Digital Transformation Success - Five Essentials

Either you are keen to hop onto digital bandwagon or want to squeeze maximum bang from your digital buck, below are things to be mindful of

1. Consider Business Transformation - Digital transformation often opens up new ways of doing business and opportunities that did not exist in a traditional set up. Unless business processes, operating model or underlying capabilities are tweaked (concurrently or beforehand); the benefits would either be lost or more cost may be incurred running business as usual. Doomed to fail without business transformation! (PS: you may argue in case of business and digital transformation, one is subset of the other)

2. Furiously Integrate Channels - Not only that, go for a seamless, consistent and integrated experience across channels. Even without research, you know that a transaction does not always start and conclude on the same channel but you as customer keep channel hopping due to various inherent needs. Imagine your frustration that you have to start explaining things from the beginning every time you switch from online to in-person!

3. Tame the Technical Debt - You have an ageing technical platform that abhors agile methodology and vendors are unwilling to budge from signed off defined scope / requirements based contracts:: AND it is something you have inherited. Rather than trying to implement the latest technology "fad" to magically solve the problem - throw the problem to some experienced gurus for solution (because each problem is unique per company and solution needs to be tailored). Beware of "fan club" approach i.e. people who blindly recommend solutions of awesome technology companies.

4. Never Lose the Human Touch - Remember your frustration when you want to talk to a person and the IVR keeps redirecting you to more menu options. Digital does not always mean loops of automation but must feel real. There should be people at both ends of your conversation not artificial intelligence and a customer number. A little empathy goes a long way...

5. Beg, Borrow or Steal Lessons -Digital initiatives need to be quickly implemented for them to be successful. There is no time to learn from your own mistakes so next best thing is to learn from everyone else's experience. Even if you have to look across industries for best practices, tailor them -> contextualize them ->implement them. External Management Consultants are a decent starting point here. Your strong competitors in market can also be your best gurus.

PS - This article is written in a lighter vein and there could be many more essentials. Would love to hear from you about your experiences or additional important points to consider. You could also write which one of these is considered to be most important per your opinion.