Doing Digital Right: Transformation without chaos

Are you already on the Cloud journey? Have you spent the best of your COVID time for planning Digital transformation? But, the invisible forces of the system may slow your progress and break you. 

Let us examine these invisible forces. 

1. Talent – the key to any digital transformation is the availability of expertise in the organization. Talent acquisition in this space is like chasing a moving target, which changes form and shapes quickly. 
2. Parallel Communication lines – Successful Digitization needs a common language and unified line of communication between the business and tech teams. More often than not, the tech teams’ lexicon leaves business teams alienated, which only creates a rift that is hard to be bridged.
3. Organizational culture – Organizations with rigid command-and-control leadership, can put breaks on the digital journey. The bureaucracy could further derail the timelines, choices of technology, and talent to succeed.
4. Abusing the term Digital transformation – Employees get stressed out by constant usage of the term digital transformation, which takes away the enthusiasm and rigor required for real digital projects. 

The key here is to avoid romanticizing the digital transformation and chant the mantra of Simplification and Standardization

With the pandemic gripping the entire world, we started living in uncertainty –health, jobs, education, and business plans; all of this was not predicted early. But with every crisis, we find opportunities to innovate and sustain. We felt that technology might be the savior and digital transformation is now critical for every business.

Digital transformation may be critical for survival during tough times, but around 51% of organizations feel outdated compared to the competition, as per a Globant report. The most popular tech adoptions include the Internet of Things (IoT), Cloud, Intelligent Automation, and Data and Analytics. Decision-makers across industries face challenges with collaboration, communication, and unclear goals while adopting digital technologies.

Roadblocks in the Path to Digital Transformation

Are you already on the digital transformation journey? Have you spent the best of your COVID time planning Digital transformation? But the invisible forces of the system may slow your progress and break you. 

Let us examine these invisible forces. 

1. Talent – The key to any digital transformation is the availability of expertise in the organization. Talent acquisition in this space is like chasing a moving target, which changes form and shape quickly. 
2. Parallel Communication lines – Successful Digitization needs a common language and unified line of communication between the business and tech teams. The tech teams’ lexicon often leaves business teams alienated, which only creates a rift that is hard to be bridged.
3. Organizational culture – Organizations with rigid command-and-control leadership can put breaks on the digital journey. The bureaucracy could further derail the timelines, technology choices, and talent to succeed.
4. Abusing the term Digital transformation – Employees get stressed out by constant usage of the term digital transformation, which takes away the enthusiasm and rigor required for real digital projects. 

The key here is to avoid romanticizing the digital transformation and chant the mantra of simplification and standardization.

How to Avoid Chaos with Digital Transformation?

Digital transformation is not about technology adoption but the right strategic mindset to change and the organizational culture to accept change. Most digital transformation initiatives do not meet success as the direction and implementation falter. If you want to do digital the right way, you may need to follow a few pointers:

1. Digital Transformation to be guided by broader business strategy

When organizations establish goals to adapt to digital technologies, they also have a list of tools that need to be used in the future. If you want to automate processes, you may have options like Automation Anywhere, UiPath, or any other RPA tools. But before selecting these tools, a clear analogy between the strategic business goals and the digital toolset is essential. For example, if your goal is to improve productivity and accelerate the market time, automation tools may not solve the actual need. Automation, data, and analytics need to be leveraged collectively to achieve strategic goals in this scenario.

2. Watch out for your competitors and create an edge

Most businesses have already started adopting digital technologies to stay ahead of the competition. Check out for the early adopters and the laggards in your industry. Success stories will clear your roadblocks and pave a wave for you to imitate the best and transition to have the edge over time. Unsuccessful stories may help you strategize your investments and stay away from failures. A few of us may not support looking at the competition, but this saves a lot of effort and money before you set up the digital culture.

3. Focus on customer experience and needs

Almost every customer today expects a seamless digital experience across all the channels and platforms they deal with the company. Hence the need for digital transformation is aligned with customer needs and usability. The roadmap for digital transformation should be customer-centric and not technology agnostic. Always ensure that you analyze and test it with your customers before navigating your moves.

4. Employee Inclusion and Leadership Direction

Research from Organic says that around 62% of employees feel that they lack leadership direction in digital transformation implementations. Employees within the organization know more about the processes and customer success factors to design effective digital systems with their support. At times employees may feel left out or find digital solutions as a threat to their jobs. In such cases, the minimal support may also lead to the failure of digital transformation initiatives. C-suite leaders must recognize such concerns and emphasize that digital transformation is an opportunity to upskill themselves for the future.

5. Start-up mindset

Most start-ups generally have agile decision-making, flat structures, and rapid solution plans. Digital transformation also involves faster decisions and commitment from the entire organization. This is far beyond the change management that the organizations perceive. Switching to new technologies is not a simple process and involves a step-by-step approach before visualizing the results at every step. Often it requires experimentation at each stage. If each step had to be forwarded to multiple management layers, the chance of errors is high. Most importantly, after a substantial business transformation, specific systems returns can be witnessed.

Digital technologies adoption is a continuous process, and none of us can confer it to days. Digital transformation requires commitment, communication, and digital culture by everyone in the organization.

Are you still concerned about the right direction for digital transformation? Our experts can guide you through an effective and efficient digital adoption. Get in touch with us for more details.