The term ‘Digital transformation’ refers to the profound use of technology to radically improve the business activities and processes.
The journey from inflexible workflows to achieving the perfect agile condition is possible by undertaking an initiative. Similarly, a digital transformation initiative involves the desire to jump on new opportunities and reduce costs leveraging technology.
Though transformation and re-structuring a business is the hardest part, yet every big initiative starts with a small step.
These 7 steps for digital transformation will help you progress from strategy to execution.
1) Identify the objectives
The first step is vital, as you move from strategy to execution. Whether you are looking to improve the consumer experience, boost productivity or differentiate offerings, the identification of objectives in the light of digital transformation is required.
2) Study about the technology
Emerging technologies including machine learning, Internet of Things, Cybersecurity are taking over the business processes. These technology enablers need to be leveraged for business benefit, and any delay in implementation might cause struggle.
Embracing these disruptive technologies will serve as building blocks of your new digital ecosystem.
3) A Culture of Change
The only thing which is constant is change and to create change a momentum is required. Actions like acquisitions, partnerships and investments are some of the external ways to bring change. A strategic approach for continuous improvement in business operations is necessary.
For example, Harman the leader in connected & audio services has been one of the pioneers to bring about change using a strategic consumer-focused approach.
4) An opportunity to break silos
Departmental silos are a real hurdle to cross. You wouldn’t want to go through the laborious approval process and instead focus on bringing the product to market.
Digital transformation presents a real opportunity to break down these silos for collaborating and enabling faster workflow.
5) Organize for Innovation
Future platforms will be highly distributed rather than being a single integrated IT platform. However, you won’t have to do the assembly.
For the practical execution of these technologies, you need to select a set of elements which include an Omni-channel and customer driven approach along with contextually relevant analytics.
6) Measure and Analyze
It is all about the continuous cycle of measuring and improvement. For a digital transformation, a know-how of the products performance and work data is required.
You won’t be able to transform into an agile business without knowing what to do next.
7) Execute the journey to being agile
It is important to understand that we live in a world with continuous digital transformation. Some elements of the digital ecosystem may get defunct and may need to be replaced, while others co-exist in harmony.
Interoperability across business process is the way forward on the journey to being agile.
