Throughout my experience assisting companies modernise their business, a pattern emerges which affectively dictates the level of success of the exercise. In this post, I would like to offer some tips that, I hope, will aid produce a more effective Digital Transformation.
When discussing Digital Transformation, one might conclude that it is about introducing new technologies that optimise the inner workings of the business, reduce the cost of doing business, and produce better reporting for decision makers. Digital Transformation is much more than that.
People
People are at the heart of Digital Transformation. They are your end users, the most impacted resource; they will determine whether your investment is successful. Start your journey with the people.
People are naturally resistant to change; change disrupts habits, brings uncertainty, and leads to perceived loss of control. A successful Digital Transformation starts by establishing a company culture that embraces change; a culture founded by trust and transparency.
- Nurture your people by providing clear and achievable criteria and rewards.
- Manage the time and energy of your people throughout the process to reduce change fatigue.
- Encourage positive criticism as a sign that people want to improve.
Processes
Processes are the glue that holds the company, and any innovation, together. As the leading cause of waste in the company, process enhancement is the strongest target for organisation-wide gains.
With an open mindset, such as that of a zero-based organisation, one can better view areas of improvement and engineer ways to achieve these goals.
- Start by determining the survival minimum, the core requirements for the organisation to operate.
- Break-down the activities that are crucial to support the business objective into their core concepts. Understand the required timeliness, frequency, and performance benchmarks for the activities.
- Use an organisation-wise set of principles to describe and design the processes as if in a clean slate. If necessary, divide the process into smaller functional components that can be assigned closer to the department or person that can execute the work.
- Test the new processes within the organisation, determine the constraints that need to be applied to make it feasible and sustainable.
- Continuously benchmark the new activities in comparison with the previous iterations, identifying and acting on paths to improve.
Technology
Technology is the catalyst for Digital Transformation to occur. It is the tooling to enable you to automate mundane tasks and, to offer new services, but also the design, experiment and measure your journey.
Technology is also the engine that pushes your industry forward; by enabling your rivals it entices you to respond to remain competitive.
- Focus initially on quick win solution that most benefit your customers.
- Endorse technology that generates useful data, and use said data to further enhance your decision-making abilities.
- Embrace, experiment, and invest in emerging technology such as AI because your customers will request it in a few months.
- Keep up to date with security and compliance. Your organisation does not operation in a bubble and these requirements are ever changing.
Let us say that you have started your Digital Transformation journey, how do you know if you are on the right track. Does on time delivery of milestones mean a successful step? Or would you rather gauge your effort based on the joy of your employees? Get in touch with us today and we would be happy to discuss this topic with you!
