Removing the complexities of digital transformation

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The impetus for a digital transformation can come in many different forms. It could be an activist investor, market disruption, changing customer needs, the desire to establish a new product, service or operating model -- to name a few.

No matter the cause, many CEOs today are seeking the best way for their company to transform. The questions I hear most often from CEOs across industries, from healthcare to financial services to retail, are: “Where do I start?” “What are the crucial steps for success?” “How can I help my employees become comfortable with the imminent changes?” and “What technology do I need?”

While pursuing a digital transformation can seem overwhelming and complicated, it doesn’t have to be. By keeping the below key considerations in mind as you begin your digital journey, you’ll be better prepared to transform your business and unlock new value for your customers, employees and society.

Laying the Groundwork for Digital Transformation

• The Fundamental Step

First, it’s important not to treat digital transformation as a single line item on a long checklist of company goals or create a digital sub-unit in the organization. You’ll be sinking time, budget and energy into efforts that won’t help you reach your goals.

Instead, start your transformation by asking two key questions: what are your customers’ current and future needs and what operational and technical changes should you make to deliver on them leveraging digital technologies? Don’t be afraid to be creative. Take time to think about how your customers are behaving and how expectations from other digital experiences can impact your business, the multi-channel experience you want to provide, the available digital tools, and how you’d like to prioritize as you transform at scale and at pace.  

• Build a Digital Strategy

Digital transformation is about so much more than technology. To succeed, you must think through how digital tools enable fundamental changes in how you achieve your mission and execute your business strategy. To become a digital enterprise, CEOs should establish a set of overarching principles and operating procedures to help guide employees on the path to digital transformation. With a clear roadmap in place, individual teams will be able to evaluate their choices within a larger framework, ensuring that each decision moves the entire enterprise – not just their one piece of the business – closer towards meeting its goals leveraging different digital tools.

• Remove Internal Silos and Create Ecosystem Partnerships

The modern enterprise is moving away from systems of control toward a new paradigm of engagement. Today, IT decision-makers must work with colleagues in every part of the business, from the C-suite to marketing. By eliminating internal silos and promoting cross-departmental collaboration, your company can yield long-term benefits, including increased interoperability and agility.  

Success in a digital world will require an open approach to collaboration with ecosystem partners. Understanding how to leverage assets and investments others are making and creating new partnerships is often a key step in unlocking trapped value within your business or across a market.

• Explore New Technologies

There are a wide range of rapidly changing technologies enabling disruptive change to customer experiences, business models, and business processes. Digital transformation requires a willingness to explore innovative technologies, tools, methods and systems, such as artificial intelligence, blockchain and virtual reality. Many companies are also moving from a technology ownership to a subscription model, looking outside their four walls for the best combination of digital tools and solutions. This gives them the flexibility to experiment with a range of services and quickly adapt to new market demands.

• Focus on Your Workforce and Talent

For an enterprise to achieve its mission, it needs the full commitment, creativity and energy of its workforce. Employees must be willing to change the way they work, to collaborate and to move beyond their comfort zones. When digital transformation is rooted in strong values – ones that are clearly articulated and embraced by leadership – teams will be inspired by a sense of shared purpose and will work together to uncover new value propositions, experiences, smarter products and smarter services, and different commercial models.  

On the workforce topic, I’d be remiss not to mention that talent is one of the most important ingredients in any digital transformation. Even companies with a robust digital strategy will fail to meet their transformation goals without the right human capital to support the process. Before embarking on any transformation project – whether large or small – take time to evaluate whether your company has the right digital skillsets in place to succeed. If the answer is no, you must take steps to fill existing gaps by developing internal talent or onboarding external candidates. A digital enterprise must build adaptive, resilient teams that are prepared to learn new architectures and develop new skillsets.

CEOs can be the digital transformation change agent for their companies. The five considerations outlined above can help to remove the digital complexities for CEOs so they can focus more on harnessing the potential of innovative technologies, becoming an industry disruptor and thriving in the new digital economy.