Digital transformation is hard. So, how do you make it a success? It’s a question asked by countless organisations today, which is why we’re going to address the topic over the next few weeks as part of an insightful five-part blog series.
A Series on Digital Transformation
Our series will cover the essential areas we deem worthy of your focus – so make sure you don’t miss it. To whet your appetite, we’ve summarised the content of each article below, giving you a taste of what’s to come. But ultimately, there are two key takeaways that have emerged:
- Digital transformation is all about gaining and retaining momentum.
- Business outcomes have to be at the centre:
- Put simply, if these outcomes would be achievable without technology, no one would invest in it.
- Success is defined by outcomes, so always make sure they are at the heart of everything you do.
Intrigued? Here’s a breakdown of each article we’ll be releasing:
Digital transformation is all about integrating technology to drive fundamental changes in how your business operates. That’s why alignment to business strategy is crucial for successful digital transformation, enabling you to confirm the changes you are driving are having a measurable impact on your wider business objectives.
What does a well-defined strategy look like? You’ll need direction, focus, and ongoing prioritisation for digital transformation initiatives. Measurable business outcomes are also critical to ensure effective allocation of scarce resources and to deliver tangible progress.
Alignment to strategy gives you the power to manage upwards by helping you achieve senior stakeholder buy-in, manage conflict and roadblocks along the way, and track progress to ensure project success.
Technology transformation is crucial for business success, but it requires more than just throwing money at it. Digital transformation requires significant investment in time and resources, and, for this, you’ll need support from across the business.
Furthermore, operating on the scale of transformative change will rely on cross-functional partnerships across different business units and departments. Cross-functional relationships are born out of translating your goals into languages that resonate with all stakeholders. It’s all about communication.
At a high-level, you need to align your transformational goals with your key business outcomes. And at a lower level, you need to relate it to a business unit’s or individual’s personal goals. This rallies everyone around a common purpose, regardless of their background.
Technology is purchased to solve people problems. So, ask yourself: ‘What do the people actually need?’ After all, the most successful technologists are people experts, not technology experts. They centre innovation around creating better experiences.
Don’t limit yourself within the functional bounds of a specific technology – think much bigger and wider than that.
CIOs need to prioritise connection and collaboration with the people in the business to create a successful technology program. Communication is essential to connect with these people and create an atmosphere of understanding, transparency, and purpose – because a lack of understanding leads to frustration and resistance, which can risk the success of the project before it even gets going.
Transparency is important to ensure everyone feels personally connected to the project and its success. Working on a meaningful project fosters collaboration and engagement. Therefore, everyone should understand why a specific project is important to the business vision – and the role they personally have to play in its realisation.
We all need support through the change journey. Humans are naturally change-averse because we perceive any change to our environment as threat, manifesting itself in stress and resistance.
Though we are all the same with our feelings toward change, how we deal with it is very personal. Only the individual can guide themselves through the change journey, but there are certain elements we can influence externally – and this is called Organisational Change Management (OCM).
Engagement, opportunity, and reinforcement are key areas that OCM can influence to help accelerate people through the change journey. Engagement is about creating a connection to a vision; opportunity is giving people the tools they need to benefit from aligning to the cause; and reinforcement is about creating ownership and accountability to ensure you are multiplying the benefits over time.
Watch This Space
Hopefully we’ve provided enough information here to show you how valuable our upcoming series of insight articles will be. So, stay tuned in the coming weeks as we release them – and be sure to share them with your colleagues and anyone you think might gain value from them.
See you soon!
