A Guide to Successful Digital Transformation

The most discussed topic in business today is digital transformation. Companies are struggling to keep up with changing business environments brought about by customer demand and technology. Digital tools and technology are changing how people interact, and in turn this changes how people do business. According to the recent study of Forbes Insights and Alfresco Rethink: How Digital Leaders Are Building Tomorrow’s Organization, the most successful digitally transformed companies tap three common skillsets.

       

• Design thinking – When it comes to digital transformation always put the customer’s needs first. The main goal of most digital initiatives include expanding into new markets, protecting market share, and honing the brand experience.

        

• Open thinking – When an enterprise employs open thinking, “innovation from both inside and outside the organization is encouraged to drive new initiatives.

           

        

• Platform thinking – In platform thinking, “the desired outcome of systems and solution deployment is to build an ecosystem of partners and customers that exchange capabilities and data in a manner that creates added value.

Digital transformation fundamentally changes how companies create, monetize, and defend value, giving companies the much-needed competitive edge. We have identified the key steps to a successful digital transformation.

1. Think differently and understand what digital means to your organization

While digital transformation is important, the first step is to understand what digital transformation means to your company. The word digital can have different meanings to different companies since digital transformation is the means to solve a problem and each organization, depending on its maturity, industry, competition, value chain, and ecosystems, has unique problems. Also, People in the organization must first analyze their people, technology, go-to-market strategies, and all of the other things which they are comfortable with – and think about how these can be changed to meet the threat.

2. Establish How Your Company Will Go Digital

Once you have identified the key challenges for your company, you are in a good position to evaluate the various digital transformation alternatives that exist for you. These alternatives could range from front-end transformation such as products and customer experiences to back-end transformation such as cloud and IT infrastructure.

3. Have Strategy

This strategy should go beyond the steps you are taking toward digital transformation, but should instead encompass the whole company. For example, how is your company going to position itself to fend off threats from digitally savvy companies? Additionally, you do need a technology strategy. Without a step-change in technology and new sources of data, your plan will not have enough innovation for it to succeed in the long term.

4. Don’t worry about processes, empower your employees

If you have the right strategy you won’t need to worry so much about processes. Having great people with the right training who understand the strategy will develop the right approach on implementing your strategy. This is particularly important for companies whose markets change quickly. As things evolve more rapidly and data becomes more real-time, then the company’s reaction must be more agile.  And for this to happen, you must empower employees to make the right decisions.

5. Begin Your Digital Transformation

Start executing on your plan, contact ANSI, and request a free demo.