Top 3 Challenges with Digital Transformation and Change: Solving for Success
Paul Banks
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Many organisations are facing a digital transformation as a result of the digital economy's disruption of our work and life. Combine this with the pressures of the pandemic, and the rapid changes we've all experienced in the last 18 months, and we now have a situation where a high percentage of businesses, both small and large, are looking at how they can afford digital transformation, never mind get through the process effectively.
Digital change is complicated, and is often tough for consumers, workers, partners, and investors.
In this post, I wanted to share three of the most prevalent challenges that companies confront with digital transformation and change, as well as some tips that can help them overcome these challenges.
1. People: digital transformation and change can be hard for customers to adapt to, and there is a high likelihood that traditional customer service will only prove more difficult in the digital age.
Also, buy-in from employees, partners, and investors is vital for digital transformation to be successful; it's difficult to get everyone on board when change has not been clearly defined or communicated.
To overcome this challenge: clearly communicate digital goals, objectives, opportunities and value with customers, employees, partners and investors in order to gain buy-in for digital transformation initiatives.
People can also be a success factor if digital change is embraced, and it's important to keep digital transformation goals in mind when communicating with customers.
- Get clarity on your digital strategy before you communicate changes to employees so they know how it ties into business goals.
- Implement new technology that works for your workforce rather than against them. For example, companies like Facebook are making work more efficient for employees through digital tools like Workplace.
- Keep digital transformation goals in mind when communicating with customers, and identify the digital capabilities required to meet their needs so you can provide them with an exceptional digital experience.
2. Processes: digital transformation has an impact on company processes, such as allowing customers instant access to their data without human assistance or outsourcing repetitive tasks so teams can work on higher value assignments, which means updating current workers with new skills at the same time.
Often, the cost of delivering the project can outweigh the business case and ROI due to the changes digital transformation requires.
To overcome this, companies should undertake digital change initiatives in phases so they can test and apply new approaches to processes before fully implementing them company-wide. This way, the cost of digital change is reduced by limiting risk exposure while increasing employee engagement through phased learning.
Also, it's key to ensure that employees have the digital capabilities needed to undertake digital change initiatives.
- Create a digital inclusion plan that will help build and maintain digital skills in employees, customers, partners and investors throughout all phases of digital transformation so you can control costs by having access to the right talent at any given time. - Use effective communication strategies with customers during periods of transition so they have a clear understanding of what digital change means for them.
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- Identify digital capabilities required to meet customer needs so you can provide exceptional digital experiences and services that will help maintain positive relationships throughout the process.
- Taking steps to innovate business processes. For example, digital transformation is not just about digitising existing processes; it can also help you create new ones that will better meet the needs of customers and employees.
- Embracing digital technology so your workforce has access to digital tools like chatbots or apps that allow them to do more with less effort.
- Investing in digital skills training for your employees to ensure they can keep up with digital change and execute new processes.
For example, companies are combining digital tools with digital capabilities so their employees have the resources needed to meet the needs of customers at every stage of the customer journey.
3. Products: digital change often challenges products because of increased competition from other companies entering the market who may have better features for less money; companies may need to update existing products in order to stay competitive and retain customers.
To effectively keep up with this, digital transformation requires digital innovation, which is the creation of new digital products and services.
- Embrace digital technology to meet customers' needs at every stage of their customer journey, whether it's creating a chatbot that replaces your call centre or developing an app where users can manage all aspects of their accounts from one place.
- Invest in digital skills training so your employees can keep up with digital change and update products as needed.
- Identify digital capabilities required to meet customers' needs. Then, you'll be able to provide them with an exceptional digital experience and keep up with digital change.
As a result of digital transformation's disruption in the digital economy, many businesses are facing challenges that they may not know how to overcome; however, there are strategies that can help them overcome digital transformation and change.
By knowing the challenges your business is most likely to face, you will be able to develop a digital strategy that includes digital innovation so that customers have access to better technology at an affordable price point while businesses remain competitive in the market. This way both companies and their customers are more likely to be satisfied with the digital change.
If you would like more information on how The Modular Analytics Company can support you in your digital transformation, I'd be happy to explore the conversation and understand more about your unique situation - Please DM me, or reach out at [email protected]
I hope this article is useful, and that it gives you some food for thought in the coming weeks - please feel free to comment with your own tips and advice from your experience - this article intentionally only covers 3 that we see most often, but there are many, many others!
Coach ventas consultivas | Transformación Dig. Centrada en Personas | Foco en Clientes | Desarrollador Negocios América Latina | Growth Head | Country Manager | Gerente Com. | Innovación | Ing. Comercial Master en Mkt.
3 年Thank you Paul Banks for another great contribution! As you say, there are several other subjects on which to work the digital transformation, which undoubtedly goes through the transformation of people first. So, I cannot agree more with you that in order to make the desired changes effective, we must first focus on people, then on processes and, finally, on products or solutions. If we already have the challenges well covered and resolved in those three fundamental areas, we can focus on other areas that could also add value. All of the previous, in total alignment with the objectives that the organization wishes to achieve, which must be communicated to all the stakeholders with the utmost clarity.
Constantly Curious. Never Happier Than On The Fells
3 年Hi Paul Banks. 1. Culture 2. Calling everything Digital Transformation 3. Lack of true internal collaboration... The after that it falls into the typical reasons 85% of tech projects fail. Kuldip S. Sandhu PhD and myself have spent many a happy hour talking about this and have done some podcasts on it :-)
Your Growth Partner: OBM + Marketing Strategist | Systems, Teams & Strategic Execution
3 年I think the single biggest challenge to every business is that the way people find the businesses they need for products and services is in upheaval. Voice search is about to change everything, so you need an online presence, even if you are the pizzeria down the street. Helping local businesses see that is a challenge.
The #1 challenge for me Paul is that the term is very “Business-y” and overwhelming. Just the word “transformation” implies a HUGE shift. So how to you make it more approachable? That would be step 1 in my “Message Challenge” solution process.