Is ‘Digital’ the most important part of your Digital Transformation?
In recent months, the term Digital Transformation has grown in popularity. This is not a new concept brought on by the current pandemic, but a focus that has delivered many companies over the decade’s rewards in their bottom line. This is achieved through greater efficiency and improved customer experience leading to retention and growth.
What has been introduced with the pandemic is a misuse of this term. Yes, we are all relying on digital communication more and more, but not all uses result in true transformation. Technology can be used to reimagine your business model (which, no doubt, many companies have had to do over the past year) but it can also be used as a powerful competitive advantage to improve customer experience in a deliberate and conscious way with measurable benefits.
As the name suggests, the starting point can be digital. This forces most companies to begin with the technology element. Often times getting distracted by the features and functions before asking themselves “what do we really need?”. That question is best answered by starting with an understanding of the “current status quo”. How do you currently operate as a business? What are your strengths and weaknesses? What is the value of your current skillset across your employee base? Where are your pain points? and more importantly What are your customers pain points?
There are three key components to any successful Digital Transformation effort:
- The Business Process in question – both current and desired future state
- The People – the transformation required of your staff
- The Technology – selected to best support the other two components
It can be tempting to have a very brief conversation about the process and the people and move quickly into RFI and RFP assessments as you consider the vendors with the latest tech you never knew you couldn’t live without and the most attractive pricing. However, this process, while interesting and innovative to begin with, can become a frustrating experience for both parties if clear non-negotiable requirements are not understood. If not during the procurement phase, then most certainly during the deployment effort. The larger your company the more complex this assessment can be.
No matter what size your company is, you should clearly outline a desired future state for what you hope your transformation efforts will achieve. Take the time to understand in detail what your business will look like when you achieve this future state, then map a path for how to get there.
The best transformation efforts are those that take into account the impact on their people. Depending on the degree of change you require in their day to day jobs, if you can support their individual transformation efforts it will translate into collective benefits for your company.
Is your company considering new technology solutions to enhance the current remote working situation for your staff? Do you have a plan to transform your business model in light of the changes brought about by the pandemic? Do you know how to balance business as usual while you execute transformation efforts with your staff?
Mary-Christine Nolan is Senior Director of Professional Services at Wrike, a collaborative cloud workload management platform recently acquired by Citrix. Prior to joining Wrike as member of the Endpoint Engineering leadership team at McAfee she drove engineering transformation to achieve better outcomes for McAfee customers in securing their corporate environment.
In her 20-year technology career to date, Mary-Christine has spent 13 years defining and executing technology enabled Business Transformation within Services teams and Engineering Development teams across some of the top banking and insurance carriers in the world, including, in particular the creation of Benefit Realization methods for use in Enterprise Software Solutions rollout. She is passionate about the contributions that secure technology can make to society and ensuring that customers maximize their investment in their technology solutions.
Written by Mary-Christine Nolan
LinkedIn
