it took 15 years before the term gained popularity. From 2015, the number of publications published per year with DT as a keyword doubled annually from 50 in 2015 to over 800 in 2022 (Van Veldhoven, Etikala, Goossens, & Vanthienen, 2021). This increased growth highlights the importance of DT, not only in research but also in business. For instance, in a study among 702 executives, 89% have adopted a digital-first strategy (Alt, 2019). Other studies point toward similar estimates such as 85% of companies agree that digital business is a fundamental aspect for success (Kane, Palmer, Phillips, Kiron, & Buckly, 2017).

Part of the recent academic interest can also be attributed to the amalgamation of terminology. Between 2000 and 2015, many different terms were used to describe a similar process in which digital technologies gained a more prominent place in our society. These include digitization, often defined as converting analog processes into digital ones (Loebbecke & Picot, 2015), digitalization or IT/IS-enabled transformation, often defined as the sociotechnical process in which digital technologies are increasingly adopted (Legner et al., 2017), or digital business transformation (Schallmo, Williams, & Boardman, 2017). In other industries, terms such as industry 4.0 are often used. All these terms are different, but they can be understood as precedents of DT. As such, studying DT is complicated and requires a broad query for the literature review.

An additional complexity of this work is the diversity of the guidelines. The guidelines found in the literature often stem from case studies (e.g. Loonam, Eaves, Kumar, & Parry, 2018), surveys (e.g. Brock & von Wangenheim, 2019) or interviews (e.g. Brunetti et al., 2020), and these differ per industry and company. In addition, as DT impacts every aspect of the business and society (Stolterman & Fors, 2004), there exists a broad spectrum of guidelines. Abstraction must be made of the industry or company-specific guidelines to find general guidelines that span across industries. It is worth noting that the aim of this paper is not to describe best practices to digitalize a certain process or service. Instead, we discuss general top-level best practices for an entire company to embark on DT.

Methodology

To summarize the best practices for DT, the methodology consisted of five steps. First, we performed a systematic literature review on both Scopus and Web of Science (WoS) to retrieve conference and journal papers dealing with DT guidelines. To include both American and British English, wildcards (*) are used to accommodate both spellings of digitali(s/z)ation. Numerous queries were tested on inclusiveness and accuracy, and eventually the following were chosen due to their high accuracy and low false positives.

1. Scopus: TITLE-ABS-KEY ((“digital transformation” OR “digitali*ation”) AND (“guideline* OR “recommendation*” OR “best practice*”)) AND LANGUAGE (“english”) AND DOCTYPE (“ar” OR “cp”) AND PUBYEAR (>2009 AND <2022)

2. WoS: TI=((“digital transformation” OR “digitali*ation”) AND (“guideline*” OR “recommendation*” OR “best practice*”)) OR AK=((“digital transformation” OR “digitali*ation”) AND (“guideline*” OR “recommendation*” OR “best practice*”)) OR AB =((“digital transformation” OR “digitali*ation”) AND (“guideline*” OR “recommendation*” OR “best practice*”)) AND LANGUAGE:(English) AND DOCUMENT TYPES:(Article OR Proceedings Paper) AND Timespan:2009-01-01 to 2022-01-01

The queries retrieved 811 and 445 papers, respectively. After merging the two datasets and filtering the duplicates, a total of 972 papers were obtained. Next, the abstracts were read. Articles that specifically talked about DT projects in companies with suggestions on how to do so were included for further analysis. For the purpose of this study, we excluded papers dealing with public services or educational institutions and papers that could not be accessed. In total, 101 papers were selected. These papers were then fully analyzed to retrieve their guidelines and suggestions on how to roll out DT projects. By analyzing overlap and categorizing the retrieved guidelines based on their main themes, the foundation of this research was formed – eight main DT guidelines.

This foundation was then validated with seven DT domain experts in our preliminary work with an online survey (hidden during the review process). The domain experts are active in a leading role on DT projects for at least four years. For each best practice, Likert scale questions were asked about their relevance. For each guideline, open questions were created to inquire about correctness and completeness. In addition, open questions were asked on how these guidelines can be put into practice. In case the respondent did not immediately know the answer, the survey probed with several practical examples. The validation was largely successful with several slight changes in the main guidelines and steered us in the right direction for the rest of the literature analysis. A summary of the online survey can be found in the appendix.

Next, this foundation was expanded with the other insights from the 101 papers that were fully analyzed in search of best practices on how to follow these eight main guidelines. In addition, the literature set was expanded with other influential DT guidelines papers and with backward and forward referencing to retrieve more information about the main guidelines. The goal was to expand the main guidelines with practical guidelines of how they can be followed in practice. The additional literature search was stopped when no further information was achieved in the next five papers. In total, we have analyzed 150 papers. In step five, we consolidated the findings in overview tables per main guideline. An overview of the literature search is shown in Table 1.

Digital transformation guidelines

From the initial literature review, we identified eight main guidelines. These include digital strategy, business agility, innovation and ambidexterity, modern organizational structure, digital culture, top management support, adequate IT infrastructure and digital skills. In the following subsections, we go over each guideline and discuss the findings in terms of best practices in more detail.

Digital strategy

One of the most commonly mentioned requirements for successful DT is the need for a digital strategy (Hess et al., 2016). It is often considered as a starting point for any DT efforts (Catlin, Scanlan, & Willmott, 2015; Goerzig & Bauernhansl, 2018). The digital strategy consolidates and aligns the IT and business strategy (Berghaus & Back, 2016) and spans the entire company (Hirte & Roth, 2018). It also plans the company-wide organizational change and outlines the integrated business capabilities and value streams, inspired by novel technologies, that are responsive to the rapidly changing market conditions (Hess et al., 2016; Kane, Palmer, Philips, Kiron, & Buckley, 2015; Ross et al., 2016). Some authors refer to this strategy as the DT strategy, hereby focusing more on the coordination of the transformation efforts (Chanias, Myers, & Hess, 2019; Matt, Hess, & Benlian, 2015; Sebastian et al., 2017), or as the digital business strategy (Bharadwaj, El Sawy, Pavlou, & Venkatraman, 2013; Kahre, Hoffmann, & Ahlemann, 2017; Mithas, Tafti, & Mitchell, 2013).

The digital strategy typically formulates and outlines the vision and roadmap the company is pursuing (Črešnar, Potočan, & Nedelko, 2020; Korachi & Bounabat, 2019; Schuh, Frank, Jussen, Rix, & Harland, 2017; Venkatesh, Singhal, & Mathew, 2018). This vision should in essence be a digitalized view of the company in the future and how it can remain relevant in an ever-changing and digitalizing world (Kretschmer & Khashabi, 2020; Stoyanova, 2020). Fundamental elements in the creation of this vision are to identify specific and measurable digitalization goals (Korachi & Bounabat, 2019; Sjödin, Parida, Kohtamäki, & Wincent, 2020; Stich, Zeller, Hicking, & Kraut, 2020; Wade & Shan, 2020), challenges (Fichter, 2019), scenarios (Bennett & McWhorter, 2021) and corresponding actions (Fichter, 2019; Stoyanova, 2020). The roadmap or action plan describes how to get there, the people involved, the actions required, and the time required (Patel, Kalita, & Asthana, 2018). It can outline multiple paths depending on likely scenarios in the future. According to Ivančić, Vukšić and Spremić (2019), a shared digital vision is essential. By linking this vision to the company’s strategy, both internal and external stakeholders will be more aware of the importance of their role in achieving this vision (Fichter, 2019).

Because DT deals with both the business and IT side, continuous alignment between them is needed to be successful (Dolganova & Deeva, 2019; Fischer, Imgrund, Janiesch, & Winkelmann, 2020; Hess et al., 2016; Kane et al., 2015; Li, Liu, Belitski, Ghobadian, & O’Regan, 2016; Saarikko et al., 2020). DT is not about using novel technologies but about integrating and using them to achieve strategic ends (Kane et al., 2015). For this reason, business and IT departments often coordinate their strategies and action plans (Agrawal, Narain, & Ullah, 2020). It is also important to communicate the specific rationale for IT usage and the weaknesses it addresses (Gigova, Valeva, & Nikolova-Alexieva, 2019; Kadir & Broberg, 2020; Korachi & Bounabat, 2019). This fosters collaboration between the two sides and leads to better alignment and firm-wide knowledge on the transformation.

In addition, companies with a formulated DT strategy should be aware that this strategy should be subject to constant reassessment (Bach, Spremić, & Vugec, 2018; Krell & Gale, 2005). DT is not a one-time exercise, but a continuous adaptation to changing technological capabilities, markets and customer demands (Matt et al., 2015; Parviainen, Tihinen, Kääriäinen, & Teppola, 2017). The evaluation should assess both the underlying assumptions, the market and the transformational advancement of DT. In case of disparities according to the predefined objectives, timely action is suggested.

Many researchers suggest the importance of collaboration with strategic partners in the digital world (Fischer et al., 2020; Hirte & Roth, 2018; Zangiacomi, Sacco, Pessot, De Zan, & Bertetti, 2018). This has become more important due to the wide-scale impact of DT; not only companies but entire sectors and industries are changing (Van Veldhoven & Vanthienen, 2021). One of these decisive changes is the fading of industry borders and competing in ecosystems and multi-sided platforms (Bonnet & Westerman, 2021; Subramaniam, Iyer, & Venkatraman, 2019). Managers are increasingly looking for cross-sector opportunities and threats such as novel business products that are tightly integrated between multiple external partners or ecosystems (Diener & Špaček, 2021; Saarikko et al., 2020; Veile, Kiel, Müller, & Voigt, 2020; Weill & Woerner, 2015). This shift is not just to improve efficiency but serves as a pathway for long-term growth (Subramaniam et al., 2019). For this reason, the digital strategy often investigates strategic collaborations and digital platforms.

It is generally agreed upon that the digital strategy must be customer-driven (von Leipzig et al., 2017; Weill & Woerner, 2015). The digital strategy positions, after all, the core business model in such a way that it can generate value from the digital customer environment (Gigova et al., 2019; Stoyanova, 2020). Significant gains can be realized by digitalizing the customer experience and integrating all customer touchpoints such as increased automation, better service quality and an improved customer experience (Berman, 2012; Stoyanova, 2020). Hence, it is crucial that firms design the strategy with the integrative customer perspective in mind (Helbin & Van Looy, 2019). This requires the company to research their customers thoroughly (Agrawal et al., 2020; Klisarova-Belcheva, Yankova, & Ilieva, 2019; Kretschmer & Khashabi, 2020), or to collaborate with their customers to receive feedback (Ivančić et al., 2019).

To ensure that the outcome of the DT process satisfies the preconditions of all stakeholders of a firm, a thorough stakeholder management exercise is needed both at the initiation of the DT process and throughout the change journey (Fichter, 2019; Imgrund, Fischer, Janiesch, & Winkelmann, 2018). During the requirements engineering phase, firms should determine and prioritize the informational, functional and technical requirements based on the collaboration of stakeholders and their prerequisites (Fischer et al., 2020). In case of collaborations with external partners, managers usually govern the expectations and objectives of all the parties and balance these in a common proposal (Fechtelpeter, Kuehn, & Dumitrescu, 2018). This is of particular importance as its results should be a major element in the starting point for the DT process. An overview is shown in Table 2.

Business agility

Business agility, the ability to change swiftly, has gained profound awareness in recent years (Fuchs & Hess, 2018; Imgrund et al., 2018; Kane, 2019; Sjödin et al., 2020; Veile et al., 2020). On the one hand, this awareness comes from the failures of some traditional companies stuck in their own ways, such as the camera film seller Kodak that failed to embrace digital pictures as a new business instead of a way to expand their printing business. On the other hand, business environments and customers continue to become more unpredictable and change rapidly due to the massive impact of digital technologies. An agile company is more reactive and thus more resistant to these changes (Bondar, Hsu, Pfouga, & Stjepandić, 2017), as evident during the COVID-19 pandemic, which is why firms are heavily investing in organizational agility for unpredictable areas (Nowakowski et al., 2019; Sommer, 2019). There exist numerous ways in which companies are trying to increase their agility, of which many are intertwined with the other categories we discuss in this paper.

Agile development methods are often recommended, especially in software development (Dremel, Herterich, Wulf, Waizmann, & Brenner, 2017; Leonhardt, Haffke, Kranz, & Benlian, 2017; Sebastian et al., 2017; Sommer, 2019). These are often based on the twelve foundational principles of Beck et al. (2001) that include early and frequent delivery, welcoming changing requirements and working efficiently. Popular methodologies include DevOps, which is a set of practices to reduce the time between plans and deployment, and Scrum, a framework to quickly deliver value by ranking the backlog and working in short sprints. These methodologies can be used across the entire company, e.g. the Spotify model, to increase agility and value delivery. These methods can also easily be translated to a working-from-home environment, which was necessary during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Another indirect method of increasing agility is by empowering employees. The idea is that by removing the red tape (Kotter, 1995), integrating the employees into the change process, improving the idea exchange to management (Diener & Špaček, 2021) and giving more authority to the employees, the innovation process becomes more flexible and reduces the organizational rigidity. This also enables the employees to act faster and implement the necessary changes without constantly asking for approval (Nair, 2019). Furthermore, this makes the workforce more involved in the change process. This is necessary to develop an optimal view of the day-to-day operations and increase the acceptance of the DT process (Kadir & Broberg, 2020). In the end, the employees are better connected with the DT efforts and become part of it (Diener & Špaček, 2021).

Similarly, collaborative working principles are being applied by some companies to facilitate agility and creativity (Bouncken, Kraus, & Roig-Tierno, 2021). For instance, co-working office rooms in which it is easy to sit together with a project team are often installed. Another method is by adopting open office hours which means that for several hours per week, all offices are free to walk into to discuss or collaborate on something. In a similar vein, some corporates use free-roaming desks, which gives employees the flexibility to sit with whomever they want (Guest, 2014). During the pandemic, the usage of online collaboration tools such as communication apps, e.g. Slack and Zoom, or project management apps, e.g. Miro and Trello, soared. There are many more principles a business can apply for, but the basic idea is the same: to stimulate collaboration and flexibility.

To quickly adapt the IT capacity to the dynamic market requirements, many firms utilize cloud computing to host their software and services (Bharadwaj et al., 2013). This does not only help to quickly up or downscale the required capacity, but also has benefits regarding costs, portability and reduced hardware and software obsolescence (Ross & Blumenstein, 2013). Cloud services are also helpful to support working-from-home dynamics.

A final recommendation is to outsource areas that are too slow to change (Ebrahimpur & Jacob, 2001). This can also be used to reduce costs for areas where the technological processes required are well structured and not overly complex. However, compared to creating the required competencies internally, outsourcing can be riskier (Hess et al., 2016). Instead of outsourcing to external partners, some companies create spin-offs to take over some business aspects in a more agile way (Veile et al., 2020). An overview is shown in Table 3.

Innovation and ambidexterity

Innovation is becoming a key competitive differentiator in the digital world. Companies that can sense and seize opportunities by quickly experimenting, designing and rolling out new products or services can capture new value streams and stay competitive (Leonhardt et al., 2017; Osterwalder & Pigneur, 2010). Digital innovation, often defined as the combination of digital and physical components to create novel products and services and embedding them in wider sociotechnical environments (Skog, Wimelius, & Sandberg, 2018; Yoo, Henfridsson, & Lyytinen, 2010), is especially important in the last few years. At the same time, the traditional value streams must be safeguarded. This dual goal of balancing innovation and traditional value streams is often referred to as business ambidexterity (Schuchmann & Seufert, 2015). Several ideas have been proposed to improve the innovative capacities of companies.

One idea is to foster innovation outside the core business. Some authors recommend creating a new division inside the company that specializes in innovation (Christensen, Raynor, & McDonald, 2015; Dremel et al., 2017). For instance, Alphabet created division X to investigate cutting-edge innovations such as quantum computing. Another strategy is to invest in or co-operate with innovative start-ups (Matzler, Friedrich von den Eichen, Anschober, & Kohler, 2018). Similarly, firms can enhance internal innovative capabilities by engaging in partnerships with external knowledge-rich associations or in the form of open innovation or living labs (Fischer et al., 2020; Galimova, Gileva, Mukhanova, & Krasnuk, 2019; Matzner et al., 2018). It is important that the explorative pilot projects that come forth are aligned with the overall digital strategy (Barata, da Cunha, & Coyle, 2018). This way, long-term innovation can be secured without interfering with the core business.

When the goal is to foster innovation inside the core business, some companies organize product innovation days. These can be in the form of hackathons, innovation competitions, or offsite days for brainstorming (Berghaus & Back, 2017). Other companies install dedicated innovation ideas mailboxes in which employees can submit ideas (Ivančić et al., 2019). These efforts facilitate new idea generation and identify gaps in the organization that could be further innovated. Because an overload of new ideas can be received, efforts can be made to adequately manage these ideas.

Firms can also partner up with research institutions, innovation incubators or public institutions. These partnerships can create innovation clusters that foster creativity and catalyze innovation by following an open system perspective (Fechtelpeter et al., 2018; Veile et al., 2020; Zangiacomi et al., 2018). This allows companies to access the latest methods, software and technology for both developments of new and future DT projects (Fechtelpeter et al., 2018; Ivančić et al., 2019).

Finally, it has been recommended to invest in a mix of technologies (e.g. Stoyanova, 2020). The portfolio of projects should be a balance between exploring emerging technologies and exploiting existing high-performing technologies (Helbin & Van Looy, 2019; Ishlahuddin, Handayani, Hammi, & Azzahro, 2020). For this dual-purpose, firms are endorsed to continuously monitor the external technological environment to identify emerging technologies that can be valuable to the company (Ishlahuddin et al., 2020; Kadir & Broberg, 2020). With this approach, companies are at the forefront of innovation and reduce the risk of falling behind. An overview is shown in Table 4.

Modern organizational structure

Tying in closely with the other recommendations in this paper is the need for a modern organizational structure (Dremel et al., 2017; Morgan & Page, 2008). This is a critical element to achieve the other recommendations such as business agility, innovation, aligning the IT and business side and following the DT strategy (Fischer et al., 2020). A modern organizational structure is characterized by a focus on openness, collaboration and agility.

A common element is a flat or horizontal structure (Berghaus & Back, 2017; Veile et al., 2020). In this system, the number of managers is limited which results in a more decentralized and agile decision-making environment (Dolganova & Deeva, 2019; Earley, 2014). For example, the online clothing retailer Zappos is experimenting with Holacracy: a business structure in which there are no titles and managers (Guest, 2014). This reduces the time lost by meetings, approval and appointments.

In addition, more than 70% of digitally mature companies rely on cross-functional teams to organize work (Kane, Palmer, Phillips, & Kiron, 2017). These are interdisciplinary teams consisting of experts from various departments such as software developers, marketers, salespeople and business analysts, who work together usually on a product or project (Veile et al., 2020). They are characterized by their dedicated, solution-oriented mindset (Dolganova & Deeva, 2019). Together, they have the necessary skills to manage the entire lifecycle of the product. These teams, also referred to as speedboats, are often more agile than a traditional company, also referred to as tankers (Matzler et al., 2018). These teams ideally complement the existing business structures (Dremel et al., 2017). Several business structures with cross-functional teams as the foundation exist, such as the Spotify model. The use of these teams is often linked to increased organizational agility and creativity (Imgrund et al., 2018; Veile et al., 2020).

Some companies create DT subsidiaries or divisions to lead their DT efforts (Ivančić et al., 2019; Westerman, Calméjane, Bonnet, Ferraris, & McAfee, 2011). These divisions benefit from being tightly integrated with all other divisions and include staff members from various other departments for gaining feedback and assessing needs (Ivančić et al., 2019; Westerman et al., 2011). This is different from the innovation labs from the previous section; here the division is focused on delivering the DT of the business itself while the innovation labs are focused on experimenting with new and novel technologies to foster innovation. Having a dedicated division for DT can be beneficial for digitalizing the company.

Similar to the strategy, the business structure should continuously be realigned with new technologies and the IT infrastructure (Fischer et al., 2020). This is important to maximize the gains from digital technologies and automation (Fischer et al., 2020). Indeed, applying digital technologies without proper alignment is a frequent cause of failure (Brock & von Wangenheim, 2019; Issa, Hatiboglu, Bildstein, & Bauernhansl, 2018). Ideally, the entire supply chain is seamlessly aligned with the firm’s IT infrastructure (Moi & Cabiddu, 2020). It is also recommended to integrate digital business projects into the existing organizational structure, rather than creating a separate structure. An overview is shown in Table 5.

Digital culture

Companies embarking on DT should assess and reconsider their corporate culture from the start (Çetin Gürkan & Çiftci, 2020; Fichter, 2019; Hartl & Hess, 2017). The business ethos is indeed considered as the enabler or disabler for any kind of changes (Hartl & Hess, 2017), thus companies often spend a considerable effort on transforming the business culture into a digital culture. This is typically characterized by a high level of creativity, equality, flexibility, openness, willingness to learn and digital savviness (Kaufman & Horton, 2014; Veile et al., 2020). It stimulates innovation, the use of digital technologies, and is the key to achieving the necessary agility (Fischer et al., 2020; Imgrund et al., 2018). This is crucial because one of the main causes of poor DT performance is the lack of the right culture that embraces digitalization (Hartl & Hess, 2017; Silverio-Fernández, Renukappa, & Suresh, 2021; Wade & Shan, 2020). There are several ways in which a company can promote a digital culture.

One way to develop the culture is by promoting change as an inherent part of everyday life in the company (Diener & Špaček, 2021; Kane, 2019). Communication plays a vital role in increasing awareness among employees that change is needed and urgent (Fichter, 2019). Once the employees are aware of the need for change, they must be allowed to experiment and innovate, while leaders and HR departments ensure that the business is acceptive for potential failures of the projects (Nair, 2019). In other words, an open culture that encourages employees’ creativity and risk-taking projects is recommended (Brink, Packmohr, & Vogelsang, 2020; Fischer et al., 2020; Matzler et al., 2018). Some companies offer monetary or intrinsic rewards for innovation efforts (Fitzgerald, Kruschwitz, Bonnet, & Welch, 2013).

Another method to improve the digital culture is moving away from rigid regulations to value-based regulations (Berman, 2012). Traditional companies often have rigid regulations in which the exact procedures are formally described, whereas digital natives often have value-based regulations whereby employees are encouraged to work toward the company’s goals and values (Matzner et al., 2018). Value-based regulations promote employees to create change that maximizes value (Martinez, 2019).

Throughout the process of reconsidering the corporate culture, the organization should foster open communication among departments and hierarchical levels (Veile et al., 2020). Hence, eliminating potential barriers that limit the employees from cooperating is a good starting point such as an open office in favor of assigned desks (Guest, 2014). In addition, the interdependence of projects must be verified to avoid certain departments implementing changes at the expense of other departments (Ishlahuddin et al., 2020). This is crucial for departments to reach aligned outcomes and create value throughout the entire DT process. Not only the communication should be open, but the domain-specific knowledge should also be consultable company-wide (Dremel et al., 2017).

Additionally, researchers suggest that a digital mindset is beneficial for the company (Warner & Wäger, 2019). It is fundamental that employees can apply novel technologies themselves (Diener & Špaček, 2021). This mindset can also embrace novel technologies such as data analytics and evidence-based decision-making (Dremel et al., 2017; Vial, 2019). In essence, digital should be a core part of your organization (Kane, Palmer, Phillips, Kiron et al., 2017).

Finally, digital culture is characterized by a high level of personal development (Kane et al., 2017). With personal development, we mean that employees continuously learn and improve their skills. This can be done through dedicated training hours or offering time-off hours for personal growth. Another method is the use of training groups where the digital-savvy employees collaborate with the other employees. Indeed, it is important to have internal IT competencies (Dolganova & Deeva, 2019). An overview is shown in Table 6.

Top management support

The support and determination of senior management is a key success factor for DT (Fischer et al., 2020; Harrington & Tjan, 2008; Kane et al., 2017). It is known that DT is severely hindered without this support, for instance by resistance (Brock & von Wangenheim, 2019; Fitzgerald et al., 2013; Matt et al., 2015). Hence, a successful DT process requires executives that support the DT projects.

Some companies create a chief digital officer (CDO) position to lead the DT initiatives (Haffke, Kalgovas, & Benlian, 2016; Singh & Hess, 2017). The CDO is located between the business and the ICT, and develops, communicates and orchestrates the holistic digital strategy across the company, hereby embracing the full spectrum of technological opportunities (Singh & Hess, 2017). They have knowledge of the industry-specific effect of digitalization and determine how this impacts the firm (Haffke et al., 2016; Ishlahuddin et al., 2020). Other companies give this responsibility to the chief executive officer (CEO) or chief information officer (CIO) (Hess et al., 2016). In any case, it is required that this person has sufficient authority and support to fulfill their tasks (Singh & Hess, 2017).

The top management should also be responsible for communicating the digital vision of the company (Fitzgerald et al., 2013; Mugge, Abbu, Michaelis, Kwiatkowski, & Gudergan, 2020). The vision includes both the DT strategy and the DT objectives. It should be communicated across the entire company and all stakeholders. It is also important that top management assigns clear responsibilities for carrying out the digital strategy (Matt et al., 2015; Morgan & Page, 2008).

Not only should senior managers communicate the digital vision, but they should also act as role models for their employees (Diener & Špaček, 2021). This is important for hesitant employees who often show some resistance toward change on accepting the new approaches (Bach et al., 2018). One way to do this is by increasing awareness about the benefits of digitalization projects (Fischer et al., 2020; Silverio-Fernández et al., 2021). Some authors call for pro-active leadership, in which the leader supports, motivates and inspires teams, while actively incorporating their followers’ ideas (Ebert & Duarte, 2018; Kontić & Vidicki, 2018).

Finally, it has been suggested that executives should create a sense of urgency to initiate DT (Kotter, 1995; Westerman, Bonnet, & McAfee, 2012). This perception is vital to overcome the inertia that exists in many companies that are stuck in their traditional ways of working (Besson & Rowe, 2012; Saarikko et al., 2020). By highlighting that DT is not only necessary but also requires immediate action, hesitant employees can be persuaded to put effort into the digitalization. An overview is shown in Table 7.

Adequate IT infrastructure

DT relies on an adequate IT infrastructure. The IT infrastructure can be understood as the backbone of any digitalization effort. Accordingly, many DT projects fail because their backbone is insufficiently capable (Diener & Špaček, 2021). Several authors emphasize that firms must optimize the flexibility, standardization and operation stability of their IT systems (Brink et al., 2020; Fischer et al., 2020; Schuh et al., 2019). This includes documenting the system configurations in an understandable and interpretable manner and evaluating the risks of potential malfunctions. There are several elements commonly mentioned in the scientific literature in respect to the IT infrastructure.

First, the operational backbone on which the business operations run is of crucial importance (Ross et al., 2016; Sebastian et al., 2017). It should ensure the efficiency and reliability of the core operations and back-office services in an integrated, adaptable and reconfigurable way (Agrawal et al., 2020; Colli et al., 2019). For some companies, this comes in the form of an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system (Ivančić et al., 2019). This is the foundation for future business process optimizations (Colli et al., 2019; Paschek, Luminosu, & Draghici, 2017).

Secondly, a digital services platform is highly beneficial. It is a set of digital components that connects the processes in the operational backbone with services, data analytics, websites and ecosystems (Bonnet & Westerman, 2021; Ross et al., 2016). It enables the fast development, implementation and rollout of digital innovations (Ross et al., 2016; Westerman et al., 2012). Some recent examples can be found at Kaiser Permanante’s who created a digital services platform supporting 21 technology components for operational services (Ross et al., 2016), or at the LEGO group who created an engagement platform that hosts microservices for personalizing customer experience (Ross et al., 2016).

Another important IT element deals with the usage of data. In recent years, data have become a valuable and essential resource when properly managed (Sathananthan, Hoetker, Gamrad, Katterbach, & Myrzik, 2017). Thoughtful design regarding data generation and multiple purpose usage must be conducted (Saarikko et al., 2020). Several studies urged firms to create a unified database in which all customer and corporate data are centralized (Brock & von Wangenheim, 2019; Schuh et al., 2017). The data must be available in real-time to all relevant employees and shared according to value streams (Bouncken et al., 2021). Regarding the data itself, firms often prioritize data quality and usefulness over data hoarding (Colli et al., 2019; Saarikko et al., 2020). Analytics and data mining can then be used to generate insights (Berman, 2012), make evidence-based decisions (Weill & Woerner, 2015) and make predictions.

Because digital technologies are one of the most important drivers of DT (Hess et al., 2016), the IT infrastructure ought to support novel technologies. These typically include social media, mobile applications, data analytics, cloud computing and the internet of things (SMACIT). Dolganova and Deeva (2019) state that the efficiency of implementing new technology largely depends on the flexibility of the IT infrastructure, integration potential and scalability of the solutions. This also implies that the IT departments should also be motivated and acceptive toward novel technologies.

Simultaneously, cybersecurity is of crucial importance (Vial, 2019). First, the safety and privacy of the data should be safeguarded. Therefore, an adequate IT governance system is required to be in place (Korachi & Bounabat, 2019). It is recommended that external regulations on IT governance are also adopted through compliance mechanisms, security tools and a clear communication mechanism (Ishlahuddin et al., 2020). Moreover, companies must ensure that the data are hosted ethically and securely (Imgrund et al., 2018; Veile et al., 2020). A second element is about the protection against cyber-attacks. According to KMPG, 72% of CEOs are not prepared for cyberattacks (KPMG & Veihmeyer, 2016). Yet, this is crucial as entire companies can be shut down when major cyberattacks happen. For instance, the entire production line of Picanol, a major industrial player, was closed for over a week due to cyberattacks. Hence, companies can invest in cybersecurity to keep their business running.

Regarding existing legacy systems, a combination of keeping and updating those systems is recommended. While legacy systems can pose a significant challenge (e.g. Makarchenko, Nerkararian, & Scmeleva, 2016), they also work and are trusted. Some authors suggest that DT must be supported by a similar IT transformation and not simply add to the existing legacy infrastructure (Makarchenko et al., 2016). Others recommend integrating the legacy systems with novel services (e.g. Mielli & Bulanda, 2019). Careful consideration must be made between upgrading existing systems or adding to existing systems. An overview is shown in Table 8.

Digital skills

Due to the high leverage of digital technologies in DT, digital skills are an important asset for companies embarking on DT (Adam, Hofbauer, & Mandl, 2019; Fischer et al., 2020; Hirte & Roth, 2018; Imgrund et al., 2018). Under this umbrella term, we include digital strategy, digital technologies, data science and cybersecurity skills (Brock & von Wangenheim, 2019). Managers must evaluate whether new skills are required, and if so, plan how to obtain these (Fischer et al., 2020). Educating existing employees is not always easy, as many employees are hesitant toward digitalization (Brink et al., 2020). Thus, many companies rely on hiring new employees with digital skills.

Recruiting employees with appropriate digital competencies and digital curiosity is a rapid way to increase human IT capital (Diener & Špaček, 2021; Mielli & Bulanda, 2019; Ross & Blumenstein, 2013). There exists a reciprocal effect, however, in the sense that digital-savvy applicants are more likely to join digitally mature companies, such as having a clearly formulated digital vision (Nair, 2019). In addition, it is increasingly difficult to find an available workforce with specific digital skills. Hence, sufficient effort must be made to create a culture that attracts digital talent (Kane, Palmer, Phillips, Kiron et al., 2017).

Another method is investing in continuous education in digital skills through training and development programs (Brink et al., 2020; Diener & Špaček, 2021; Fischer et al., 2020; Kane et al., 2017; Nair, 2019). This is important because keeping pace with the latest technologies is challenging for many employees yet necessary to thrive in the digital economy (Ivančić et al., 2019; Mugge et al., 2020). These programs should enhance their awareness of why DT is important for the company’s future and their willingness to cooperate (Krüger & Teuteberg, 2016). The main task, however, is to develop new competencies and increase the digital skills of all enterprise employees (Bickauske, Simanaviciene, Jakubavicius, Vilys, & Mykhalchyshyna, 2020; Kamal, 2020; Lööw, Abrahamsson, & Johansson, 2019). For the more technical profiles, dedicated training courses can be used to enhance their specific expertise (Strutynska, Dmytrotsa, Kozbur, Melnyk, & Olha, 2020). These efforts attract and retain digital workers, prepare employees for career advancement, increase the acceptance of digital culture and facilitate knowledge sharing (Buhulaiga, Telukdarie, & Ramsangar, 2019; Stoyanova, 2020). Another way to educate employees is by close collaboration with experts to share their knowledge (Diener & Špaček, 2021). These educational programs will ideally create an innovation fostering atmosphere in which employees take more initiative to use and upgrade their digital abilities (Nair, 2019). An overview is shown in Table 9.

Discussion

This study conducted a systematic literature review of the DT literature to retrieve the commonly mentioned best practices and guidelines. From the 150 papers, eight main guidelines were identified including digital strategy, business agility, innovation and ambidexterity, modern organizational structure, digital culture, top management support, adequate IT infrastructure and digital skills. For each of these main guidelines, we summarized several best practices of how these can be followed in practice. The results of this paper provide an overview of the general best practices for large companies embarking on DT. These can be used as checklists for firms or managers, or as a source of inspiration. It is important, however, to realize how these guidelines should be interpreted. They are not meant as mandatory rules nor are they applicable for every company. In addition, it should be noted that these guidelines are heavily intertwined. For instance, a company cannot become more agile by only following the agile guidelines proposed in this work but must also pay attention to corporate culture and business structure. These results also indicate that there is no golden rule to follow but DT requires a multitude of strategic actions that must be personalized to the firm’s objectives, capabilities and outlook.

The expert interviews uncovered some interesting findings as well. First, the main guidelines were validated with the expert interviews, and all deemed particularly important for DT. However, they require a degree of nuance and adaptability. A second important finding is the discrepancy between the high-level suggestions in the literature and the more down-to-earth approach suggested by the experts. For example, one expert notes that a digital strategy should be carefully implemented step-by-step compared to the more optimistic implementation ideas found in the academic literature. Another example is shared by another expert who claims that overenthusiasm in digital technologies can be harmful as well. Rather than a digital-first mindset, a digital-where-suitable mindset should be the goal. The contrast between the confident literature and skepticism found in practice is an interesting research avenue for further research.

Given this overview of guidelines, a common question is where to start. To answer this question, a framework was constructed that describes the general steps a company can follow when embarking on DT. The framework was constructed based on the combination of the insights from the literature analysis and on a comparison of a series of DT process models (Besson & Rowe, 2012; Earl, 2000; Faro, Abedin, & Kozanoglu, 2019; Fichman, Dos Santos, Zheng, & Eric, 2014; Gong & Ribiere, 2020; Hanelt, Bohnsack, Marz, & Antunes Marante, 2020; Ismail, Khater, & Zaki, 2017; Kaufman & Horton, 2014; Kontić & Vidicki, 2018; Kotter, 1995; Krell & Gale, 2005; Morgan & Page, 2008; Parviainen et al., 2017; Schallmo & Williams, 2018; Siachou, Vrontis, & Trichina, 2020; Skog et al., 2018; Venkatraman, 1994; Vial, 2019; von Leipzig et al., 2017; Westerman et al., 2011). Many process models recommend starting with an assessment of the current market, company’s capabilities and opportunities which is referred to as the reality scan (e.g. Schallmo & Williams, 2018; Skog et al., 2018; von Leipzig et al., 2017). This reality check is followed by creating a digital strategy that outlines the goal or future core business, roadmap and action plan based on the insights from the reality scan (Buhulaiga et al., 2019; Colli et al., 2018). This requires however that there is top management support. The digital strategy outlines both the innovation ambitions and the sustainability of the core business. Innovation efforts must then be done to create pilot projects of new projects and areas to innovate in to establish proof of concept (Barata et al., 2018; Fechtelpeter et al., 2018; Veile et al., 2020). These projects require the necessary digital skills to exist in the company. Over time, the goal is that the core business evolves into the future core business by combining with the innovation efforts and that the company follows the new paradigm of digital agility. At the same time, however, the core business must be kept operational and sustainable. To span this timeframe, the ambidexterity best practices can be followed to make sure both innovation and the core businesses are protected. Next, when the innovation projects start gaining shape, changes can be made in the organizational structure to support these projects into an active role. This requires an adequate IT infrastructure as well. To keep the momentum going, companies are advised to invest in business agility supported by a digital culture. It should be noted that the DT process is not a one-time exercise but must be continuously conducted. Hence, the processes of planning the future core business and conducting reality scans follow each other in rapid succession. The framework is shown in Figure 1.

This research contributes to the existing literature by summarizing and outlining often suggested guidelines and best practices for DT. This overview is necessary as the popularity of the research field is overwhelming its findings. In addition, the overview is crucial to steer future research forward. Each of the main guidelines requires more research to investigate when, for who and how they should be implemented. While we have given several best practices for each guideline, more research can be conducted to give a broader overview of how these best practices can be put into practice. Distinctions can be made between particular industries or types of firms. In essence, what is needed is a complete overview of main guidelines, best practices and how to implement them in practice for each type of firm. Future research should investigate successful DT cases and describe how they implemented the best practices with this overview as their main anchor point to keep the findings cohesive. Other research could investigate the impact of following certain best practices.

The limitations of this study mostly relate to the acquired dataset. Different queries with more keywords could retrieve more papers and potentially give different results, albeit we believe the main guidelines would not change much. While we excluded educational and public agencies, including them could give different results for those sectors. This could be a fruitful area for future research. Lastly, due to the high overlap of guidelines, different categorizations could be obtained by different authors.

Conclusion

In this paper, we contribute to the research by providing a summary of commonly suggested guidelines and best practices for DT. Eight main DT guidelines were found and each one was expanded with best practices on how to implement these guidelines into practice. These overviews highlight the complex and interwoven process of DT and guide researchers in their further work. We call for more research into each of these guidelines and best practices, especially on how the best practices can be implemented in a company. Finally, practitioners can be informed and inspired by the overviews.

Figure 1

A process model to embark on DT based on DT best practices

[Figure omitted. See PDF]

Table 1

Overview of systematic literature review approach based on the PRISMA methodology

Steps	Number of papers
Records identified from databases: Scopus and WoS	811 and 445 papers, respectively
Removing duplicates	−284 papers
Records screened	972 papers
Reports sought for retrieval based on relevance to the study	105 papers
Removing inaccessible papers	−4 papers
Expanded with influential papers	49 papers
Total number of papers analyzed for this review	150 papers

Table 2

Best practices for digital strategy

Digital strategy
Vision and roadmap	The digital strategy outlines the future vision of the company and the roadmap on how to get there
Continuous alignment	The business and IT sides must be continuously aligned
Constant reassessment	The strategy is subject to constant reassessment due to changing markets, customer demands and technologies
Collaboration	Strategic collaborations with partners, ecosystems and platforms
Customer-driven	Design the strategy with a customer-central focus
Stakeholder management	The digital strategy should be agreed upon by all stakeholders, and their feedback must be considered

Table 3

Best practices for business agility

Business agility
Agile development methods	Agile development methods, e.g. Scrum or DevOps, can bring more agility to projects by working on short iterations with frequent feedback sessions
Empowering employees	Empower employees so they can act on their ideas without red tape
Collaborative working principles	Collaborative working principles improve collaboration and thus agility
Cloud computing	Cloud computing for quickly scaling the IT services to the market’s demands
Outsource slow areas	Areas that are slow to change internally can be outsourced to smaller and nimble companies, or to spin-offs

Table 4

Best practices for innovation and ambidexterity

Innovation and ambidexterity
Foster innovation outside the core	Secure innovation without interrupting the core business by creating new divisions, partnering with start-ups or partners
Product innovation days	Organize product innovation days, hackathons, competitions or brainstorming sessions to generate ideas
Partner with research institutions	Partner with research institutions to share knowledge and innovation
Invest in a mix of technologies	Invest in a mix of technology projects to explore emerging technologies and possibilities

Table 5

Best practices for a modern organizational structure

Business structure
Horizontal structure	Reduce the vertical flow of information and authority
Cross-functional teams	Organize work in cross-functional teams with the required authority to manage projects and products in an agile way
DT subsidiaries or divisions	To lead the DT, a dedicated subsidiary or division can be created within the company with the necessary skills, authority and top management support
Continuously realigned	The business structure must be continuously realigned with the new technologies and the IT infrastructure

Table 6

Best practices for a digital culture

Digital culture
Promoting change	The digital culture should promote change, experimenting and creativity
Value-based regulations	Encourage employees to work toward the goals and the values of the company instead of following the traditional procedures
Open communication	To promote collaboration, there should be open communication so employees can freely discuss projects with their peers and supervisors
Digital mindset	A digital mindset among employees encourages digital technologies
Personal development	Digital culture is characterized by continuous personal development so employees keep learning and increasing their IT competencies

Table 7

Best practices for top management support

Top management support
CDO	The responsibility of the DT is given to a dedicated CDO
Communicating the digital vision	Top management must clearly communicate the digital vision and responsibilities to all employees
Act as a role model	Top management should act as role models in the DT
Sense of urgency	Top management must create a sense of urgency. It must be clear to all stakeholders that DT is necessary and requires immediate attention

Table 8

Best practices for an adequate IT infrastructure

Adequate IT infrastructure
Operational backbone	The core business should be hosted efficiently on the operational backbone
Digital services platform	A digital services platform must be created to connect the operational backbone with services, data analytics, websites and ecosystems
Usage of data	Data must be used for evidence-based decision-making, generating insights
Support novel technologies	The IT infrastructure should be able to support the use and integration of novel technologies such as social media, mobile applications, data analytics, cloud computing and the internet of things
Cybersecurity	Safeguard the privacy of data and protect themselves against cyberattacks
Legacy systems	Firms must carefully consider adding to or replacing legacy systems

Table 9

Best practices for digital skills

Digital skills
Recruiting digital talent	Firms can quickly increase their human IT capital by hiring employees with digital capabilities
Continuous education	Many firms invest in continuous education in digital skills to keep their workforce competent