Top 10 tips for Digital Transformation

Digital Transformation is changing the way customers think & demand new products or services. There is so much discussed in various forums as to how to go digital. No business will undergo digital transformation without making any mistakes. 

Here are my top 10 tips to make it successful.

Evangelize Digital internally, externally and celebrate even the small successes!!

It is extremely important to evangelize the digital within the organization and to the external stakeholders – employees, partners, suppliers, customers.

Celebrate each and every small success to make it visible at all levels to increase the moral of the team and show the value to leadership.

First assess your organization digital maturity, then identify digital trends impacting your industry and act!!

Getting to know where you stand on the digital maturity is extremely important so that you can create a roadmap as to where you want to go. Identify important trends in your industry and plug the gaps.

Deal first with Organization's internal resistance to change, for Digital Transformation!!

There are various organizational politics which will hold you back or stall your digital transformation efforts. Resolve all the internal politics and resistance to change before embarking on bigger journey. Culture change is absolutely essential.

Identify what Customer need from your service, not what your organization thinks they need. Transform accordingly.

Find out what your customer wants in real sense than assuming what they want. Once you know that, prioritize the unmet needs of the customer and take them head on.




Work with each senior stakeholder, to quantify the extent to which their business function will benefit from the digitization

If you work in silos, then you will miss the rigor and advantage of digitization. Get each and every senior stakeholder by your side by explaining them the benefit to their function. Some companies have hired Chief Digital Officer to get organizational alignment.

Recruit right people with right technology for success!!

It all depends on how expert your team is. If you don’t have right people on the job, then hire them from outside. Technical expertise plays a significant role in digital transformation.

Avoid the cost of trying to do it internally and then learning, bring in the expert to do the job!!

Ensure you have time on your side. If you keep on learning by own mistakes you will miss the tide and cost a business. Get an expert from outside if he/she is not available internally.

Treat Digital as a new born baby who takes over a year to walk on its own. Have patience to see the results!!

Never expect the returns immediately. Digital Transformation requires proper nurturing like a baby hence set the expectations of senior management of RoI.

Establish and communicate a clear vision of digital transformation for the business, and individual stakeholders.

 

Have a proper vision defined for organization and communicate it to all the levels of hierarchy to ensure everyone is on same page.

Fail Fast, Be flexible and prepare to change your pace/direction if needed.

Finally be flexible and be happy to fail fast but learn quickly and move on to new ideas to try out.