December 2, 2024
Top Considerations and Steps in Seamless Digital Transformation
Digital transformation has become essential in today's business world, where customers and talent expect a convenient and intuitive user experience with the security of seamless, ongoing connectivity.
However, transformation challenges are compounded by the increasing pressure to make sound business decisions quickly and often in areas where leaders have no previous experience or knowledge in digital tech and transformations. This often creates misalignment between the different business departments impacted by transformation, resulting in costly and time-consuming processes that don't deliver the right results.
According to McKinsey, nine in ten C-level and senior leaders say they've pursued at least one large-scale digital transformation in the past two years, while most organisations achieve less than one-third of the impact they expected from digital investments.
I believe one of the biggest reasons for these shortcomings is because leaders seeing tech and data as silver bullets for unrelated challenges, such as process or leadership issues. Businesses also fail to take a step back from their transformation plans to set the right goals, due diligence, workflow maps, and ongoing communication to ensure a seamless transition.
The importance of planning and preparation
In the earlier post of this series, we explored how digital transformation is a top imperative for many senior leaders but can often be misconstrued for a silver bullet to non-tech-related challenges. As many businesses fail to get their digitalisation journeys started, we believe the first step is about engaging the right stakeholders to agree on a shared purpose and desired outcomes. This is fundamental to the long-term success of any digital capability uplift.
Planning and Investing Wisely
What has become evident from various studies is that top-performing businesses embark on digital transformation journeys to achieve strategic differentiation on customer engagement and innovation rather than cost efficiencies.
However, if a company wants to differentiate itself through better customer experience and innovation, it needs to implement across several core tech capabilities. Top performing firms are often more aggressive than their peers in adopting automated processes to help test and deploy new tech. They also leverage agile and DevOps practices that enable faster innovation and execution while managing costs more transparently.
These solutions are often supported by cloud migration to ensure transparency and efficiency while optimising performance and value from digital investments. Furthermore, bolder digital strategies are more likely to be successful than more incremental ones. This often leads to the development of new digital businesses, transforming core business capabilities, and updating core business technologies to ensure future competitiveness. However, it’s important to also highlight the value of phased implementation in ensuring effective and lasting transformation.
Conclusion
Considering the rate and scale of technological change, businesses are forced to be more holistic and transformative in their tech investments, which highlights the importance of planning comprehensively prior to investment.
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