Change continues unabated for Walgreen Company since fellow Forbes contributor Ben Kepes caught up with Walgreens then-Digital CTO Abhi Dhar last October, when he covered Walgreens’ successful efforts at digitally transforming the company.
First, Walgreens is now part of the Retail Pharmacy USA Division of Walgreens Boots Alliance, Inc., as the merger with European pharmacy giant Alliance Boots is complete – one in a string of mergers and acquisitions over the last decade including Duane Reade, Drugstore.com, Kerr Drug, and others.
Second, Abhi Dhar has been promoted to SVP and CIO of what is the largest drugstore chain in America, with 8,173 drugstores in the US, including Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands – so many that approximately 76% of the population of the USA lives within five miles of a Walgreens, according to its website.
Then just this week, there’s news that Walgreens will be acquiring Rite Aid, the nation’s third-largest drugstore chain.
Walgreens has exhibited dramatic successes with its digital reinvention up to this point – but as it grows into an ever larger enterprise, customers and shareholders alike may wonder whether it can maintain its lead in the digital space.
Dhar isn’t worried, as change is par for the course at Walgreens. “We needed new core competencies including the ability to accept change and be comfortable with it,” Dhar explains. “The fundamental agility that the organization must have is a core competence.”
Such business agility is a critical enabler of any successful enterprise digital transformation, as such transformations touch every part of the business, not just IT. Connecting agility within the IT organization to the broader organizational challenge of dealing with change, in fact, is where Walgreens has shown dramatic successes.
Business agility, however, is often misunderstood, as many people confuse it with Agile software development methodologies. IT shops that have successfully adopted Agile may deliver better software, but there’s more to business agility than good code.
Nevertheless, for Walgreens, Agile is an important part of its digital story. “We’ve been a fully Agile development shop for two years now,” Dhar says – but he’s quick with a caveat. “Not just Agile development but agility across the organization.”
Many Agile shops struggle with this leap from Agile to business agility. Walgreens’ secret to making the jump is the same as its secret for digital success: an uncompromising focus on its customers.
Dhar explains the key to Walgreens’ digital strategy. “We focused on removing friction for customers,” he explains. “How to bring digital and put it in the context of the customer experience.”
Read the entire article at http://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonbloomberg/2015/10/28/business-agility-drives-digital-as-walgreens-pursues-rite-aid-acquisition/.
Intellyx advises companies on their digital transformation initiatives and helps vendors communicate their agility stories. As of the time of writing, Photon is an Intellyx customer. None of the other organizations mentioned in this article are Intellyx customers. Image credit: Joel יוֹאֵל.
