MSc Management Leading through Digital Disruption Assignment Sample
Introduction
Digital transformation integrates advanced technologies in different areas of business organisation (Vial, 2021). http://MSc Management Leading through Digital Disruption Assignment Sample
The aim is to change the way business operates and offer and deliver value to their consumers.
Digital transformation can be said to be a cultural change that needs companies to continuously challenge conventional ideas, experiment, get comfortable, and learn from failures. Such transformation must begin with a problem statement, a clear opportunity and an inspirational goal.
Concerning the digital transformation strategy, this assignment creates a future trends report proposal for the chief digital officer of Morrisons. This assignment thus involves the changes or modifications .
Morrisons must implement to retain its competitiveness in the market and deal with the technological challenges it is facing. Based on this, four different tasks have been segmented in the report that analyses the opportunities, new trends, role of digital collaboration tools and the skills of digital leadership.
Task 1: Opportunities and challenges analysis
Background of Morrisons
Morrisons is one of the largest supermarket chains in the United Kingdom that deals in the retail industry and were founded in 1899. As of the year 2021, Morrisons had 497 supermarkets across Scotland, Wales, and England. Morrisons is a private supermarket chain founded by William Morrisons (Morrisons, 2022).http://MSc Management Leading through Digital Disruption Assignment Sample
As of the year 2021, the supermarket has a total of 1,10,00 employees and serves approximately 11 million customers every week. Further, as of September 2022, the UK market share was around 9.1%, Tesco had 26.9%, and Asda had 14.1%. The current operations of Morrisons involve store formats, convenience stores, and online retail.
The convenience stores of Morrisons had a similar format to Sainsbury’s local stores and small Tesco express but also involved a wide variety of ready-to-eat hot foods. These are coffee, pastries, porridge, and a salad bar. The vision of Morrisons is to make and provide food that the company can be proud of and where the efforts of everyone are worth it so that many people can afford to enjoy eating well (Morrisons, 2022).http://MSc Management Leading through Digital Disruption Assignment Sample
Current challenges Morrisons is facing
The supply chain is the most vital part of Morrisons’ functioning, and the company is facing various supply chain challenges. However, as per the supply chain strategy of Morrisons, the aim is to make sure that the customers get the food they need.
The company thus blames the supply chain for its food shortages as various shelves are lying empty of basic foodstuffs. Because of supply chain issues, customers have also reported shortages of cooked and raw meats along with certain vegetables like lettuce (Morgan, 2022).http://MSc Management Leading through Digital Disruption Assignment Sample
Because of this issue, the company is experiencing reduced customer spending and industry-wide supply chain disruption. Besides supply chain issues, Morrisons also faces the problem of lorry driver shortage and warns about the price rises due to this issue. The United Kingdom is facing the issue of HGV (heavy goods vehicle) driver shortage, and it is estimated that there is a huge 1 lakh shortfall.
This is because the drivers are leaving the profession during Covid-19, and few are returning to EU nations. The crisis has led to shortages on supermarket shelves and even at pub chains and restaurants in the UK. The lack of drivers, higher commodity prices, and higher freight charges result in higher prices of the products. In addition to this, the labour shortage also causes delays to new store openings and investment in automation along with products reaching shelves.
For instance, around 100 shipping containers had stuck at sea amid port disruptions in Britain and Asia. This delays the products such as homewares and toys (The Times, 2021).http://MSc Management Leading through Digital Disruption Assignment Sample
Digital transformation objectives
Digital transformation strategies are beneficial for companies as this is the process of upgrading traditional processes with the latest and digital technological advancements and altering how the business operates (Verhoef et. al. 2021).http://MSc Management Leading through Digital Disruption Assignment Sample As per the above-identified operational challenges of supply chain issues, labour shortage and empty shelves, below are the digital transformation objectives of Morrisons:
- To implement the latest technologies to improvise the customer experience and higher process efficiency. The digital transformation journey can reduce the process steps, including automating certain phases.
- To increase agility and ensure business process improvements, the digital landscape is consistently changing, and customer expectations are as well. With digital transformation, the company can implement entirely improved and new business processes, enabling the team to expand the offerings and learn new competencies.
- To deal with the problem of labour shortage and supply chain problems, Morrisons, with digital transformation, can gain a competitive benefit. Digital transformation initiatives create competitive benefits in attracting high-quality talents and providing technical knowledge to employees to ensure their career and professional development.
Task 2: New Trend for Digital Agility
Digital Business Agility Model
Business agility can be said as the capability of a business to constantly and quickly adapt or change in response to the changes in the marketplace (Saputra et. al. 2022).http://MSc Management Leading through Digital Disruption Assignment Sample
This concept is centred around responsibly handling resources and operations to drive maximum business value. The three main pillars of digital business agility are:
Hyperawareness: This refers to how well the company can detect, monitor, and understand the implications of change to the business environment. Hyperaware companies can sense vulnerabilities and adjust processes and models accordingly.
Morrisons is required to understand the supply chain issues and detect the major root causes for the issues. This helps in making preferred changes and dealing with the situations appropriately (Wiraeus and Creelman, 2019).http://MSc Management Leading through Digital Disruption Assignment Sample
Make informed decisions: This is the capability of the company to make the best decision possible in a particular situation. For this, Morrisons is needed to develop mature data analytics capabilities.
The cited supermarket chain is needed to identify the best possible solutions to address the challenges of supply chain disruptions and worker shortages.
Fast execution: This means that the company can put its plan into action effectively and quickly. The cited company needs to carry out its plan quickly and effectively. For this, the company needs skilled and competent employees who can understand the requirements and implement changes.
Implementation of new technological trends
As per the digital transformation of Morrisons, organizations can implement various new technological trends from robotics process automation to extended reality to detect the changes and implement the same to develop and improve the business model in the future.
For instance, concerning the robotics process automation, implementation in various stores of Morrisons and its warehouses can result in better supply chain management. This will help in dealing with the unavailability of stock and forecasting demands to serve the customers better in the supply chain.
Implementing robotics process automation automates the whole process and methods carried on manually, leaving little or no room for any error (Viale and Zouari, 2020).http://MSc Management Leading through Digital Disruption Assignment Sample The robotic process automation tools are basically the software solutions that decide on virtual servers that can be further executed and shut at the desired hours.
In the warehouse and the stores, automation through robots will enable to recruitment and train employees for problem-solving instead of repetitive robotic tasks. Therefore, it can be elaborated that robotics process automation can be installed in the supply chain operations of the retail organisation to order any process, payments, email automation, inventory management automation, and vendor selection
Figure 1: Benefits of machine learning in hiring
Source: (Ross, 2022)
Moreover, it will also help in supply and demand planning. In addition to this, to deal with the challenge of labour shortage and recruit the best candidates for the supermarket, machine learning technology can be installed. Such technology involves screening applications in the recruitment process, whether it be candidate resume screening, targeted job or work for succession planning.
Justification and analysis of the chosen technologies
Robotics process automation is justified for the supermarket as it ensures greater compliance and increased speed in the functioning (Radke et. al. 2020). http://MSc Management Leading through Digital Disruption Assignment SampleFor instance, the business process can be set to operate following the necessary standards and regulations as per the organisation, and every process can be accomplished at unprecedented speeds.
With this, the disruptions in the supply chain can be minimised, and agility can be increased. This is because this will reduce the overheads and can create more flexible business resources. Overall, implementing this technology will reduce costs and offer a better employee experience.
Furthermore, machine learning can be justified as this will help in job advertising, candidate engagement, and workforce planning. Effective candidate sourcing reduces the likelihood of making bad recruitment choices. The machine learning tools promise better recruitment accuracy and increase overall efficiency (Rąb-Kettler and Lehnervp, 2019).http://MSc Management Leading through Digital Disruption Assignment Sample
Task 3: The Role of Digital Collaboration Tools
Collaborative technologies
To implement the whole digital transformation, it is important for the company to develop a digital-ready culture in the organisation (Marion and Fixson, 2021).http://MSc Management Leading through Digital Disruption Assignment Sample
This culture can be defined as a mutually and shared reinforcing set of practises and values that allows higher performance in service of innovation and execution in a digitally enabled business scenario (Westerman et. al. 2019). http://MSc Management Leading through Digital Disruption Assignment SampleIt can be elaborated that the digitally ready culture is not just a technological challenge for the company.
Still, also a leadership tasks and the right communication and collaboration are important to implement this culture. in this, the formal leaders of Morrisons will play a crucial role. Leaders will be required to create a sense of transparency, and engagement, upskill interpersonal skills and set up new digital operating models to implement this culture.
The change manager or the project leader must emphasise identifying and engaging the informal leaders who will involve in the change management process; they will be free to tell their own stories and lead the team for change. To create a digital-ready culture, it is important to develop a customer-centric culture and employee engagement in the organisation (Nasiri et. al. 2020).http://MSc Management Leading through Digital Disruption Assignment Sample Among agile, lean and hybrid models, the agile model can be applied to Morrisons.
Further, some collaborative technologies that Morrisons must implement involve using support tools and technologies that allow people to interact in a virtual environment, using software, hardware, and equipment to share information.
Hence, the recommended collaboration technologies are online communication tools such as Microsoft teams, Google docs, Trello, Google Meet, Skype, etc. Moreover, some other online collaboration tools and software that can be adopted are teamwork, nifty etc.
Justification of tools
To implement digital transformation in the organisation, it is significant to ensure real-time communication and collaboration between the team members irrespective of their location to ensure that everyone is on the same page and following the set standards.
Therefore, the tool teamwork is justified in this context. This tool has various growth-focused features and is a user-friendly application (Eisenberg et. al. 2019).http://MSc Management Leading through Digital Disruption Assignment Sample It has the collaboration, flexibility and client features required for managing various complex projects.
It helps in real-time collaboration with the team members to get the queries answered and projects delivered within budget and on time. In addition, Nifty is another tool that reduces or eliminates the gap between communication and action. With the help of this application, team chats and project discussions become easy, providing an opportunity for direct group communications.
Apart from these two, Microsoft team is also a justified and unified communication platform that merges the workplace’s chat with video meetings, attachments, apps and file storage (Hubbard et. al. 2021). http://MSc Management Leading through Digital Disruption Assignment SampleThe team members of Morrisons can host web conferences and communicate through chat, video and audio.
The biggest advantage of using this tool is that it is easy to use and connects with co-workers on a safer platform to follow the confidentiality rules. Further, Trello is one project management tool that helps organise projects into boards and see the progress and can be considered one of the most effective collaboration tools recommended for Morrisons (Naik and Jenkins, 2019).http://MSc Management Leading through Digital Disruption Assignment Sample Apart from this, Google docs are also recommended for creating, editing, and storing shared documents regarding digital transformation.
Task 4: Digital Leadership
Proposal of digital leadership skills
Digital leaders are those individuals who shape the strong vision of the organisation and inspire others (Kane et. al. 2019). http://MSc Management Leading through Digital Disruption Assignment SampleDigital leaders can develop a vision that serves as a compass for other individuals to follow.
The recommended digital leadership style for Morrisons among Goleman’s leadership is affiliate leadership. This is because it creates harmony and develops an emotional bond, and people-first culture motivates the team members to join in the transformation of the organisation and reduces the chances of resistance.
This creates a positive impact on digital transformation, and the recommended digital leadership skills are effective communication, digital literacy, vision, innovative skills and critical thinking skill, along with the knowledge of technologies.
Some other skills needed to support the whole digital transformation of Morrisons involve visionary skills, adaptability, engagement and humility. It can be illustrated that the leader is required to listen, communicate and interact with external and internal stakeholders of the organisation to develop a sense of strong interest and curiosity.
Apart from this, having visionary skills in the leader generates a better sense of long-term direction, even in times of short-term uncertainties (Klein, 2020). http://MSc Management Leading through Digital Disruption Assignment SampleThe leader is also required to have emotional intelligence competency; this is the capability to understand and manage own emotions and recognise the emotions of people.
This skill covers four aspects: self-awareness, self-management, relationship management and social awareness. Self-awareness is important to understand own weaknesses and strengths and their impact on the performance of the team. When the leader is capable of understanding their own strengths and weaknesses, the work tasks can be done easily and effectively.
Social awareness will further help in identifying the emotions and feelings of others. This is important to understand the subordinates as well as their level of contribution and engagement in the team’s performance.
For the digital age and to support the overall digital transformation, the leader must have attributes such as putting the customers at the heart of everything, applying fresh and innovative ideas while taking calculated risks and embracing complexities. Concerning this, the two major skills that arise are collaborative and innovative.
The digital leader must have the innovative capability to think analytically and learn actively with a problem-solving mindset. With this, it becomes easy to implement changes better and deal with issues that arise in the journey. In addition to this, collaboration skill is helpful in seeking out a variety of ideas and opinions among the team members in developing strategies and solving problems.
Consequently, when the employees are more engaged and involved in the transformation process, they feel trusted and worthy, enhancing their ownership of the work.
Conclusion
From the above analysis, it can be concluded that Morrisons is facing challenges related to labour shortage and supply chain issues affecting its overall operational areas and resulting in dissatisfied customers.
This is why the supermarket chain must implement digital transformation as soon as possible to deal with the issues while satisfying the customers and fulfilling the digital transformation objectives.
For this, Morrisons is needed to adopt a digital business agility model by adopting new technological trends: robotics process automation and machine learning. Further, the collaborative technologies suitable for Morrisons involve Trello, Microsoft’s teams, Google docs etc. furthermore, the digital leadership skills proposed in the report have been revealed as Visionary skills, innovative skills, collaborative skills, technical skills and being adaptable.
References
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Hubbard, M., Bailey, M.J., Hess, D. and Hellebro, M., (2021). Mastering microsoft teams (pp. 57-74). Apress.
Kane, G.C., Phillips, A.N., Copulsky, J. and Andrus, G., (2019). How digital leadership is (n’t) different. MIT Sloan Management Review, 60(3), pp.34-39.
Klein, M., (2020). Leadership characteristics in the era of digital transformation. Business & Management Studies: An International Journal, 8(1), pp.883-902.
Marion, T.J. and Fixson, S.K., (2021). The transformation of the innovation process: How digital tools are changing work, collaboration, and organizations in new product development. Journal of Product Innovation Management, 38(1), pp.192-215.
Morgan, W., (2022). Morrisons blames supply chain for food shortages – this is what we found in Cheltenham. [Online]. Accessed through: https://www.gloucestershirelive.co.uk/news/business/morrisons-blames-supply-chain-shortages-6996802 Accessed on: 22nd December, 2022.
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Viale, L. and Zouari, D., (2020, July). Impact of digitalization on procurement: the case of robotic process automation. In Supply Chain Forum: An International Journal (Vol. 21, No. 3, pp. 185-195). Taylor & Francis.
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