Three Lenses for Seeing the Digital Business Opportunity

The best answer to the question "Where should we start?" is to look at the digital business opportunity through three fundamental lenses: People, Things, and Business. These three lenses are the direct counterpart of the definition in the first section ("intelligently connecting people, things, and processes"). Each lens points to a different type of entity that needs to acquire an identity in the digital world.

PEOPLE

Lens 1: People

"Who are the people involved in this business in the digital world, how are they seen, and how do they work?"

Customers: Individuals who are recognized at every step of the purchasing, delivery, and service journey, and whose preferences are known
Employees: Users whose roles, authorizations, and tasks are defined in the system; who access information not from their desk but from the device in their hand
Business partners: Dealers, franchisees, suppliers, and service providers

THINGS

Lens 2: Things

"Which assets in the physical world can generate data, be monitored, and be managed?"

Machines and equipment: Production lines, machine tools, robots, energy systems
Vehicles and fleets: Delivery vehicles, forklifts, service vehicles
Products and assets: Goods in stock, fixed assets, warehouse shelves, sensors, mobile and wearable devices

BUSINESS

Lens 3: Business

"How is the business itself (processes, services, assets, and the business model) defined and run in the digital environment?"

Processes: End-to-end flows from order to cash, from procure to pay, from plan to product
Services and APIs: The digital services the business exposes to the outside and consumes from the outside
Business model and organization: Products, pricing, channels, company structure, financial results

The three factors that give the lenses meaning

Merely "listing" a person, a thing, or a business is not digital transformation. These three types of entities acquire digital meaning only when three factors are present together: Digital Being (the entity existing in the digital world), Digital Interacting (entities talking to each other digitally), and Digital Operating (the business being run on top of this being and these interactions). These three factors can also be read as the maturity steps of transformation: first to be, then to interact, then to operate.

DIGITAL BEING

Factor 1: Digital Being

An entity's existence in the digital world: having a defined, unique, and reliable digital identity, record, and data. An entity without digital being does not exist for the system; no decisions can be made about it, and it cannot be monitored or measured.

In practice, this means a single customer card for the customer, an asset record and a digital twin for the machine, and a defined flow in the system for the process. The prerequisite of digital being is a single, consistent data model: if the same entity is defined in two different ways in two different systems, digital being has not yet been established.

The question to ask:

Does this entity exist in our system as a single, accurate, and up-to-date record?

DIGITAL INTERACTING

Factor 2: Digital Interacting

Entities communicating with each other in the digital environment: people with people (collaboration, messaging, approvals), people with things (mobile devices, interfaces), things with things (machine-to-machine communication, IoT), and business with business (B2B portals, APIs, data integration).

Digital interacting is the data that flows between the identities established by the first factor. The building blocks of this factor are integration, APIs, mobile access, user experience, and collaboration tools. Entities that have digital being but do not interact are data islands.

The question to ask:

Can this entity exchange data with the other entities it needs, without human intervention?

DIGITAL OPERATING

Factor 3: Digital Operating

The business being actually run on top of digital being and digital interactions: processes flowing automatically, decisions being based on real-time data and AI-supported predictions, and control moving from people's memories to the system's rules.

The building blocks of this factor are business execution, automated workflows, real-time analytics, machine learning, and artificial intelligence. Digital operating is the layer where the tangible results of transformation (shorter delivery times, fewer errors, predictive maintenance, new revenue models) emerge.

The question to ask:

Are the tasks and decisions related to this entity carried out through the system, measurably, and as automatically as possible?

Three lenses × three factors: the digital business opportunity map

When the lenses and factors are brought together, a nine-area map emerges through which you can see your company's digital opportunities systematically. Each cell is filled with the answer to the question "Where do we stand on this factor for this type of entity?"; the cells that remain empty or weak are the areas on which the transformation should focus.

	Digital Being Digital Being	Digital Interacting Digital Interacting	Digital Operating Digital Operating
People People	The unique digital identity, role, and profile of the customer, employee, and business partner; their entire history gathered in a single record	Self-service portals (B2B, B2R, B2E), mobile access, in-system messaging and collaboration, call center integration	Role-based screens and workflows, proactive alerts, personalized recommendations, AI-powered copilots
Things Things	Asset records, digital twins, and sensor data of machines, vehicles, products, and fixed assets	Machine-to-machine communication (M2M) via IoT, telemetry, mobile data collection with barcodes and RFID, connecting equipment to the system	Predictive maintenance, remote monitoring and control, Industry 4.0 automation, fleet and asset optimization
Business Business	Processes, products and services, and the company structure being defined in a single data model (the digital core)	APIs and services, e-invoicing and e-processes, data integration with supplier and customer systems, multi-company consolidation	End-to-end process automation, real-time dashboards and KPIs, data-driven planning, new digital business models

The common denominator of the three lenses and three factors

All nine cells rest on the same prerequisite: a single, consistent, and real-time data foundation. Digital transformation is achieved only when people, things, and business exist on the same platform, interact on the same platform, and are operated on the same platform. Without this foundation, all nine cells remain disconnected, partially digital islands.