Digital transformation has introduced a new era of business and public service delivery.
It is fundamentally reshaping the way organisations compete in the market and provide services to their customers or communities; it is not just shaping how they engage with them but what they offer to them. The data organisations collect is their best ally in providing real insights to build their future business.
Now is the time to accelerate the transformation. The impact of COVID-19 lockdowns pushed organisations and leaders into totally uncharted waters. In many ways’ organisations have shown incredible adaptability.
However’ the pandemic has also made it obvious that many organisations are not as far on the digital journey as they thought’ with research from Deloitte Digital highlighting that 33% of consumers do not think online services are good enough. The impact of the pandemic has proven to be a disruptive force’ accelerating change across industries. For many organisations’ recent months have opened up a window of opportunity to push their digital transformation into a new gear.
From ‘doing digital’ to ‘being digital’
Many organisations swirl in an endless loop of ‘doing’ digital things and launching new digital projects – an illusion of ‘being’ digital – rather than making fundamental changes to business models’ operating models or organisational culture. Becoming a digitallysavvy organisation requires coordinating digital technologies to make innovative changes in current business operations providing for customer needs. Being digital means mastering three domains:
Customer – differentiating the customer offering leading to top line growth or delivery of public services.
Operations – efficient’ predictable’ low-cost operations’ digitalising processes’ automating work’ analysing data to increase business productivity such as real time feedback on the customer experience.
Work – radically changing how work is done to achieve business and organisation dexterity.
Customer
Businesses should build a clear understanding of the customer’ their expectations and their needs. It is also vital that a brand’s digital ambition is aligned to its purpose and business values. It’s important to acknowledge that’ in every aspect of business’ data is the new fuel in optimising your business performance. Whether it’s customer insights’ understanding their behaviour or how they transact’ collecting data is core to being a digitally-savvy organisation. This data can be used for analysis and performance improvement.
Operations
Re-thinking how the organisation works must be considered whilst breaking away from the pre-pandemic ways of working that have inhibited improvement of operating margin and flexibility (which is needed to constantly adapt to a changing situation). Technology leaders should create sets of components and assign accountability’ as well as taking advantage of technologyenabled innovation and cloud-based opportunities (e.g.’ language recognition).
Teams should consider consolidating data from across their organisation to provide insights into customers and operations. Then look to apply advanced analytics to anticipate changes’ develop scenarios and execute the right one when needed. These capabilities can be augmented with artificial intelligence’ for example to offer products and services increasingly directed to the individual needs of the customer.
The technology that underpins the operations and customer domains present new cyber-security risks that need to be managed. Traditional approaches of securing the ‘perimeter’ may become impractical as the number of digital touch points with customers and remote employees increases. What’s more’ in regulated industries (e.g.’ financial services)’ teams must grapple with frequently changing laws and regulations regarding risk’ security and compliance.
Work
First and foremost’ it is your people who are driving the digital transformation. If we can make the most of human adaptability to reskill and upskill the workforce’ we can simultaneously augment humans and technology. When leaders think about investing in technology’ they should first think about investing in training their people who can make the technology useful. The best way to make your organisation more data-centric and digital is to invest in those people who demonstrate their adaptability’ curiousity’ and flexibility to get to grips with new technology and learn new skills. The focus should be on nurturing soft skills and knowledge for hard skills. Motivated employees are likely to remain curious and will take ownership of clearly defined business outcomes and make their own decisions. They take responsibility for their actions and accountability for their failures. They are intrinsically motivated to become influencers within their industry. Change is much more likely to happen if you drive it from the top down. In digital transformations’ the main implication is that you cannot expect big changes or upgrades to your organisation unless you start by selecting and developing your top leaders to embrace and champion the transformation.
In simple terms’ digital transformation is how to future proof an organisation. It’s about being able to innovate by putting offerings and experiences into the market rapidly’ successively and at scale.
