Digital Practitioner?

This becomes a rather interesting question? Who is, may not be as important as what is? Consider the terms Architect and Engineer. Several decades ago it was fashionable to be labeled an Engineer, so much so many jobs were 'engineerized" e.g., Sanitation Engineer. Today the term architect has been over used and now the meme "digital" instead of information worker.

The real test of whether "digitalization" elevates is if it changes an enterprise for the better. Previously I commented on the "go-to-cloud" movement.  

When I was at previous employer I was asked to develop a portfolio tool to help businesses determine what applications to move to the cloud. This was a similar problem manufacturing firms had when they investigated CAD in the 70s. Eventually the clear strategy emerged that all new work and long-term products (cash cloud) rework made sense to migrate. A similar strategy is likely to emerge for cloud and digitalization. However, this only changes the location of storage and processing as most work in medium to global enterprises are already digitized on premise. 

 The cloud push is seeking to obtain the long tail market. That is the small business market where the level of digitalization is low due to costs. If done correctly, a huge market of small transactions with low transaction cost for the provider can be very profitable and semi-beneficial for the customer. This is why service design and customer experience management become critical skills.

 I point out semi-beneficial to the customer as it is unlikely the small business will be able to invest in altering their business model to any significant degree. Like many medium to large enterprises unless they take the time to reinvent themselves with the possibilities digitization and cloud provides, they’ll just be on the Jetson treadmill.

 This is where I believe a “digital practitioner” verse a digital consumer comes into play. The role is that of an architect looking on how to design, express and operate business concept in bits.  However, much of this work as mentioned above is not the actual technology, it is creating the logic to be laid down in the technology