Where to start your digital transformation?
The Digital Transformation of a company is typically covering 5 domains:
1-The Digital Customer / Consumer including Business Model transformation
2-The Digital Employee
3-The Digital Processes including Digital Manufacturing, Supply Chain, R&D and automation
4-The Connect Everything in your company (leveraging IoT technologies)
5-Data/Analytics/AI capabilities
It will be very hard and almost impossible for any given company to be able to free up enough investments and build capabilities fast enough to tackle these 5 domains at the same time. Leadership is all about making choices, and if you are at the beginning of your journey, I will recommend you start with only 2 domains: Digital Customer / Consumer and Digital Employee.
Why? (I will limit myself to 3 points only, but happy to elaborate more if you want more details)
Digital Customer / Consumer
1-The employees you will target (sales, marketing & services) are usually younger, they are in daily contact with your customers and digital will be a way to enable them to spend more qualitative time with their customers instead. We estimated that it could reduce by 30% the bureaucratic work.
2-Very quickly the executives in your company (including the CEO, the CFO, the head of business units and the head of the regions) will be able to measure the return on investment of the digital initiatives in term of top and bottom line (It will encourage them to continue to allocate resources).
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3-Digitalizing the relationship with your customers and partners will not only create intimacy, but also will enable you to understand much better the products and services your customers are looking for. In addition, most of the companies would like to become more services than product only, this domain will enable you to accelerate this transformation.
Digital Employee
1-The digital transformation of company is 95% about people, culture, mindset, change management and 5% about technology. At the same time, if you expect your employees to deliver to your customers great digital solutions, then you will need to raise the bar for them (training, up-skilling, academy, etc.)
2-In a traditional company, even with significant investments the size of Digital teams will be made of hundreds and in some cases several thousand people. However, if you work in a company made of 100.000 people, it will still be a small subset of the overall company. It is then critical to strategically build a network of champions inside the various departments of your company for your transformation to become sustainable (The digital team will be 1% to 2% of your global workforce).
3-The workforce of your company is like the permafrost :-), some departments will be very inclined to changes, some of them will be much more reluctant. One key word: Empathy. By focusing on the Digital Employee domain, you will learn what are the challenges each person, department has, and you will then be able to find solutions accelerating the adoption of your initiatives inside a broad population.
Please let me know if you found this article valuable.?
And for the next post, I had in mind 3 subjects:
1-How to finance the digital transformation?
2-What are the key initiatives of the Digital Customer / Consumer transformation?
3-What does it mean that the workforce is like the permafrost? Which subject do you want me to cover first?
Architect Practice Manager & Leader (EMEA) - Industry Solutions @Microsoft
2 年I think you should write about the potential initiatives next and the solution areas that might support it. For customers and employees, I found it helps to identify the jobs to be done and describe personas, their expectations which then in turn drive the experience you might design for them. Also, quantify the revenue streams by personas and same for employees in order to prioritise value
Delivery Leader for Strategic Partnerships
2 年Great article Eric, for your next discussion I would like to hear about items 1 and 3 on your list. Financing the digital transformation, should be self funding if it is targeted at the right projects. There is an upfront cost to put the foundational elements in place, and I would like to hear your thoughts there.
SEGURAN?A DA INFORMA??O | DPO | AUDITORIA | COMPLIANCE | BCM
2 年Eric Chaniot, excellent article! It's always great to see you sharing successful experiences.
Passionate about shaping the future of mobility | Industry Strategy | Your ally in Auto Battery Manufacturing | Marketer | Ecole des Mines
2 年Eric Chaniot you write that the workforce of company is like the permafrost :-) To push further the image : Does it mean old and bad virus will be released when temperature with raise up during the digital transformation ? That’s a risk, so better to anticipate a work with partners to get an holistic view, as Microsoft and Rockwell Automation are doing. Stronger together !