Running a business is more challenging than it’s ever been. Simply see how several of Australia’s largest companies are struggling, losing business to digital disruptors and trying to catch up.

There is a way out for all organisations caught in the digital disruption vortex, one that won’t just enable them to catch up but will also position them far ahead of their competitors.

Disruption should primarily focus on transformation of the whole business. It needs to rethink and recreate its culture and its fundamental processes, not just embrace technological opportunities.

Technology is just a means to an end. It is not the starting point.

To fully benefit from the digital disruption opportunities, established businesses have to dig deep and rethink their basic business model to provide more tailored services that offer consumers significantly better value and greater control.

It is the internal attitudes and structures of organisations that have to change as digital disruption is occurring at an industry level and in every operational function.

Accordingly, changing the internal mentality of every employee regarding the role of the customer and full consumer empowerment should be the focus for management. Too often it is not.

This is what will differentiate organisations that can adapt and embrace the opportunities that are arising every day.

For example, some 83 per cent of superannuation trustees expect to personalise each member’s fund experience by 2025.

Technology will have a critical role to play in the development of this more personalised model, but it is the human and organisational aspects that will determine its success in improving efficiencies as well as facilitating more rigorous compliance and regulatory reporting.

Established organisations that try to get on the digital disruption bandwagon by buying small, highly innovative and entrepreneurial companies will fail as they tend to smother these acquisitions. 

The correct relationship is a mentoring one with minimal investment and ownership. Collaboration rather than possession is the key.

Adam Salzer is the founding chairman of the Asia Transformation and Turnaround Association