Successful experience of implementing digital technologies with further improvement turns them into the most financially capacious resource in the economy, which requires searching for conditions for a comprehensive, systemic combination with traditional material, financial, and human resources in order to achieve higher efficiency of their use. However, the lack of understanding of the strategic nature, the role of unity in interpreting the digital economy and digital transformation, as well as the importance of digital technology design methods often creates obstacles to their establishment on a scientific basis. The paper proposes to use the main approaches to these concepts based on strategic management methods. It is shown that the use of these methods allows us to present the digital economy in the form of relevant programs with a strategic plan. At the same time, digital transformation is a mechanism for implementing the selected optimal ways to achieve the goals of this plan. The organization of a comprehensive development of the most advanced digital technologies on the so-called reference objects, considering all significant resources, is proposed to establish the digitalization of the entire economy on a scientific basis. The developed and tested in practice unified digital production management framework can become one of the main tools for digitalization of reference objects.