Digitalization – THE HYPE IS OVER – PART 3 (THE WAY FORWARD)
Will break the way forward into a couple of parts to make it more readable.
Like it or not, one has to go for digitalization. Here digitalization neither means adoption of any particular technology nor just moving processes online, or just creating a web-page or mobile app. It means revamping the entire business with customers and employees at the center. Technology does play a critical role in this story but that’s not the only story. The story is about customers and employees and technology is the enabler.
1) Continue with the transformation journey if you have started one. Do not stop. However, do take stock of what you are doing, and where do you want to you? Always question whether a particular change in the processes or technology would help you achieve the end objective?
a. If “Yes†then continue the path.
b. If “No†then you should stop that particular activity and do it differently or do something else.
c. If the answer is “Maybe†then rethink, remodel and retry.
If you have not started the Digital Transformation journey, don’t worry, neither the 50-60% of your competitors have. But you need to start the journey somewhere and sooner the better.
2) Do not call the Consultants as a first step. Consultants do not know your business more than you. They maybe technology or vertical experts but keep in mind – most of the times, they learn at your expense. You may need them, but not as a first step. As a first step you need to ensure all your business processes are documented and you are aware of all the human, and technology touch points. As in any business you must be knowing the same processes in your competitors place or the best in class similar processes. Map the variances and justify why your processes should continue the way they are now, and right into the future? If you can justify the same, and have any of the following answers then you are fine:
a. Due to investment or resource crunch I cannot do the changes now.
b. I do not need the changes as I am happy with the revenue and market share I have now, and I don’t see any threat in future
c. I have a very few clients; they have not changed so I don’t need to change either.
d. I don’t plan to add any more clients. They are happy with me and I am happy with them.
e. I don’t plan to expand my business and am satisfied with my current reach. I don’t see any threat in future as well.
f. I have too many issues to manage now, I don’t need another variable to cope up with.
g. I am not sure if any change is required, or whether I need to add any complexity.
3) Hire a Chief Digital Officer: If your answers don’t match to the above then you need to continue with the Digitalization process and hire a “Chief Digital Officerâ€. Most of the companies do some of the following mistakes:
a. I have a lot of data, all I need is a Data Analytics person, who would churn information out of the data and that would solve all my problems – WRONG. You first need a Chief Digital Officer who would work with the business to understand the business problems, build a digital strategy, map the processes which need to be digitalized, implement technology and then choose the new and old data, do data mining, run analytics and thats gonna help you. Short cut to this would be painful.
b. I will hire an Analytics person and have him report into the CIO/CIOs office. They can work together, shorten the above process and solve my problem – MAYBE or MAYBE NOT. It depends on who and how your CIO is engaged. If he is a hardcore technology person, or is day in and day out firefighting, or his plate is generally full with the regular things, he will not have bandwidth for this strategic initiative. It would be pretty much left to the analytics person you hired to do whatever he thinks is right.
c. Have an innovation team comprising of a few UI/UX people, analytics people, a devops expert, maybe a blockchain guy, and a few mobile app developers and they can help me do this. – MAYBE
It again depends on the organization they would be a part of. If they are part of the regular IT team, they would report into an application head, who is again part of the CIO team and would have other things and priorities as well.
d. I can hire a part time Chief Digital Officer/ Chief Data Officer/ Chief Automation officer as an external consultant as well. DON’T- NEVER DO THIS.
It’s too important a function to be given to an external person. Even if you are thinking of a Chief Data Officer instead of a Chief Digital Officer, or an Analytics head, NEVER GIVE IT TO AN EXTERNAL CONSULTANT, if you do not know him well, or you have not worked with him for a long time, or are not sure of his credentials. Here’s why:
i. He will not take ownership of the entire process.
ii. He is answerable for only the part he is assigned.
iii. He will leave one day, handing you over another unknown animal.
iv. He may initiate projects which may look attractive on the face of it but they may not be required for you. It maybe helping some of his other clients., friends or acquaintances.
v. Normally I have seen people have to hire a larger consulting company to clear up the mess created by this one individual.
vi. They will come in and complicate things further and you will not know where to restart again.
The bottom-line is “you need to hire a Chief Digital Officer,†who is a mix of both Business and Technology. He should have done technology projects earlier, should have gone through various cycles of development/ implementations / consulting and at the same time should know the business. He should not be an expert in one field in IT like not just an ERP consultant, but should know or be hands on in Infrastructure, Cloud, Security, Mobile application development, Business Process Re-engineering, IOT implementations etc. That will make him a well-rounded person and he would be the ideal bridge between business and IT.
We will continue with the other points in the follow up article.