Don’t Leave it to Luck | 13 Areas Key to Accelerating your Digital Transformation

According to McKinsey's 2022 research Digital transformation survey results | McKinsey, most businesses are not realising the expected value from their digital transformations. The complexity of business transformation enabled by digital extends far beyond technology. Leaving leaders wondering where to focus and which levers to pull. Exposing their strategies and programmes to chance and at risk of costly delays.

Drawing from over a decade of successful business and digital transformation experience, the short article below outlines 13 critical areas to help you navigate the digital and business transformation landscape.?

Clarity and Vision:

Understanding and alignment on digital transformation within the organisation form the foundation of Digital transformation. Leaders and staff need to comprehend the effects of digital, the need for transformation, and the implications for specific functions and the business. Ensure the organisation's digital strategy is clear, aligns with the overall business strategy, and that the vision for digital transformation is effectively communicated.

Leadership:

Dedicated leadership commitment and alignment on digital transformation within the organisation are essential. The CEO should be a prominent advocate for digital, reinforcing digital goals and exemplifying desired behaviours. Challenge commitment, align managers, and ensure that building digital capability is a shared goal owned by the entire leadership team. Tech savvy leadership is also a proven factor in success!

Agility:

Customer-focused agility is at the heart of rapid digital transformation and adoption. Delegate decision-making to and empower project teams. Enable the organisation's ability to test-and-learn, quickly learn from customer testing, and work in cross-functional teams to identify and overcome obstacles.

Environment:

Focus on the organisation's working environment for digital transformation. Encourage collaboration using open and co-working spaces, use digital technology to enhance the daily employee working experience. Modify the working environment to attract digital talent. Leverage hybrid working to access scarce talent but ensure regular face to face collaboration to optimise productivity.

Skills and Talent:

Evaluate the organisation's skills, talent, and innovation level for digital transformation. Identify the necessary skills, modify the recruitment process to access a broader talent pool, and use diverse learning methods to spread digital capability more widely across the organisation. Promote experimentation and an environment where failure is not stigmatised to facilitate learning transfer.

Communication:

Direct targeted communications to key stakeholders about your organisation’s digital goals. Maintain a continuous dialogue and commitment to your digital vision and cultivate a network of digital evangelists, while actively engaging with ideas and feedback from colleagues.

Technology:

Focus on applied technology, to drive market and customer-led digital solutions and initiatives. Translate this into the right technology choices enabling delivery at scale. Evaluate the IT team's partnership with digital transformation efforts. Maintain a single view of the customer with aligned and integrated systems enabled by collaborative decision-making. Ensure IT is perceived as a service provider where internal and external customer satisfaction are key performance measures.

Process and Governance:

Ensure the organisation's ability to securely design, source, and scale its digital solutions. Evaluate the organisation's effectiveness and efficiency regarding its digital transformation processes and governance. Identify and map key internal processes, ensure external and internal service level agreements, and regularly review and iterate governance and sign-off processes.

Organisational Design:

Design the organisational structure to support digital transformation, assessing if the structure is optimal. Investigate the integration of digital capability into the organisation, whether as an enhancement to its core, as a separate business, or a hybrid. Regardless of structure, establish routines for timely information flow on digital developments. Consider an innovation lab to drive experimentation and accelerate adoption.

Collaboration:

Collaborate and innovate continuously. Ensure the organisation effectively shares knowledge with members of its value chain on digital developments. Drive collaboration with key customers and suppliers, internal networks, and proactively engage with start-ups, and the broader digital community.

Measurement:

Ensure the organisation's core business objectives are clearly articulated. Make them measurable and relevant to the Digital agenda. Connect the impact of investments in digital initiatives upon primary customer and market objectives. Align digital KPIs and analytics with clear campaign objectives and overarching business goals.

Innovation and Entrepreneurship:

Promote innovation and entrepreneurship. Leadership communication should encourage experimentation and testing, and the sharing of ideas and market insights. Establish processes to enable and govern experimentation while supporting a culture of managed risk.

Financial:

Link the impact of digital initiatives to financial outcomes and business performance. Collaborate between finance and digital teams, to undertake financial impact assessments in business cases. Ensure a balanced approach to evaluate and track investments beyond the financial. Remember longer-term infrastructure investment can lay essential foundations supporting many developments over time – you can’t fly a plane without an airport!

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