Digital Transformation is about Empowerment

Written By Jesse Rosel

Photo by Clay Banks on Unsplash

Note: This article first appeared in Medium.

Digital Transformation is about Empowerment

The best business transformation efforts are about empowering your customers, your employees, or both. Digital Transformation is no exception. Transformation initiatives should be about removing barriers, whether that’s through leveraging technology, modern processes, culture shifts, or optimized business models. A successful transformation will remake the customer experience and streamline how your employees deliver value for the company.

Before we go any further, let’s define what we mean by digital transformation, given it is a well-worn term bordering on becoming a cliche. It’s also a widely misunderstood concept, so a precise definition is a must!

Digital transformation is a strategic reinvention of how a business operates by integrating technology, evolving processes, and fostering cultural change to drive long-term growth, efficiency, and better experiences for both employees and customers.

I will summarize the “first principles” as the following five concepts but know that there are many variations — none of them necessarily right or wrong.

✅Remove Barriers, Don’t Add Complexity: The best digital transformations make experiences seamless — not more complicated.

✅ Empower Both Customers and Employees: Transformation isn’t just about automation — it should make work easier for employees and better for customers. (Note, however, that the focus of this article will primarily be on customer empowerment).

✅ Use Data to Personalize and Predict Needs: A great digital transformation should feel tailored to the user.

✅ Frictionless Integration Between Digital and Physical: The best transformations don’t just live online; they enhance real-world experiences.

✅ Adapt and Evolve — Transformation is Never “Done”; It’s a Culture Shift: Digital transformation isn’t a one-time project but an ongoing improvement process.

As you can see, digital transformation is not just about technology. It’s not just about process or people or culture. It’s about all of those things at once. I will walk through a few of my favorite real-world examples of digital transformation from the last ~10 years that demonstrate these first principles in action.

My Espresso Addiction & the Starbucks Mobile App

Photo by Sargent Seal on Unsplash



Let me first begin by saying that I am a caffeine addict and an espresso snob. I drink primarily straight espresso — no sugar, cream, or flavored syrup shots. So, the quality of espresso matters. Prior to Starbucks’ digital transformation, I viewed them as the McDonalds of caffeinated drinks; it was OK if you were out and about and needed a convenient pick-me-up, but it was not a place I would go to regularly. However, all of that changed when (1) they introduced their blonde espresso roast, which reminded me much more of what a craft espresso tastes like, and more importantly, (2) they introduced the new version of their mobile app that expanded mobile order and pay features for all customers.

At the time, it was pre-pandemic, and I was still commuting to work most days. One morning, while running late and feeling like I needed a caffeine boost for a critical early-morning meeting, my wife (who had always been a Starbucks fan) thoughtfully ordered a drink to pick up on my way to the office. As I was running to my car to try and beat the madness of traffic, I wondered if this was such a good idea or if I should skip the espresso and drink the crappy drip coffee at my office. I gave in, though, since she went out of her way to place the order. I pulled into the parking lot and walked up to the counter, unsure what to do. The barista smiled at me (probably correctly assuming I was a novice) and asked if I was looking for a mobile order as she set my drink on the counter.

And that was that. The convenience, combined with my perception of improved quality, sold me. For the next several years, I ordered from Starbucks at least once a week (and often more). While I still prefer the “artisan” coffee shops and their expertly pulled espressos, you cannot beat the streamlined experience of Starbucks. Indeed, this effort to digitally transform the Starbucks customer experience has contributed significantly to an increase in customer lifetime value and an increase in overall sales growth (Source: https://www.factr.me/blog/starbucks)

Starbucks’ digital transformation has remade the company and streamlined the customer experience. People like me, who once turned their noses up at Starbucks, are now regular digital customers. Furthermore, Starbucks has significantly more data through increased app usage to leverage for personalization and engagement campaigns.

This is not to say that Starbucks’s transformation has avoided introducing new challenges — it certainly has. Store congestion, high mobile order volumes during peak busy times, and highly customized orders have all presented new challenges for the company to overcome. What this proves is that digital transformation is not a one-and-done initiative. It’s an ongoing effort to adapt to the ever-changing technology landscape and customer expectations. The Starbucks mobile app initiative is a clear example of a successful digital transformation that drove revenue growth (top line) and operational efficiency/profitability (bottom line), solidifying Starbucks’ position as a leader in digital retail experiences.

An “Epic” Ski Experience

Photo by Jasmina Rojko on Unsplash

In addition to being an espresso addict/snob, I’m an outdoor activities junkie, with mountain biking, and especially snowboarding/skiing with my family being my favorite. I live in the upper Midwest, where hills are plentiful but mountains are not. Since having kids, I dreamed of returning to the mountains, where I hadn’t been since my post-college years when I was young, single, and carefree. I also had a ski bum for a friend, who helped with planning and costs (by way of a friends and family discount for lift tickets)!

However, with two kids and a mortgage, the twin barriers of planning and paying seemed insurmountable. Then, along came Vail, who purchased one of the local ski hills near where I live in Minnesota, meaning we could now participate in the Epic pass. The barriers of planning and paying were lowered (if not completely removed). Thanks to the convenience of buying a pass to ski our local hill that now would work at an *actual* mountain resort, all I had to do was pick from one of the Vail properties!

Vail Resorts is an example of a business model and digital transformation going hand in hand to revolutionize the skiing experience and extend accessibility to more skiers. And to be fair, the digital transformation has perhaps been as much an evolution as a revolution — Vail Resorts initially launched the Epic Pass in 2008. However, the game changer for people like me was when they expanded beyond Colorado to acquire resorts within driving distance of mid to large metropolitan areas around the country — thus linking a digital transformation with a business model transformation.

The digital transformation aspect is the seamless online experience for customers, regardless of which resort you visit. Creating a seamless experience meant Vail had to invest in modernizing its infrastructure, moving systems to the cloud, and integrating data across dozens of resorts and several countries (each resort was essentially an independent company).

The mobile app syncs with all the resorts and keeps track of your days and “vertical feet” of skiing every season for those nerds like me who like self-quantification. Moreover, skiers/boarders can use the app to check the status of runs and lift times. The mobile experience was not without some quirks, but on the whole, it was an impressive and relatively seamless experience. Once again, the data supports that this digital transformation effort was a success by many measures, albeit some of this growth was also driven in part by the pandemic and the desire for people to be outdoors.

Like with Starbucks, Vail’s transformation is not without challenges or controversy. Similar to Starbucks, increased access is a double-edged sword. With the explosion of outdoor activities like skiing during the pandemic, the size of the skiing population suddenly grew much bigger. Pair that with increased access and convenience, and you are bound to introduce problems such as overcrowding (especially on weekends and peak holiday dates).

Additional criticism has been (justifiably) directed towards Vail resorts for the increased cost of the skiing experience and the cost of living around resorts for their workers who make a modest wage. These are all fair points that Vail should address. But the transformation does not necessitate a certain amount of lift tickets to sell, how much to charge for a slice of pizza for lunch, or what hourly rate to pay staff.

Vail Resorts’ Epic Pass initiative and associated technology investments represent a comprehensive digital transformation that has reshaped the company’s operations, customer interactions, and overall business model in the ski resort industry. Again, I am biased here. But this transformation lowered the barriers to taking my family on a ski vacation in the mountains without needing to buy multiple, separate passes. Even if this transformation introduced new challenges that Vail Resorts must address, it empowered me, the customer, to enjoy more of an activity I love to do with my family by removing major friction from my journey.

Perplexing, Isn’t It?

Perplexity is an AI-powered search engine and research tool that provides clear, direct answers with cited sources rather than just links. It leverages large language models (LLMs) to understand the context of your questions and generate summaries of search results. Perplexity is hands down, one of my favorite generative AI-powered applications currently out there.

On the surface, Perplexity seems different than the previous case studies I walked through. Perplexity is both a digital-first and an AI-first company — a much different starting point than either Starbucks or Vail Resorts. However, there are common elements here. What Perplexity did do was “transform” how people think about the search experience — a task performed roughly 10 billion times per day — by innovating with AI and reimaging what the user experience could be.

Like with the other two examples, Perplexity created something new that most people — including yours truly — did not realize was possible. You could say that all three companies “delighted” the customer by creating a streamlined experience that removed friction and gave the customer more control over their journey. While Starbucks and Vail Resorts underwent a digital transformation that merged in-real-life (IRL for you kids) experiences with digital, Perplexity merged a digital experience with AI — an Intelligent Transformation, if you will. I’m not convinced my name will stick, but you understand.

The Perplexity search experience is truly a gem. I now prefer it over using Google. Even though Google is implementing some of the same features and functionality, it’s a bolt-on to the existing search experience. That isn’t to say the new Google search experience is clunky — it’s just not as good as Perplexity, in my humble opinion. Getting straight to the answer to your question, asking follow-up questions, and being presented with further topics for exploration and source links to do a deep dive is a truly transformed search experience.

Empowered Employees

The one topic I did not dig into in this article is that digital transformation also empowers your employees. Empowering your employees means they can better serve customers more efficiently and effectively, act more autonomously and nimbly, and do so with higher engagement.

Digital transformation — when done successfully — streamlines the employee workflow and removes barriers in front of them, enabling them to deliver more value for the company. This topic deserves its own article, but you can look at what Walmart did to equip its workforce with digital tools such as the Me@ mobile app and what Domino’s Pizza did with their mobile app to help optimize delivery routes, streamline the order-taking process and give customers better real-time information about the status of their order.

Transformation Is Continuous

I’ve heard it called the “tyranny of user expectations,” meaning that customer expectations will perpetually evolve… and so must your company. Even a company with a successful digital transformation cannot rest and celebrate articles written about its case study in business journals and consulting blogs. There is no rest! Each company must evaluate what’s next on the horizon (ahem, Generative AI!) and decide how to adapt and adjust to new technologies and increasing user expectations.

While many companies are just beginning digital or operating model transformations, AI has emerged as a genuine and legitimate disrupter. As I mentioned above, I’m informally referring to AI-driven transformation as “Intelligent Transformation.” My definition:

Intelligent transformation is the strategic reinvention of how a business operates by leveraging AI — especially generative AI — to automate processes, enhance decision-making, and create more adaptive, efficient, and personalized experiences for employees and customers.

The future belongs to organizations that embrace continuous transformation as part of their DNA. Every business transformation today must incorporate AI, but the fundamental truth remains unchanged: Successful transformation is about empowering people. When you remove barriers and create seamless experiences for both customers and employees, you’re not just adapting to change — you’re creating the future. The most exciting part? We’re just at the beginning of what’s possible. The companies that will thrive tomorrow are the ones that start reimagining their possibilities today.

Jesse Rosel
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