Ever-evolving technologies continue to disrupt almost every industry and digitalization of services has been shaping customer expectations. Adapting a digital transformation strategy has become crucial for many companies to keep up with this changing landscape and gain a competitive advantage.
Digital transformation can be seen in every industry as most businesses are shifting towards innovative technologies and have their own ways of implementations. But companies share a common challenge in embracing the many complexities and investments in resources required.
As a result, many businesses fail to have strong planning in place before starting their digitalization journey. For businesses to successfully adopt digital transformation, they need to have a defined strategy and clearly set objectives that will guide the transformation throughout the process. Having a clear vision with a detailed plan will enable companies to predict the risks and costs to make sure to achieve success.
Here are 5 fundamental steps to creating an efficient digital transformation strategy:
Step 1. Defining the vision
The very first step should be determining your company’s vision for implementing digital transformation and defining the motives behind it. Clearly understanding what digital transformation will do for your business and making those points meaningful for everyone in the organization, should be considered at the initial stages of your transformation journey.
As they will be key elements of the transformation, your employees should understand “why are we doing it” and “why you need their support”. If you want it to be a meaningful project for everyone, clearly state the value of this digital transformation for your company and how it will benefit all of your stakeholders.
Step 2. Aligning the goals
Once you identify the reasons behind the implementation, make sure that it aligns with your key business goals, mission, and planned future. Determine where your organization is now and what you need to achieve to get it where you want it to be. Decide what type of experience you want to create for your customers and employees.
As you’ll need to roll out the plan from top-down, every manager of your organization needs to be aware of how the new technology will help them get to their department’s targets. A transformation of this size would require every function of an organization to be on board and all of the teams to understand the goals clearly. Top management should be communicating the reasons why digital transformation is the right strategy and emphasize the outcomes.
Step 3. Analyzing the market
A profound analysis of market dynamics should be carried out before starting out any type of digital transformation process. Because most industries are being forced to change very quickly as the technologies develop, many companies fall behind recent changes and lose out to their competition. The possibility of unexpected competition makes it crucial to create a relevant strategy.
It’s also important to note that when analyzing the market, businesses should look beyond their industry to other fields that their industries could be related to vertically. There could be some areas where there are opportunities for flexibility and competitive advantage. Because technology is evolving constantly, a new development that is used in a similar field to your business could be beneficial for your organization as well.
Top management should be communicating the reasons why digital transformation is the right strategy and emphasize the outcomes.
Step 3. Creating the roadmap
After identifying your goals and analyzing the market, it’s time to create a strategic roadmap of the experience you want to create for your employees and customers. This roadmap should emphasize the key targets and include all the necessary changes in your infrastructure, a timeline for milestones and key roles along the way. Your roadmap should also be easily adaptable to changing conditions and priorities of your environment.
The main focus should be delivering the desired experience and deciding on the value that is going to be created at the end of the process. The success of your digital transformation efforts will mostly depend on your employees’ and customers’ experiences. With that in mind, it’s important to make sure your employees are engaged during the process and your customers to find it convenient to interact with your business.
Step 4. Assessment
The next step should be conducting an assessment to see your organization’s current state and identifying the gaps that needed to be filled. It would be risky to assume that your current system can easily be migrated to a new digital system without analyzing its current state. By conducting this assessment you’d have the information needed to make strategic decisions about resources and steps to be taken in the process.
By analyzing your infrastructure, you would be able to see which efforts and investments need to be prioritized and what processes can be updated or automated. It’s also important to evaluate the tools that are used in your process and analyze your systems’ capabilities to see if you have any technology that needs to be upgraded.
To wrap up
In today’s highly competitive business landscape, digital transformation is crucial for businesses to improve their efficiency and increase their competitive advantage. A solid transformation strategy can help businesses find new opportunities and channels to increase their revenues.
Businesses can accomplish a successful transformation with the right leadership and people along with the efficient usage of data. That is why teaming up with a specialized provider could also be a great way for organizations that are looking to start their digital transformation process.
At Veriday, we enable organizations to carry out successful transformation processes so if you’re looking for a team of experts to help you launch a digital transformation project, get in touch with us today.
About Veriday
Since 2005, we’ve used innovative technology solutions to help solve marketing and consumer engagement issues for numerous brands including Google, Canadian Tire and RBC Financial to name a few. Since our inception, we’ve translated those early successes into helping many of the largest corporations in both Canada and the US, drive usage and deliver user-centric experiences to their employees and clients.
We’ve become a leader in transformative digital experiences and continue to take a user-first approach to ensuring that the end customer is at the center of our planning, across all channels and interactions.
Veriday’s diverse experience, products and professional services have allowed us to effectively tailor enterprise solutions for partners operating across industries including healthcare, financial services, government, insurance and engineering, providing us with critical insights and deep customer relationships throughout North America.
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• Digital Transformation and Digital Engagement Consulting
• Digital Marketing For Regulated Industries
• User Experience Design
• Application Development and Technology Integration
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• Red Hat
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