A change of course in the Digital Transformation journey

In my profile summary, I always like to highlight 2 great tools I believe can support businesses: Digital Transformation and Data-Driven Culture (the theme of my next post - stay tuned!). While I learned almost everything about the data-driven culture at dp6, a Brazilian marketing consulting, the knowledge about digital transformation was first presented in my time at Sprinklr, the enterprise software for customer experience management.

The Digital Transformation topic has been trending these days and based on some podcasts I listened, it can be estimated that medium and large companies were pushed 15 years to adopt the digital initiatives.

But what can be called a digital transformation? The standard definition that was presented to me follows two pillars: a change in the company mindset from Product-Centric to Customer-Centric & Adoption of technology to monitor information (Analogical vs Digital). The Product-Centric and Analogical scenarios are highly influenced by the second and third industrial revolution, while the Customer-Centric and Digital are outlooks from the fourth industrial revolution powered by internet, social media, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence.

Recently, the writer and Customer Experience Futurist Blake Morgan published a Forbes article that develops the concept in detail following 12 steps to move faster into digital transformation. Highly recommend the reading if you are interested to do for your company.

Digitization is probably the first step many companies take hoping that buying technology will be enough for the process. The company culture must be influenced and aligned to changes that are about to come for the next 6 months, reinforcing the importance of strong change management. Lastly, considering many customer data is being stored, there is also a concern about privacy and security. And it is not always clear that the framework company A followed probably does not match your company, you will have to rebuild your plan adapting it to the market and world requirements.

An example to understand if you are in the right path are the metrics you measure: the traditional Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) focused in the number of sales, cost of acquisition, return over investment (ROI) or if you are already looking to Customer Performance Indicators (CPIs). The best examples are given by Gene Cornfield from Accenture Interactive where he mentions First Time Resolution, Customer Delivered Value, or Payment Flexibility. Of course, the real transformation is measured when KPIs and CPIs are combined according to your industry and business goals.

However, during my time studying and reflecting during the quarantine I could review the above description for Digital Transformation. I have been watching and listening to Philosophers (Mario Sergio Cortela and Luiz Felipe Ponde), Historians (Leandro Karnal and Yuval Harari), virologists (Atila Iamarino), economists (John Hopkins teacher Monica de Bolle), journalist (Manoel Soares) and many others. They brought a new perspective to me.

The new digital transformation should include a human vision to its components. Not only customers but employees and society should be an additional pillar to guide a company transformation. Most part of the investment is directed to technology, but people must be the core of the real transformation.

Adapt the home office and provide tools (software and hardware) to employees, elaborate e-learning and e-training strategies, change from physical store to e-commerce which means a delivery solution should be adopted, improve the quality of digital services you already have, connect the different departments into the same goal, and review the impact of your business to the community the company is inserted are some examples to be considered.

But what happens if the company is small and does not know where to start? The solution must be customized. If you know any business in Brazil or Canada that needs support to rebuild their planning due to the COVID-19 pandemic, please contact me and we can manage how I can help you go through the challenge.

Most of my ideas here are highly influenced (understand as Reference) by Forbes and Harvard Business Review: Digital Transformation Isn't A Project, It's A Way Of Operating, Is COVID-19 Forcing Your Digital Transformation? 12 Steps To Move Faster, and The Most Important Metrics You’re Not Tracking (Yet).