Digital transformation strategy: 7 key pieces
You may have heard that 70 percent of digital transformations fail. The truth in this stat depends on how you define failure: According to Korn Ferry’s Melissa Swift, it’s more likely the majority of those efforts are simply stuck versus completely doomed. Still, it doesn’t inspire much confidence for those organizations just getting started.
What can you do to give your digital transformation the best chance of succeeding? Experts point to a few critical pieces of the puzzle, such as changing the culture of IT, identifying and convincing stakeholders across the business, and connecting transformation to a meaningful vision for the company.
We know the possibilities of digital technologies are enticing and that mounting competitive pressure creates urgency. But don’t rush into digital transformation without first laying a solid foundation for success. Here are seven important steps to consider as you construct your digital strategy. You can’t skimp on any of them – especially number seven.
What will digital transformation do for your company? Figuring out how to answer that question and make it meaningful for everyone involved is the first major step in your digital transformation journey.
“A major step is connecting digital transformation to meaning,” says Jeff Skipper, a certified change management professional and consultant whose client list includes AT&T, Goldman Sachs, and other high-profile enterprises. “People toss around the term ‘cloud’ freely, but few employees really understand where the cloud is let alone how it works. As with any transformation, employees must understand what it is they need to support before you can drive buy-in and adoption. Tell a story. Walk through a day in the life of a typical employee living with all the features of a digital work environment. Highlight both benefits and challenges and tie it to strategy and winning. Give them a target they can identify with and aim towards.”
Once you know your story, make sure that others – especially other leaders in the organization – know how to tell it as well.
“Alignment is the most important step to a successful transformation, and it needs to be supported from the top down,” says Bernie Gracy, chief digital officer of Agero. “CEOs and boards need to communicate that the move to digital is the right strategy, outline the right outcomes, and mitigate the fear of the ‘substitutional effect’ whereby former processes or products get replaced by new or digital ones. Further, digital transformation cuts across every function and every budget, and all functional teams need to be on board. Transformation cannot be driven out of IT only; rather it must be fully aligned with the organization’s overall path, goals, mission, heritage, and planned future.”
“Digital transformation nearly always requires many internal stakeholders to do things in a different way,” says Martin Henley, SVP, technology services sector for Globality. “That likely includes changing or breaking processes that have been in place and have worked well at some point, changing how stakeholders interact with their clients, even changing their roles. Finding ways of bringing the entire group on the same journey through major disruption is critical. Be sure to identify both obvious and non-obvious stakeholder groups. Even if it does not seem so from the outset, they are very important to the success of your digital transformation initiative.”
“To get stakeholder buy-in, take the time to run proofs-of-concept and pilots before moving forward with any solid plan,” Henley suggests. “If the technology you’re deploying is new to your business, it is always more difficult to anticipate how things will work.
