Snakes & Ladders of Digital Transformation, from specialists who deliver them!

There is an intricate network we need to negotiate in order to give ourselves a fighting chance on the road to Digital Transformation.? Whether you are doing a Core Banking Transformation or a Cloud Migration or anything else with a finite goal, understand your Snakes before you climb the Ladders of Digital Transformation.

All organisations are recognising the reality that to remain competitive in a disruptive market place, they need to find an advantage.? Using digital transformation as an IT optimisation Ladder, facilitates an organisation to:

1. Become more agile,?
2. Learn the benefits of collaboration,?
3. Build the future on data,?
4. Understand the importance of customer value,?
5. Deliver engaging customer experiences,?
6. Trim inefficiencies, and
7. Embrace the power of innovation

Optimising your IT infrastructure is unique for all organisations, but we can still learn from each other as we all have some shared attributes that remain constant throughout the process. A structured approach, agility, willingness to adapt to change, and constant vigilance are just a few examples.? Many organisations are terrified of the potential disruption to their operations, that any transformation might bring, especially when you are entrusting it to others (well at least in part).? In reality, this should only be a concern if you take the all-or-nothing approach.? If you embark on a structured transformation journey with experienced specialists who have done it all before, you immediately enhance your chances of successfully achieving your goals along this ongoing digital journey.? Most of us already know our Snakes along this journey, so let’s take a look at the path less travelled.

The Ladders of Digital Transformation

As we already know, doing a core banking transformation or migrating to a cloud environment will help to improve our operational performance, workload scalability, security and time-to-market (CICD).? We need to exploit every advantage we can in order to stay competitive.

Becoming more Agile

Assuming we have already embraced the digital transformation initiative, becoming more agile will allow us to train and retain high potential talent.? People that work in an Agile manner, benefit not only from the constant rewards model (CICD promotes amongst other things self-recognition and self-satisfaction), but also from the self-organising and self-managing rewards.? Yes I’m calling them rewards, as we often forget, in business, to reward our staff and ourselves.? Agility brings those traits already built-in!? Through agility your leadership bench will steadily improve in strength, and strong leaders make good decisions.? The most obvious benefit will be stronger business performance, and of course good leaders and good workers can drive any company through difficult times.? As Leaders we have to guide, we have to mentor and we have to take responsibility, but most importantly we need to trust our team, as they climb this Ladder of Change.

Learning the benefits of Collaboration

We already know that two heads are better than one, and sometimes three heads are better than two.? So collaboration clearly encourages problem solving.? By working together colleagues learn from each other and grow more confident to self-organise and self-solve.? Carefully nurtured this improves productivity and to use a familiar cliché, those previous mountains now become mole-hills, that can easily be solved.? Once we have this level of internal collaboration mastered it makes things far more productive when 3rd parties are involved, and similarly with remote teams and a work-from-anywhere mindset.? Some leading Core Banking solution providers have already recognised the power of collaboration if we look at Temenos and their collaboration Impact Partner Platform.

Building your future on Data

Big Data is clearly the way to go.? By taking our Assets and transforming them into big data sets (the power of Cloud Migration) through submitting them to computational analysis, we can determine associations, trends, patterns, interactions with human behaviour and all kinds of other ways to extract what these information sets offer.? Using the relationship between Artifical Intelligence, Machine Learning, Neural Networks and Deep Learning, we are able to now better understand our customers needs, and use this information to drive what was previously too complex for conventional data processing programs.??

Understanding the importance of Customer Value

Focus operations on the things our customers value, challenge the status quo and try new and innovative ways of performing tasks, streamlining processes, and stimulating our talent.? We need to comprehend why our customer does business with us and know what it costs us to do business with them.? Success today depends on how relevant (perceived benefits or what a customer is willing to pay for our goods or services) we can be to our customers at any given time.? Being able to understand and measure this is imperative.? Customer value is really simple if we define it in Math.? But it is a lot harder to validate.??

(Perceived Customer Benefits - Total Customer Costs) = Customer Value, or (B - C = CV).

Delivering engaging Customer Experiences

As our Fintech competitors start to disrupt the market with innovative and customer centric approaches, we need to focus on delivering effective and emotional experiences to continue to engage our customers.? We can do this by allowing our Talent to tap into their creative and innovative spirit.? This allows us to engage our customers in manners that open the door to them helping themselves, and those around them.? Be clear about what they can expect from our products and services, and provide them with opportunities that will allow them to achieve their objectives.? Constantly listen to our customers, and take feedback from them whenever possible.? They are the voice of our future success, let them open new doors of opportunity for our businesses.

Trimming inefficiencies

If we understand what inefficiencies are, such as complex workflows that are no longer productive or necessary, lack of skills in specific areas, and products or services that no longer suit the client, we can start to address them one-by-one.? Some will be scary, so we will need to break them into bite size chunks.? For example, if we use the principles of Agile to look at these scary ineficiencies and organise them into Initiatives, Epics and Tasks, delivering change becomes a lot less ominous.? Root cause analysis, current flow, desired flow, minimum viable product (MVP), assigning responsibilities (internally and externally to 3rd parties if necessary), and delivering and testing the new process, all reduce that inauspicious concern.? Digital Transformation is an infinite process constantly evolving and looking for cheaper, more efficient, and better ways of doing things.

Embrace the Power of Innovation

Current skills must be upgraded to meet the digital needs of the business as new techniques and approaches are available.? Empower your talent, provide them with the support they need to bring out their best selves.? Provide them with a conducive work environment, whether it be a work office, a communal workspace, work from home or work from anywhere.? Let them choose where they are most productive and trust and support them.? To get the best out of our Talent, we need to put them in their best space in order to release their creativity.? If we can, let them choose where that is.? Manage their deliveries, facilitate their requirements and listen to them.? Innovation will follow!

It doesn’t matter whether a Cloud Migration, Core Banking Transformation or anything else is the motivator for our Digital Transformation.? If we know and identify our Snakes, and build each of our Ladders in stages through careful meticulous planning and delivery, each product or service we deliver through this medium will give us a greater chance of success and achieving our overall Objectives.