5 Factors to Watch for Digital Transformation Journey

Organizations are standing at an exciting crossroad to compete for the future. A crossroad is about change. And, the change is about becoming digitally mature to improve organizational agility and customer experience.

Many organizations, at their core, are making themselves fully digitally enabled to navigate the turbulent changes of the digital age and create more growth opportunities. Their focus is completely on the digital transformation to create better customer value and encourage innovation.

However, the road of digital transformation is not the same for everyone. Some organizations still have to start their digital transformation journey to accelerate their growth engine. And, it is not as easy as it looks.

The reason: inadequate digital leadership and technology capabilities, organizational complexity, resources and budgets, and lack of clarity in digital ambition.

To mitigate these challenges, organizations need a refresh thinking and balanced foundation of people, process and technology. The best way to do is to create the transformation road-map through the lenses of customers, stakeholders and employees.

In particular, focus on the below 5 factors:

Set customer-first approach:

Some businesses make the mistake of jumping on every technological bandwagon without analyzing their customers’ current expectations. Put customers at the core of digital readiness strategy.

Organizations must consider not just about customer service, but also a seamless and unified customer experience. Analyze the existing customer data for better understanding of their needs. This will help in putting in place the right systems of engagement across all customer touch-points.

Whether an organization is transforming certain business components or a complete transformation, they must place their customers at the heart of everything they do. What’s more important is cultivation of customer-centered culture and breaking down silos across the organization.

Make it everyone’s responsibility:

Any major initiative, whether it revolves around technology or traditional models, is strategized and implemented by the people for the people.

Digital transformation is a company-wide initiative, which requires strong collaboration from top to bottom and from executives to decision makers. It is important to align everyone while crafting and implementing the organization’s digital vision. So, the onus of responsibility must be on everyone to work together towards a common vision.

In fact, make digital transformation a passion project. Involve people across the board in order to get their ideas to cultivate the right solutions for digital success.

Integrate digital platforms in alignment with your vision:

In essence, digital transformation is about closing the gap between the traditional way of working and modern customer expectations toward digital. Organizations must have a clear vision for digital transformation platforms to get them moving towards their ultimate purpose.

Today’s digital platforms are the dominant innovation channel.  With limitless technology partners, digital platforms allow for intelligent use of cloud, big data, mobility, social media, and the internet of things (IoT). They provide powerful capabilities and solutions for better collaboration, customer personalization, process automation, deeper data analytics, and operational excellence.

So, choose the right digital platform that would help support the speed, safety, and growth required in digital transformation. Keep in mind that the core objective of transformation is to help the organization operate faster, smarter, and in modern ways that benefit customers and the bottom line.

Bring the right experts to the table:

Digital transformation is a not a one-day project. Organizations need expertise across the board which includes technologists, creative specialists, enterprise architects, business analysts, and operational experts. They should engage with consulting partners while beginning their digital transformation journey.

Don’t limit with just one consultant. Invite more than one consulting partner to better understand the latest IT trends and how to exploit them for business excellence.

Digital change will introduce new forms of challenges and risk, thus look for a strategic partner who can help navigate change and implement the latest strategies specific to the business.

Also, organizations should not ignore the fact that they may have to re-imagine their existing processes, rebuilt or built from the scratch to align with new digital capabilities and IT components.

It is important to keep an open mind to what is possible for the greater good.

Embrace Agility:

Adopting change is not just about technology, but also about the processes and practices for continuous innovation. In the context of digital transformation, agility enables an organization to bring more collaboration, focus and transparency in their implementation process.

Agile practices empower organizations to improve collaboration for quality delivery, eliminate friction, and ramp up velocity for faster time-to-market. So, the better the ability to be agile —to quickly sense upcoming challenges, decide and act quickly – the easier it would be to innovate further and evolve the existing capabilities for ultimate customer satisfaction.

Conclusion:

The digital future is here. So, don’t stick with just talk-zone. Sooner the organizations act on their digital transformation ideas, earlier they will realize the positive impact. Huge opportunities exist for those that invest in the right digital initiatives at the right time for their business.

In fact, opportunities exist in all industries and taking advantage of these opportunities must always be a priority in any future-ready organization.

What other factors are critical for digital transformation success? I would like to know your thoughts.