A digital transformation strategy is a key part of a digital transformation project. It's a strategy that will re-shape your business as a digital business, focused on using technology to continuously deliver new value and better customer outcomes. But why do you need one? And how can you create this strategy? Keep reading…
The definition of digital transformation is that it’s a type of business transformation that’s driven by technology. But technology isn’t the only focus; there’s also value creation, managing organisational risk and other disciplines such as effective change management.
To succeed in transformation, you need to look at the bigger picture.
So you see, digital transformation is about more than simply using technology to improve your old processes. It’s about using technology to deliver new value for all stakeholders and empowering your employees to take advantage of these improved capabilities and continue improving. That’s why value creation and change management are so important.
Old business transformation approaches no longer cut it. It’s the modern value-driven, people-centric, design thinking, lean and iterative approaches that can massively improve success.
Successful digital and business transformation should be done with a holistic, yet lean and agile approach. There are three vital ‘directional disciplines’ which will dictate how you will reach your vision and a series of ‘enabling disciplines’, which refer to your business’ capability to do it.
The right configuration of these disciplines, alongside aligned leadership with the right mindset, robust management and method, and you’re well on your way to success.
All three must be tightly integrated, led and supported with the capabilities and maturity that enables the organisation to be ‘fit for the transformation.’ In the directing, strong abilities are required in:
Without the above, or if one of the directional disciplines is missing or weak, most transformations will struggle or fail.
A lack of any of the directional fields, especially that of being value-driven always reminds me of a quote from Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland: “If you don’t know where you’re going, any path is as good as another… but you won’t realise you’re lost, you won’t know what time you’ll get there, you might unknowingly be going in circles, and others won’t understand how they can help.
"And, since you could pass right by without knowing it, you won’t get the satisfaction of having arrived.”
There are many enabling disciplines required - it depends on the agility required and the size, scale and pace of the transformation journey. These need to be made capable, mature and orchestrated in the right way, and are major success factors, including:
Hopefully, that gives a good overview of how you should look at transformation and what digital transformation means. To learn more about the above directional and enabling disciplines and get started on your digital business transformation, click the button below to download our handy guide.