A successful implementation of digital transformation requires more than just the deployment of a select technology for one aspect of the business. It entails the all-round digitization of the business. It integrates several digital technologies, including analytics, mobile, and cloud.
Digital transformation, therefore, requires a viable strategy. In fact, studies show that the strategy has a greater effect than the technologies. The strategy lays out a blueprint for adopting technologies in the most effective way. Such a strategy will most likely increase efficiency, enhance the decision-making processes, elevate customer experience, and enhance employee retention.
Six Steps to Implementing an Effective Digital Transformation Strategy
1. Outlining the Objective of the Digital Transformation Strategy
The first step in creating a digital transformation strategy is painting the big picture. This implies defining the expected outcomes of a successful digitization as per the impact of the transformation on productivity, the customer, the employees, and the decision-making process of the business. The clearly defined objectives serve as a guide for adopting the technologies.
2. Defining the Modules
The next step is to define modules that can help improve the customer experiences and employee satisfaction. In this step, goals are defined to bring about the fulfillment of the objectives. Note here that the most important aspect of this step isn’t the technologies, but how the technologies can be used in the most effective way to improve customer engagement and experience.
3. Taking an Inventory of the Technologies Currently in Use
This step entails a reality check of how close the business is to achieving the objectives of the digital transformation strategy. It helps businesses identify which area they need to start the transformation from. By assessing the software and digital technologies currently in use, the business can determine the actual technologies that need to be installed, updated or replaced.
4. Identifying Prospective Solutions and Vendors
With the transformation objectives clearly defined, the goals that lead to the accomplishment of the objectives clearly outlined, and the existing technologies assessed, the next step in digital transformation is to brainstorm potential technological solutions that can be integrated into the current technological ecosystem to help bring about the accomplishment of the transformation objectives.
Afterward, the business needs to then choose the vendors for the selected technology with due diligence.
5. Integrating a Digital Adoption Platform (DAP)
In some businesses, especially those with a model that’s highly dependent on digital technology, it could be easy to implement traditional training sessions to help teach employees software skills. However, in most businesses, traditional training sessions may not turn out to be an effective way to suit employees to the digital transformation strategy.
A Digital Adoption Platform features learning applications such as Walkme and AppLearn that efficiently supplement traditional training sessions to provide help employees as well as customers with an effective guidance for adapting to the changing technological environment of the business.
6. Creating a Schedule for Implementation
This is where all the steps outlined above are co-opted into a tenable plan. The business needs to come up with a plan and timelines for implementing all the aforementioned step so as to implement the strategy in a tenable way with little or no hiccups.
A veritable plan with timelines also helps provide employees, stakeholders, and customers with a heads up of the expected changes to elicit support for the transformation from all parties involved.
Conclusion
Even businesses that are doing well offline today will come in need of a digital transformation strategy sometime in the future in order to stay in the competition as competitors incorporate digital technologies that provide them with a competitive edge. In a world that’s experiencing unprecedented technological advancements, a digital transformation strategy is fast becoming indispensable to businesses in nearly every industry.
