Steps to Digital Transformation

Today, every part of a company is subject to new customer expectations, new competitors and innovative channels which come with threats but also fantastic opportunities.

How do you transform your business? I’ve outlined 5 steps you can take:

1. Define the Digital Vision: 

Begin your digital transformation journey with a digital assessment of your business. Fundamental questions need to be asked; why are you transforming? What are your customers’ perspectives and expectations? What is your business model? What are your company’s short and long term objectives? The result of this step is a company-wide digital vision.

2. Establish your digital maturity level: 

Determining the digital maturity level of your current business, and the degree to which you leverage digital technology will help you understand where you can and should make improvements and where the gaps are in terms of technology and processes. Where have current demands not been met? How will a digital remodeling contribute to company goals? These are important questions during the assessment period.

3. Identify New Technologies and Review Data: 

Choosing the right technology to implement requires a good deal of research and patience. Do your due diligence and make sure the tools offer features and capabilities that fulfill your employees’ needs. Make sure it is scalable if you have plans for growth. This step also involves reviewing your current data and data sources; how will the new technologies integrate with current data sources to create compelling and connected experiences for the users.

4. Drive a digital culture and plan out training:

To establish a strong foundation for success, any digital transformation requires a leader and a cross-functional digital transformation team so they can draw on all aspects of company-wide knowledge and collaboration. As business processes are reimagined, employees’ roles will also evolve, so it’s vital that your digital transformation leader is making available any required training or upskilling to staff as and when they need that access. Onboarding employees to the new technologies can be one of the most challenging experiences during the digital transformation process. Traditional methods of training (classroom sessions, manuals) are time-consuming and not effective. The most cost-effective and efficient modes of training are digital trainings that enable contextual learning with real-time navigational prompts and on-screen guidance.

5. Maintain an open ended process: 

Digital transformation is an ongoing process. Technologies need to be frequently updated and there must be a structure in place to support ongoing training.

Digital transformation is only possible when you have an optimal mix of people, processes, data and tools that allow smart interaction between customers and employees.

These steps ensure you have that mix in place to realize success with your digital transformation project.