Digital Transformation: 6 Key Takeaways from Success Stories!
Run for a competitive edge in this digital trend led to the skyrocketing demand for Digital Transformation (DT/DX) across firms.
But on the negative side, risks associated with Digital Transformation (DX) continue to be among key concerns for many organizations in 2019.
Shocking revelations say that an estimated USD 900 billion of the total USD 1.3 trillion DT spending in 2018 went in vain!
Success stories of Digital Transformation (DT) implementation involved organizations with digital technologies that focused on efficiency gains and customer choices. Whereas, those witnessing failures report lack of inclination to change within the organization and flaws in current practices.
Here are 6 key takeaways from success stories in digital transformation:
1) Strategize and Invest
It’s recommended to plan a broader business strategy rather than staying limited to specific tools. It’s important to note that no single technology can get all the things done in an organization. Combination of best tools, backed by a digital vision, makes a broader DT approach.
2) Rely on Insiders
The most common approach we observe everywhere is hiring teams from outside for a transformation within the organization. Doing this might often mislead you, as the external provider who comes to help might not be completely aware of your inner strengths and usually tends to apply the industry’s best practices.
This might or might not apply to your organization. So, experts recommend focusing on insiders, who hold awareness of internal day-to-day operations.
3) Customer Satisfaction
If your digital transformation is aimed at customer-brand engagement, then you will have to start executing it from the customer side. Know what your customer feels about your business, the strengths and weaknesses too. Assess your existing performance metrics on their needs and expectations.
Focus on ensuring transparency and seamless responses through your customer portals. Give your customer the feasibility to track the progress of their requests. Configure related software to deal with the stalled applications. Personalize the dashboards and go with small-scale changes to different tools at different intervals, instead of implementing a single tool or single application. All this naturally leads to customer satisfaction!
4) Build Employee Confidence
Make sure your employees won’t feel insecure about the new transformation you bring in! Give them a clear picture that the DX transformation you make is a good opportunity for them to upgrade their skill-set in line with the changing trends.
The best approach to do so is identifying their individual skill strengths and map them to respective components in your digital transformation process. This gives them a clear understanding of how the new transformation is unfolding and helps them identify areas they fit in the new process. Cross-team collaboration not only brings success in DX journey but also boosts productivity.
5) Encourage Start-up Culture
Successful start-up firms are known for their agility and minimal hierarchy, which make the processes faster. Given this fact, start-up culture will be more supportive for a digital transformation strategy, say experts.
A typical DX transformation process demands quick decision-making and subsequent rollouts, and cultured collaboration among teams keeping aside their individual skillset.
6) Flat Organizational Structure
Start moving away from hierarchy-based operations if you have to see early success in DX journey. A flat organizational structure, away from the rest of the organizational setup, sounds more apt for the digital transformation process.
Given the fact that DX is not a one-time process, leaders should think of ways to choose the best tools that are customizable in line with requirements and also the areas to be experimented with. If every such decision has to go through multiple layers of management, that consumes time and also increases time to recover in case of a modification/failure.
Remember! In a DX process, the result can be seen only after a substantial switching of the business from old to the new system. Organizations with flat team structure report more scope for generation and presentation of ideas at high frequency, to achieve success in the Digital Transformation (DX) process.
On an EndNote
Organizations with a good success rate in DX feel that the ‘DX process is more about culture, mindset, planning and focus on fundamentals, both across teams and organization as a whole’.
Want to move the digital way?
Got Questions? Schedule A Call
Related Articles: