Customizing a Generic Digital Transformation Objectives Model onto a Telecommunication Company

Setting-up a Digital Transformation (DT) strategy appears to be challenging for a lot of organizations. Indeed, C-level managers often do not know how to coordinate and align each individual initiative towards a well established long-term vision. Previous work allowed to build-up a set of DT strategic objectives out of literature, validate and extend them through expert opinions. The refined representation was then customized/instantiated onto a case in the healthcare sector. Further validation is nevertheless needed in order to understand the applicability of the generic DT strategic objectives onto cases in various sectors and, very importantly, determine the pros and the cons of such an approach. This paper is part of this effort. It depicts the application of the generic DT strategic objectives model onto the case of a telecommunication company and the validation of the instance. Information collection and validation are performed through domain experts interviews. We discovered that the instantiated strategic DT objectives representation helps to clearly identify the priorities that should be considered by the company in formulating the organization’s DT strategy. These prioritized objectives entail the analysis of the government policies and the adjustment of human resources management. The most frequent critics from the three interviewees consist in the generic model’s failure in recognizing the vital stake that the government has in the management of a state-owned company. Finally, some objectives were not fully comprehended by the managers despite our detailed explanation, such as the financial allocation ability which, to a certain extent, entails the meaning of assessment of impacts on current core businesses.