5 essential ingredients of a successful digital transformation strategy

“When digital transformation is done right, it’s like a caterpillar turning into a butterfly, but when done wrong, all you have is a really fast caterpillar.” - George Westerman, Principal Research Scientist, MIT Sloan Initiative on Digital Economy

Digital transformations increase productivity, company resilience and agility. It’s no wonder businesses are accelerating their initiatives to get their transformations off the ground. But are they all just becoming fast caterpillars rather than beautiful butterflies?

There’s no clear-cut definition of a perfect digital transformation. It’s different for every business, based on your own unique requirements. So, you shouldn’t do it just because other businesses are. You need to have the key components to make it work.

Let’s look at what ingredients make a successful digital transformation strategy:

1. The right reasons

If you don’t have the right reasons behind your transformation, you’ll never know what success looks like. All you’ll know is you’ve spent money.

When it comes to any IT project, you need to make sure it aligns with your business objectives. You might want to:

• Boost your profits
• Increase user satisfaction
• Reduce time to market
• Tighten up your security
• Increase process efficiency

Don’t romanticise other transformations. Nail down why you’re doing it and what success looks like for your business.

2. The right data knowledge

Your pain points might be driving your digital transformation initiatives. But how do you know what’s causing these problems? And how do you measure them?

Understanding your data is key. But, before you can troubleshoot, you need to know where your data is (and what it is!). Is it stuck in a spreadsheet on someone’s desktop? Is it already in a digital application ready for you to use? You can learn this by conducting a data audit.

A data audit evaluates the accuracy, consistency and validity of your data. This ensures you only migrate high-quality data that you can use for reporting.

3. The right technologies

You don’t need to become an AWS house just because other companies are doing it. (Although, we do really love AWS.)

You need to choose technologies that will benefit your transformation. In fact, implementing new tech can speed up progress towards enterprise goals - such as financial returns, workforce diversity, and environmental targets - by as much as 22 percent.

The technologies you choose will depend on your company’s needs, budget and transformation goals. And that’s important to note. It’s about what’s right for your transformation, not someone else’s.

4. The right questions

Once you’ve got your ’why’, it’s time to get granular and ask ‘how?’. These questions tell you whether you’re ready to start your transformation project.

Ask yourself:

• Is everyone on board? Company-wide buy-in ensures everyone’s in the right mindset for success. Digital transformation requires collaboration across departments. So, set yourself up to flourish with an organisation-wide culture change.
• How do we measure success? Thinking back to what we mentioned earlier, a lack of clear goals is one of the main reasons that many digital transformations fail. Quantifying your ROI will help you measure your transformation’s success.
• Do we have our priorities in place? Without a well-structured understanding of what needs to happen, and when, you’ll delay your launch.
• Do we have further resources after we’ve launched? Digital transformations don’t end at launch. Once everything’s live, how are you going to sustain it? Do you have training plans ready to upskill your workforce? Is your IT department up to the job of maintaining your new systems?

5. The right metrics

Measuring metrics helps you ensure the changes you’ve made are having the desired effect.

Analyse your problems to help measure your success. Identify:

• Your objective. Knowing your objective helps you measure improvement. Take your desired outcome from the first step and workout your baseline. Then you can decide what relevant KPIs you want to measure, such as:
  • Employee productivity
  • Return on digital investment
  • Hours saved
  • User engagement analysis
  • Reliability metrics
• The inputs you can control. These are your levers for creating a change. What inputs do you have control over that will bring you closer to your objective? For example, if you want to reduce time to market, what areas of your process can you speed up?
• The data you collect. Collect new data around the objective. This will inform your decisions and help you understand the options available to you to make a change.
• Model. Manipulate your inputs. Do you come closer to meeting your objective?

This approach keeps you on track and stops your digital transformation project from straying away from your goals.

Create a recipe for success with the right talent

These five key ingredients turn caterpillars into butterflies. Having the right reasons, looking at your data and choosing the right tools will help your company evolve digitally. And it’ll ensure high ROI on your efforts.

However, there is one final ingredient we’ve not yet mentioned: talent. Without the right IT experts, you’ll struggle to implement your transformation project. The demand for IT skills is at an all-time high and there’s a shortage of quality candidates out there. At Tech City Teams, our verified tech specialists have the right experience to fit your requirements.

So, if you’re looking for talented teams to deliver your digital transformation, contact us today.