How can you improve your digital transformation capabilities?

1. Begin your Cultural Transformation 2. Clear vision, strategy and commitment from leadership 3. Customer centric design thinking 4. Setup a Learning Ecosystem 5. Empower, enable, encourage your employees 6. Data literacy for data driven culture 7. Communication 8. Collaboration 9. Use of tools, techniques and technology 10. Networking 11. Be agile and flexible 12. Encourage risk, experimentation and failures

Decide what is your focus area (internal - optimisation-centric, external - customer-centric, both). For digital transformation focused on your customers, you will need a well-developed Voice of Customer program. Be aware of survey biases (esp. survivor bias). Use various sources of data (i.e. contact center interactions and reasons). Avoid getting confrontational with other functions.

Don’t forget about the customer! Consider client pain points, frustrations, and gaps in your service; also, what do they like and appreciate about your service.

Include in your program design the requirement to create a business case for ‘transformational’ changes. It should be required to gain buy-in from executive management and support the investment required. Also, ensure governance is applied into the program operating model so that opportunities and solutions are reviewed by the appropriate leadership team. The objective is to ensure the solutions align with data and technical strategies, risk is properly managed, and the business case is intact.

-Create a digital vision document. Share it with the team, departments and stakeholders. - Org Departments (be it a person or a team) must have a say. - Be patient, and let the chatter begin. Employees should be eager and excited about the future.

A good aligned vision is better than a great, but not aligned vision. What matters is the openness to change. You need a good business case, but you need to find a story that will motivate people to change (blunt calculations rarely do).

Consider pods of excellence to create a pool of resources that can learn and work together. The pods may support major business lines or an entire organization (based on the organization’s size and complexity). The tools, also centralized, can help keep licensing costs down.

You will face rotation in your team, so retention of knowledge and effective onboarding are essential as well. Make sure your knowledge base is accessible and easy to update.

A key step with implementing digital transformation is the human side of the equation. Determine how roles change, staffing levels change, procedures need to be updated, and staff needs to be trained. Also, understand the implications of the changes and align with inflight initiatives to reduce rework.

People and Process are two key aspects. Employees see 100% of the problem as they face it. Few key points: - Enable employees with time and reward the futuristic approach to a problem. - Arrange and encourage a culture of face to face collaboration between technology teams with other departments. Think of water cooler discussions. Great ideas are always born in most simplistic environment. - Avoid egoistic digital campaigns by IT teams. Forcing a technology will not win the employees, but engaging will.

- Create and share a digital vision document. It should constantly evolve (a living and breathing document like a "constitution") around people and processes. Employees are the key stakeholders of this document. - Award and celebrate the quick wins. - Now create KPI(s) and pull ideas from employees rather than pushing. - Remember that IT team of your organization is only a service provider of the digital vision document. They should have the least say in the document. They should only focus on "Implementation". - Make non-IT employees champions of the digital vision.

Enhancing digital transformation involves clear goal-setting, cultivating a digital-first culture, upskilling staff, modernizing technology infrastructure (e.g., cloud, AI), leveraging data for informed decisions, prioritizing customer experience, adopting agile methodologies, fostering cross-functional collaboration, emphasizing cybersecurity and compliance, measuring success through KPIs, forming partnerships for innovation, and implementing effective communication and change management strategies.