Whether you’re working with a digital transformation consultancy or going DIY, it’s essential to build a cohesive strategy for transformation. Without that intelligent planning, you can find yourself in a pickle as you pursue the benefits of new technologies and processes.
But how do you actually define your strategy?
Here are 7 essential questions to ask. As you answer these questions, your digital transformation strategy will start to take shape.
1. What does success look like?
You can’t build a strategy if you don’t know what you want out of digital transformation.
Once you define that goal, however big or small, you can start constructing a strategy.
There’s no “one-size-fits-all” answer here, because digital transformation covers so many types of initiatives. But here are some goals that our clients often set for their transformation projects.
- Become more efficient. Digital transformation empowers an organization to reduce costs and increase margins.
- Become more competitive. Customer expectations are a powerful driver for transformation—and a great reason to start refining your strategy.
- Reach new market segments. Want to swim upstream? Digital transformation can enable a broader strategic focus that covers the needs of new customer types.
- Reduce errors and waste. Manual processes create more mistakes than automated alternatives. Digital transformation empowers an organization to plug leaks in the quality and reliability of processes and data.
Defining success is the first step—but it’s not enough to build a real strategy. You also need to understand the impact of digital transformation on your organization.
2. How will this transformation affect specific processes and workflows in your organization?
Digital transformation never occurs in a vacuum. At the very least, it affects one specific process and one specific department.
But most transformation projects actually have a wider impact. This is why it’s important to take a strategic approach.
As you’re analyzing your transformation initiative, you’ll want to look at all processes and teams that will feel the ripple effects of change. In each case, ask yourself these questions:
- Will life be better or worse for this team after transformation?
- If worse, what additional work should we include in the project to cover their needs?
These are essential questions to ensure that your strategy works for the entire organization. And while it’s important to look inward, you should also look outward. Specifically, you should look at your competitors’ digital transformation strategies.
3. How does the competition handle the processes in question?
You can’t always find this information—especially if you’re looking at an internal process that has no public visibility.
But this information is gold if you can get it. After all, benchmarking yourself against the competition is a crucial step in building your digital transformation strategy. Benchmarking can help you answer essential questions like these.
- Are you chasing after a trend, sitting in the middle, or leading change within your industry? Whatever the answer, are you in the right place?
- How do customers feel about the process in question?
- Will transformation make you more competitive and better differentiated?
- Will transformation create new opportunities to grow your market?
- Will transformation help you achieve crucial regulatory compliance?
Benchmarking is a key component in defining your strategy, but it’s still not enough. You also want to think about potential risks of transformation—and the most intelligent way to transform.
4. What specific risks should you be aware of?
Digital transformation does come with risks, and your strategy should account for them. This is one of the biggest reasons to partner with an experienced consultancy like Corsica Technologies. Having worked on countless projects, we have a deep understanding of the risks—and how to mitigate them.
Here are some of the most common risks we see:
- No consensus among stakeholders
- Strategy that isn’t future-proofed
- Not accounting for cybersecurity
- Not accounting for user training and adoption
This list isn’t exhaustive. A consultancy can help you define the specific risks at your organization. Once you’ve uncovered those risks, you’ll want to ask another essential question.
5. What’s the least disruptive way to improve?
Gartner provides a helpful way to think about transformation. They offer two categories for this type of change:
- Digital optimization
- True digital transformation
As Gartner explains, “digital optimization” creates outcomes by “improving existing processes and customer experiences.” Digital transformation, on the other hand, does so by “reinventing how the organization serves its market through net-new products, services or business models.”
Gartner emphasizes that these two paths aren’t an either/or choice. Your strategy can take both approaches at the same time. But the key is to find the simplest way to improve.
This is a smart strategy for digital transformation, as there’s one factor that really has to be considered: the people impacted by transformation.
6. How will your people react to transformation?
Ultimately, every organization is made up of people, not IT systems. Your mix of people as well as your traditions all combine to create your organization’s unique culture. That culture will have a huge impact on what transformation looks like at your company.
Some teams embrace change, while others struggle with it. Because digital transformation affects people directly, your strategy should seek to bring everyone into the fold. If some people are doubting whether transformation is necessary, or whether it will succeed, you actually want to bring them in from the start. They may help uncover potential issues that you didn’t know about, so it’s critical to listen to their concerns. These people need a seat at the table to help influence the project—and to buy in after their concerns have been accounted for.
There’s one essential consideration for handling cultural change carefully. It’s the size of the project—which brings us to our last question.
7. How can you start small?
Some digital transformation consultancies may try to sell you the biggest transformation they can. But that’s rarely in your best interests.
In fact, it’s better to start small and take an iterative approach.
Why?
Because the bigger the project, the more complex it is. And the more complex it is, the more likely it is to fail—especially if you haven’t built out a cohesive transformation strategy.
We often advise clients to start small. The best transformations happen in incremental steps, with each step laying the foundation for the next step. This strategy gives you time to adapt and work out any kinks. It’s a smart way to approach transformation, and it’s what we recommend here at Corsica Technologies.
Ready to define your strategy?
Reach out to schedule a consultation with our digital transformation specialists.
