An example of Digital Capability Conversion Factor

In the course Advanced Digital Transformation, Prof Pankaj Setia talks about Digital capability conversion factor. Developing digital capabilities would lead to development of some other valuable organizational capabilities. They may not necessarily have a direct impact on performance instead.

Quoting from the lecture on Digital Capability Conversion Factor

There are two aspects when you're building the instrumental purpose or defining which digital capabilities to build.

One , how much is this digital capability contributing to other organizational capabilities?

Two, How much is that organizational capability contributing to performance?

The total effect on performance is dependent on the interplay between different capabilities.

I tried to understand this in the context of an EdTech organization I had worked for:

We developed a product that provides a digital learning platform for schools. The product goal was to enhance the educational experience for students by equipping them with AI enabled Learning application, with teacher as the enabler. To achieve this, we needed to focus on building customer orientation and customer response capabilities, with school as customers, within the organization.

Orientation capability was etched into the institutional memory of the organization with vast experience of working for over two decades, but never documented. We sat down with the seasoned sales staff, teacher training staff and our existing clientele schools to understand the unique needs and challenges to align the digital learning platform with these needs. This involved lot of internal consultation and workshops on pitching a product for sale rather than hardware supply.

At the same time, customer response capability was to be built almost from scratch as most of the organization's bandwidth was consumed in servicing larger B2G clients. We redefined the Standard Operating Procedures to include providing timely technical support, offering training and onboarding programs for teachers and continuously improving the platform based on feedback from schools. We leveraged the data we were receiving from the product usage along with a CRM built to build cohorts which the servicing team could use in various workshops.

In short, the digital capability conversion here is - building a education App helped in looking at existing sales and servicing processes and enhancing them with more digital capabilities and thereby better outcomes.