Digitalization is changing the entire world and is not stopping in front of the M&A sector. But what does digitalization actually mean and what is the current status in the M&A sector?
Although digitization is influencing entire business areas and industries, the following quote from the Harvard Business Review makes it clear that digitalization is elusive:
"A Senior Vice President at a leading global company confessed to us: "We have a dozen committees on digital transformation; we have digital transformation initiatives; we are going full steam on digital transformation… but no one can explain to me what it actually means.""
One of the reasons for this is that, despite its ubiquity, digitalization has so far been strangely undefined and no uniform definition of the term has yet become established. While the German language essentially speaks of digitalization, the English language distinguishes between "digitization" and "digitalization" in this context. These two conceptual terms are closely related and are used as synonyms by various authors in the literature. However, the distinction between these terms helps to make digitalization more tangible.