Digital transformation has become an overused buzzword.

When most people speak about digital transformation, they are really speaking about digitization, digitalization, or digital strategy.

They are all very different and none of them are digital transformation.

Let’s look at each of these four terms so that we can be very clear about what we are talking about:

1. Digitization – Digitization is the process of converting information into a digital (i.e. computer-readable) format (source: Wikipedia)
2. Digitalization – Digitalization is the adaptation of a system, process, etc. to be operated with the use of computers and the internet (source: Oxford Dictionary)
3. Digital strategy – In the fields of strategic management, marketing strategy, and business strategy, digital strategy is the process of specifying an organization’s vision, goals, opportunities and related activities in order to maximize the business benefits of digital initiatives to the organization (source: Wikipedia)
4. Digital transformation – A digital transformation is the journey between a company’s current business operations to a reimagined version from the perspective of how a digital native would build the same business operations leveraging the latest technology and scientific understandings of management science, leadership, decision science, business and process architecture, design, customer experience, etc. (source: bradenkelley.com)

At the heart of successful digital transformation, innovation, disruption, and even customer experience are two things:

• Humans
• Data

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