Understanding the key factors that contribute to a successful digital transformation.
We live in an era where technology is the major driving factor of business innovations. While some see it as complex, nearly 70% of businesses see this technological advancement as a lucrative opportunity and welcome digital transformation as a way to move forward. As all companies generate data daily, they need data to remain relevant and competitive in their industry. But how do they begin making a successful technology investment? How do they learn about their requirements? And how do they prioritize what has more significance?
In this post, we aim to describe the key factors and steps a company can take to successfully achieve digital transformation, improve efficiency, and become more profitable.
What is Digital Transformation & Why Does It Matter?
Digital transformation refers to integrating digital technology into every aspect of an organization, including its processes, tools, and people, resulting in basic improvements to the way it works. This involves adopting digital processes and solutions to replace the non-digital ones and updating current technology with new advancements. Using digital technologies to create new business operations, culture, and customer experiences can fundamentally change how a company works and provides value to its customers.
This process is vital to all businesses, irrespective of their size. It has become increasingly important across all industries and firms seeking progress. It is more important than ever to stay competitive and relevant in the digital world. For instance, digital transformation is becoming increasingly important to ensure businesses can provide the best customer experiences that today's consumers usually expect.
When going through the digital transformation process, companies have the chance to re-examine how they do business through technology. This provides a holistic view and consistency and identifies and prioritizes areas for improvement. Companies can significantly improve their customer experience and create a competitive advantage in their market.
Some great examples of digital transformation include driving the effectiveness of OS and software by moving to the cloud and Software as a Service (SaaS), boosting logistical efficiency by adopting an internet-of-things (IoT) inventory system, using big data analytics to spot opportunities and inefficiencies, and reducing training costs by educating staff with digital applications.
Key Factors and Tips for Successful Digital Transformation
Organizations have leveraged the power of digital technologies to transform their market position, enhance their bottom lines, and improve their customer experiences. While the methods and objectives of each company vary, their digital initiatives share a particular investment in complete implementation across their organizations in general.
Here are a few factors and tips to follow that help build and support a successful digital transformation strategy:
✅ Identify Existing Applications and Tools
While you lay the foundation to adapt to new operations, having a record of the resources and software solutions you currently have is a must. Work with senior heads of departments or build a small team to find out which software and digital processes are already in place.
✅ Define Resource and Technology Breaks
As soon as your digital inventory gets completed, you get a high-level outlook to assess what is working, where operations improvements can be made, and which areas of your business are unaffected and great for implementing more streamlined digital processes.
✅ Evaluate Past and Current Digitization Efforts
If you don't know where you have been, you don't know where you are going. This saying is true for tech as well. You need to evaluate what digital initiatives have been undertaken previously and what were the results of the projects. Are there any departments or projects that have digital processes in place at present? What were the effects of those efforts on efficiency and productivity? Once you evaluate your past and present digitization efforts, you can have a smooth journey towards digital transformation.
✅ Find New Processes to Upgrade
Pinpoint existing processes that take the most time or effort and have high customer visibility and impact. For successful digital transformation, carry out a market analysis or find out about where your competition has put digital processes into place. Note that little wins can greatly contribute to your overall plan and acceptance.
✅ Define Achievable, Realistic Objectives
Instead of overdoing it, plan, research, and start working to achieve objectives in a timely manner. However, ensure you don't ignore your budget and the capabilities of your team. Failure, in the beginning, can hinder your progress in the long run. On the other hand, step-by-step improvements with measurable return on investment will hold fast.
✅ Get Buy-In from Team Leaders
Another great tip to ensure a successful digital transformation is to inspire excitement and eliminate employee resistance. This can be done by ensuring that leadership is involved and vocal in supporting new digital initiatives as they come up. What's more, encourage team leaders to host weekly/bi-weekly check-in sessions (live or virtual) to ensure that updates, upcoming steps, and outcomes can be shared.
✅ Start at a Smaller Scale
There is nothing bad in starting small. It is the ideal way to approve sustainable change. If you create a significant change during the course of a night, it can lead to resistance and panic and invite different problems and errors that can make a huge negative impact. Make changes in stages by implementing them in waves to assess development while you grow.
✅ Invest in Upskilling
Research shows that the success of a digital transformation depends a lot on the use of innovative technologies and empowered staff with the needed skills. Since change is occurring so fast, current skills are degrading, and new skills are essential for all employees to keep pace with the evolving business industry. At this point in time, excellence will not come from a set-it-and-forget-it approach. Development and innovations need a foundation of regular upskilling, so invest your time and efforts in it.
✅ Partner with the Right Technology Partner
With any digital transformation initiative, the technology partners you select are much more than providers, especially if the change your project supports is detailed and extensive. The learning curve for moving from analog purchasing workflows to automated processes built around continuous improvement can be important. Therefore, it is crucial to choose tech partners who can also give your IT team and employees the training and support they need for successful digital transformation. The partner should also offer insights from their own experience to help guide your staff as you define your project's objectives, scope, and timeline and thus become partners in shared success.
✅ Create and Communicate Your Schedule
There must be a well-defined list of priorities, responsibilities, and benchmarks as they have been established. Regular communication of project objectives, milestones, and timeframes helps maintain engagement and enthusiasm across the board. Clearly define roles and responsibilities and how they provide support to the project and help reduce delays and errors. Keep a simple, straightforward, and adjustable timetable that gives room for breathing while still making visible progress.
✅ Celebrate Innovation
It is by taking a leap of faith that an inspiriting company culture begins – even when the change is backed up by research. Get stakeholders onto a team as a member by creating a culture that celebrates difference and values new notions and feedback. This helps lead to the next point in the digital transformation.
✅ Keep It Simple
To encourage adoption, it is essential to ensure that your staff can get on board with all speed and with no trouble. Get rid of complexity, and adopt processes that fit your work without much difficulty, at least in the beginning. Provide anything from sessions to complete training guides to ensure staff success.
✅ Promote Team Collaboration
There's a quote by Steve Jobs that says, "Great things in a business are never done by one person. They are done by a team of people." This indicates that all team members need to facilitate communication on ways of process improvement. Consider creating a forum for feedback and reviews, and consider new ideas to keep the successful digital transformation going.
✅ Put Your Focus on Results
Remember your objectives: review, revise, and repeat. Stay in touch with stakeholders regularly to see if these goals are being met and where problems are occurring. Make an action plan to address challenges to ensure the progress doesn't slow down.
Takeaway
Digital transformation is vital for all businesses, from small companies to large enterprises. Embracing it does not have to be a struggle, nor does it have to end in disaster. It is possible to incorporate new technologies as part of your company's continued success with a developed digital strategy that engages the entire organization and prioritizes clarity, communication, and improvement. If you are looking to jumpstart your digital transformation efforts, these factors and tips offer a blueprint for stakeholders across the company to come together, form a shared vision, and take the initial steps towards development in the new digital reality.
Ready to Transform Your Business? Kwixand Solutions Can Help
If you're looking to digitally transform your business, the team at Kwixand Solutions is here for you. We are a IT consultancy and Microsoft Partner who help companies across Canada and the US digitally transform, optimize their processes, and achieve their business goals. Book a consultation with us to get started.