Growing an organization these days is very different from the 20th century. Business is much easier in some areas, but far more complex and extremely challenging. In the 29th century organizations operated mainly locally but with technology advances these days any individual with a smartphone can be their customers. Any/every business has access to the global market.
Playing a crucial element in enabling this is the concept of Digital Transformation and in this article we will look at what it is and some of the things to keep in mind if you are considering to embark on your own transformation journey.
Digital Transformation is the act of understanding your organization's goals and objectives and building a plan on how you can integrate technology into it , with the explicit goal of maximizing—or even innovating—what that technology can do for the company. Digital transformation's goal is to make technology a core aspect of how your company operates and not simply a tool used to automate work and improve employee collaboration.
To shed an example of this, let's take the expense reporting activity. In the past business travelers had to hold on to every single receipt of their purchases while on business trips, compile long excel files, submit them to finance and spend some time and effort to get their expense claims reimbursed. With Technology an organization can simply use an online expense management system that allows users to scan receipts using their phones, immediately notifying the finance team to process it and include it in the current month's transfer. Instead of this process being long and cumbersome it just flows naturally in the daily routine of work.
But while the above example is very nice and clear, Digital Transformation isn't as simple as automating or finding solutions to the various tasks employees do. It is about organizations can reinvent themselves using technology and seeing how they can integrate the different components to build their own solutions based on their business vision. So how can you start this journey.
This one should be clear, if the buy in isn't there you will quickly see your self stuck with problems and changes that need to be made , but the people trying to make those changes don't have the authority to do that. Your entire management staff should be on-board and providing full support for this journey.
Culture is the core of every successful digital transformation. In our digital world a digital culture can't thrive if your employees are still working in disconnected silos or under-connected business functions. A modern workplace needs to find harmony between a traditional org hierarchy and the fluidity of a productive interconnected network.
To build this digital culture your organization as a whole should start thinking in a boundary-less way across all internal department. Employees should have clear ways to communicate and collaborate with each other, you should use real data from the business to equip employees in ways that let them truly understand and serve their customers, suppliers or partners. Your employees should be able to get meaningful insight form this data that will them to operationalize their shared accountabilities with processes that help other teams become more successful
If the main priority in Digital Transformation is your employees, the second priority is your data. In this world you have more data being captured from more sources than ever before.The opportunity and challenge is to bring all that data together, analyze it and use it in a way that’s contributing to better decision making and better outcomes. Too often data is fragmented, with limited effort going into aggregating the data estate into a single, cohesive asset.
Your data strategy must begin with the end in mind and include a plan with clear outcomes. If you don’t tie together your data in a meaningful way, there is a danger you will veer from wrong decision to wrong decision, based on a cursory look at fragmented or incomplete information. In a worst-case scenario, your data might not even be grounded in reality, leading you to become ever more comfortable while making catastrophic decisions. That’s a danger of using data that’s not connected. It’s fragmented and it doesn’t get you where you need to go.
If you don't show early success, it's easy for the middle management and the entrenched bureaucracy to basically resign to saying that this journey is going nowhere.
In organizations usually you have three groups of people those who want to change, those who don't, and those who are on the fence. If you start showing those small projects and successes early, then a lot of those fence sitters start to get with the program.
As such you really need to focus on the quick wins to get the possibility of success into everyone's mind so that your already challenging journey moves at a smoother rate.
The person handling a digital transformation journey is as much a diplomat as he is a transformation expert. An open communication channel should be open at all times showcasing progress, wins, challenges and opportunities to everyone in the organization. This will ensure that stakeholders are well informed and providing their support, solutions are being generated and shared from all different units/departments and anyone who doesn't want the change will be slowly persuaded to change their mindset.
While the above are some core steps that any organization serious about Digital Transformation need to take to kick-start their journey this isn't everything. Digital Transformation is a very difficult yet very exciting journey that any organization can undertake, in the end you are taking everything you might know about how business is done and turning it around 360 degrees using technology. The important thing to know is that there is to keep pushing forward, experimenting and learning from mistakes/problems.
Arqitek a member of Exceeders is a premium consulting firm focusing on supporting organizations with their Digital Strategy , Digital IT and Application Life-cycle Management initiatives.