How You Transform Your Business

You lose sales. Your long-term clients all start leaving. Soon, your competition is miles ahead of you, while you’re still standing there trying to make sense of the world around you. That is precisely the situation you're going to be standing in, or you are in already maybe, if you don't understand the need to transform your business.

With so many transformation triggers all around in today’s day and age, it’s hard not to fall under the pressure of transforming. So if you’re looking for pointers to help you understand how to transform your business, you’ve come to the right place!

What is Business Transformation?

First thing first, there should be a clear understanding of what “business transformation” really means, so that it’s clear what you’re working towards and trying to achieve. Business transformation is a strategy for managing change within the organization. The strategy focuses on three main elements – people, processes, and technology, and aims to align all the initiatives related to these three elements together with the company’s overarching vision and mission. To define business transformation even simpler, which is basically what it all boils down to, is changing from one outlook and culture to another, more innovative, accepting and efficient one.

Change needs to be disruptive, innovative, and visible. Most people have the misconception that business transformation is more of an underlying process, one that never shows in reality. That is wrong, because change always shows, and real change is always visible. From being visible, let’s move on to being innovative. Dare to step out of your comfort zone, because that is exactly where you are trying to take your organization with this business transformation hopefully. And last but not the least, focus on disruption, focus on breaking the status quo, and focus on standing out.

The Stats Don’t Lie

If you don’t already understand the vital point that your business needs to be transformed to keep up with the changing times, then it’s high time for you to understand it now. Because most companies (93%) that Forbes Insights along with KPMG surveyed in their report "Business Transformation and the Corporate Agenda" admitted that they were either in the middle of a business transformation, or were planning to undergo one, or had already just completed their transformation. With such a huge majority of businesses thinking about business transformation, do you think it's a smart decision to you keep ignoring the facts? Don't worry, you're halfway there as it is; realizing that you're in dire need to undergo a business transformation is the first step of the transformation itself.

Key Steps for A Successful Business Transformation

Change and transformation are critical for any business to stay in the game. With technological advancements taking place every second of every day, and the competition and pressure to come out as the top only increasing by the minute, there is no way any business can survive in the long run without effective business transformation. To help you understand how to go about this transformation, there are some basic essential steps that no business should ignore. Keep reading to find out about them.

Step 1: Create A Sound Strategic Vision

A company's vision soon becomes everything for that company. Without a clear vision, the company becomes a case of the blind leading the blind. No change can happen without a dream, and you need to translate that dream, that want for a better future for your organization, into a systematically defined vision. The vision plays a vital role because it includes many things that will help the business transformation. A vision includes the context of the change, the scope, and depth of the change, and discusses the changes of internal processes and structures. 

When writing the vision, it should be a point to write it in simple English, with no jargon and overly complicated processes. The vision should be simple enough so that everyone within your organization can understand the big picture of what the organization is trying to achieve.

Step 2: Build Trust within the Organization

Transformation is all about change. Most likely than not, people don't respond so well to change, they're set in their ways, don't want to change, and view the transformation with a wary eye. Every leader who wants to bring about business transformation needs to understand all of this, needs to understand that the organization is set in its traditional ways and needs to be motivated and inspired to adopt new methods instead. Transformation is the time to cause disruption by completely redefining the organization culture. All of this is not possible without one basic ingredient: trust. The employees need to have trust in their leaders. And the leaders need to be worthy of that trust, they need to exhume inspiration. No transformation can be successful if the people within the organization are not on board with the change.

Remember, business transformation is the sum of all the people who make up the business, and the transformation will only be as good as the attitude of those people. So if you’re looking to drive a successful transformation, you need to create an atmosphere of trust. One initial way of doing this is by changing your leadership style and adopting a more adaptive approach. This approach will require you to communicate your vision to the organization, all the while remaining open to feedback and room for improvement.

Step 3: Translate Vision into Action

After the vision, it is also important to translate that vision into action, by making a strategic plan for how everything needs to be done. The vision is basically what the business is trying to achieve, whereas the strategic plan is how to go about achieving all that. A strategic plan involves setting goals and objectives, which are the way of going about to reach the vision. This planning involves setting up priorities, allocation of resources, dividing responsibility and assigning tasks to different teams.

To keep it simple for you, here are the three steps you need to take into account when converting vision into action:

·      Determine strategic priorities

·      Assign the goals and objectives and KPIs of each strategic priority

·      Establish action steps

Although this step seems very straightforward and easy to do, it is also the most difficult and underestimated step out of the entire transformation process.

Step 4: Don’t Forget to Consider Your Customers

A common mistake made by most leaders who jump into a business transformation unprepared is the lack of understanding of what the customer wants. No matter what industry you navigate within, there is always someone outside of the customer you are trying to please. And the biggest mistake you can make is planning without taking into account the needs and challenges of the customers.

Many leaders start out too narrow, by trying to create a strategic plan whose result will be producing a product or a service. Instead of something so specific and narrow, leaders need to take a broader view when considering customer demand. The business transformation needs to be in line with what the customers' need and the customers need intuitive and simple solutions, simple as that.

It is the basic rule of business that you need to anticipate your customer’s demands, needs, wants and basic desires. But a lot of leaders and organizations as a whole lose sight of this important and fundamental element, which causes them to end losing their customers even after transforming their business. Such a business transformation, unfortunately, cannot be considered "successful" and does not count as a transformation. Instead, it is simply a very poorly understood version of change that the organization has failed at bringing about. At times like these, I am forced to remind everyone about the age-old saying: the customer knows best!

Step 5: Merge Technology into Your Business

In the digital age, with growing use of technologies, there is no point in denying that successful are those companies who have the help of technology by their side. In 2018, business transformation is just synonymous with digital transformation. Both forms of transformation require disruption, letting go of old traditions, decreasing communication barriers, and much more. Therefore, if you’ve decided that you are going to be transforming your business, then one of the many sure ways of success is to integrate your business with technology.

As can be seen in the world around us, the current companies who have made their way to the top are the ones that not only are entirely aware of how technology fits in their business but also those who are redefining technology's role in their respective industry. There are examples of such companies all around us, such as Amazon, Uber, Spotify. To set yourself apart from everyone else and cause your organization to transform truly, you need to make use of the technological advancements at your disposal.

The Last Word

To sum it all up, here are my last words of advice: every game has winners and losers. The very fine line that divides your company from the losers is whether you decide to undergo the process of business transformation or not. Remember that it is perfectly alright to dream, and that dream is exactly what will guide you through this transformation.

All you need to do is focus on some main aspects, so you don’t make the same mistakes that many before you have already made. Following the simple five steps discussed above will make all the difference between whether you emerge a winner or a loser, starting with creating a vision with the transformation and ending with incorporating the use of digital technology into your business.