While most organisations need to accelerate their digital transformation to effectively compete and stay relevant to customers, this journey needs to be trod carefully and with careful planning. Moreover, a company that attempts to go digital and which does not seek employee buy-in, or achieve partner and supplier engagement, and which does not provide a seamless customer experience, will struggle and probably fail. This is the experience of Sriram Sabesan, of Delegata.
Writing in Computer Weekly, Sabesan outlines seven important change-related steps for businesses to follow as they embark on their digital journey. Sticking with these should lead to a greater possibility of success.
Business process
The first point is that there needs to be a non-siloed and connected business process to enable the enterprise in its entirety can make informed decisions about the purpose of digital transformation. This includes collecting metrics and insights into what customers want.
Customer engagement
Customers are increasingly empowered and businesses that do not provide a fast, multi-channel experience will start to lose these customers. For this to happen “consistent, tangible feedback around the customer’s perceptions, motivations and expectations” is needed, and for the results for such surveys to be meaningfully analysed.
Product and service digitisation
Successful businesses will collect data, via connected processes, to develop a solid understanding of the customer’s reality. This helps the business to make modifications to services and cement their relationship with their customers.
IT and delivery transformation
Since the increasing transparency of organizations’ operations, staying in the same place in terms of technology is no longer sufficient. While operational and information technology are important, for this to be carried out successfully requires the creation of a hybrid process to achieve greater agility for technology delivery.
Organisational culture
Each employee needs to be engaged and the businesses structure needs to be sufficiently robust in order for effective digital transformation to take place. The culture needs to be digitally focused and for every employee to be committed, otherwise any strategy will fail.
Strategy
The optimal strategies, Sabesan writes. identify the common priorities across the businesses which will deliver value for the customer as well as profitability for the enterprise. These strategies need to be based on policy-based governance that hold decision- makers accountable.
Ecosystem and business model
With the final point, businesses need to be cognizant of the wider economic context. This means working with partners and start-ups, bringing in technologies that increase customer retention.
In related news, research from British Telecom and the Economist Intelligence Unit reveals that 40 percent of CEOs currently have digital transformation at the top of their agenda. The research provides some best practice advice. See the Digital Journal article “CEO perspectives in the digital age.”
