Digital Transformation, today: Part 1- What's needed for success?

This is the first in a series of articles looking at Digital Transformation. We plan to give you an insight in to Digital Transformation (or Digitisation) and what businesses need to think about when they approach it. Before we get into the nuts and bolts of successful Digitisation let’s look at the basics and the language around the process.

Digital Transformation, for many, is another buzzword that causes confusion and uncertainty. Across all sectors, business leaders are realising its significance and understand – when undertaken correctly – it can bring huge advantages to any organisation, its operations and future success.?

However, how to go about a process of Digitisation is quite another thing. It’s not about ordering new hardware or simply subscribing to some software. The process is about reviewing the business in more depth and understanding the objectives, processes, talent, and motivation that already exists and harnessing that to drive measurable change for growth now and in the future.?

What does Digital Transformation?actually mean?

There seems to be as many?views?of?Digital?Transformation?as there are businesses in the world – which makes sense, every?business’?Digital Transformation is unique to itself.?However,?it will follow a few?core?themes;?

• The adoption of digital technology to transform services or businesses.?
• Replacing manual processes with digital processes.
• Replacing older digital technology with newer technology.?
• Enabling a business to achieve growth through technology.

What operational benefits are available after the process?

Some of the themes above may already sound worrying before we even start. Digitisation will impact technology, data, process, and culture within your business. Therefore, any undertaking must bring significant value in the short, as well as long term and allow the business to continue operating without any disruption.?

A successful digital transformation should facilitate;??

• Enhanced data collection?
• Greater resource management
• Overall better customer experience
• Encourages Digital Culture?
• Increased profit?

Improvement?in any one of these areas is a key?attractor?for digital transformation, but in truth a?thorough?approach will lead to measurable change in?all of?these areas. Your business will?become?more agile, more profitable, more?responsive?to change, see increased profits and productivity?and?have a better understanding of how it best can serve your?customers.?

The global pandemic has brought an acceleration in the digitisation of the world’s economy. Enterprises that have already leveraged technology prowess were able to strategically evolve as their customer base changed. They were agile and responded quickly to new competitive threats using both competitive and substitute methodologies because of their digitisation. Some were left behind and others did not survive.?

Digital transformation is not easy and it is not for the faint of heart. For a company to have a successful digitisation many aspects need to come together. Far more than many leaders anticipate as it brings together technology, data, process, and the capability of organisational change.??

In our next post we look at the four fundamental elements of Digital Transformation, breaking down how they come together to deliver a successful programme of change to bring you the benefits we have discussed today.?