How can you successfully pitch a digital transformation program to stakeholders?

Building a trusted network of stakeholders and influential decision makers is critical to your role as a program manager. If you want to pitch any major transformation, and have your pitch heard and taken seriously, start by building the trust and confidence of your stakeholders. Understand their needs, their pain points, their motivations, and their ambitions. Try using different stakeholder registers to understand who are your advocates and who are your detractors, and make active plans to how you will engage with each. A Power/Interest grid is a great tool to visually map how you will engage with each of your stakeholders based on their level of interest and ability to influence the change you are proposing.

The starting point for the program vision is the stakeholder map with an emphasis on POWER x influence. After version 01 (we are talking about a dynamic process) identify the communication models for engagement.

To successfully pitch a digital transformation program, focus on tangible benefits and alignment with strategic goals. Start by outlining current challenges and inefficiencies before discussing how the proposed digital solutions address them. Highlight potential cost savings, increased efficiency and competitive advantages through case studies or examples from successful digital transformation projects similar contexts; highlight an implementation phased implementation plan showing manageable risks with clear milestones; address stakeholders concerns while inviting collaboration throughout this journey to ensure buy-in and support throughout.

To successfully pitch a digital transformation program to stakeholders, emphasize the benefits and outcomes aligned with their goals. Highlight increased efficiency, improved customer experiences, and competitive advantages. Provide concrete examples, case studies, and ROI projections to demonstrate the potential impact. Address concerns proactively, including budget, timeline, and change management strategies. Engage stakeholders in the decision-making process and emphasize the importance of staying ahead in a rapidly evolving digital landscape. With a compelling vision and clear plan, you'll gain buy-in for your digital transformation journey.

In my experience, defining the benefits of the program needs to be done based on strategic information in the business and senior management decisions. It is not an easy job but it needs to be done and approved by executives.

Any program needs to start with a Business Case, and a good business case should include the context of the problem you are looking to solve and the benefits the organization will realize by solving it. Some other things to consider are how this transformation program fits in with the organizations strategy and the risks of not doing doing it. All of these factors lead to a coherent and well articulated business case to help you attain buy in for your transformation proposal.

The program's analytical structure must present all component projects up to that moment, knowing that we will have updates. I like to use visuals to illustrate what will be predictive, agile and hybrid.

Without an actual plan, a Business Case is just an idea. Once you've gotten sufficient buy-in, you are going to need to go the next step by articulating your program plan. That plan needs to be concise and easy to comprehend as well as realistic and achievable. Remember that a program roadmap - even a well articulated one with clearly defined projects and phases - is only one part of the plan. You must also consider resourcing, budget management, benefits management, governance and reporting structure, and benefits management. All of this must be well articulated at this stage of the process and refined throughout the program delivery phases.

The program risk matrix needs to reflect the sum of the risks of all projects in the program. The view of probability x impact of expected monetary value (EMV) helps to make decisions about program risks.

No program or project comes without risks. Failing to acknowledge the risks early on might seem tempting - why weaken your pitch by calling out its shortfalls? But in my experience, failing to acknowledge risks for a transformational program will only serve to lessen your credibility with senior stakeholders. You want to be show that you have thought about the major risks and have a plan to address them, rather than walking into a pitch and having those risks called out for you. Create a high level risk management plan that takes into account Enterprise Environmental Factors, creat program Risk Thresholds, and provide an overall program risk assessment. Remember a risk can also be an opportunity, so take risk management seriously early on.

A program business case must have benefits and value realization at it's core, otherwise why would an organization spend money to invest in your program? Those benefits can be ROI driven, but remember that not all benefits are financial. Think about all of the potential stakeholders and how your program will benefit them. What is most important to your organization's strategy and how does this program align to those goals? The answer to that question will likely tell you the key benefits you want to measure. Your benefits may be financial growth or cost reduction, or less tangible benefits like employee or customer satisfaction. Create a benefits register early and build your plan to include details for how you will track those benefits.

Trust will be built according to how the program is designed, implemented and managed. You need to have a clear vision of the post-project benefits.

“Digital transformation” is the ‘how’ No-one cares. If you could achieve the same result using Magic Pixie Dust, that would be fine. Rather, describe the concrete business benefits - top-line growth, revenue retention, Cost of production or delivery, possibly increased speed of business process, … You need to translate techy ‘hows’ in to business ‘why and what’.