What should an organization’s digital transformation (DX) look like? How do you know if your efforts are making the right impact? As artificial intelligence (AI) and technology advance at a bewildering pace, how do you make decisions with foresight?
If you’re asking yourself these questions, you’re not alone.
A DX strategy can benefit your organization through improved operational efficiencies, productivity and customer experience while also reducing costs. The bad news? Approximately 70% of digital transformation efforts fail.
For the most part, people don’t know where to start. They understand their competitors are making moves but aren’t sure how to keep up with them.
Impact has always been there to help clients implement new technologies and use data to be more successful. And now, with long-term DX taking on added importance, that’s where Managed Digital Transformation steps in to guide clients through this often-complicated journey.
The first steps—listen to the client, gain a deep understanding of their business objectives and operations, and create a DX roadmap.
Preparing for Success in a Modern Business Landscape
In its most basic form, DX involves updating and modernizing your business and preparing for the future using digital technology. Making it meaningful requires synergy between people, processes and technologies.
Businesses often view DX with a mixture of enthusiasm and caution. They’re excited about the immense possibilities a successful transformation can achieve. But with that comes anxiousness due to the high percentage of unsuccessful transformations, often after heavy investment into them.
Coupled with a common, sometimes organization-wide, reluctance to change—or an if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it mindset—digital transformation can be difficult to plan for. But at the heart of every successful DX is a comprehensive strategy for achieving it, one which can be clearly visualized using a handy six-step roadmap.
What is a Roadmap in Business?
A roadmap in business is a visualization of long-term strategic planning. It often accompanies a complex plan or strategy that, when on paper, might seem complicated. Visualizing that same process in a roadmap helps people wrap their brains around each step, identifying key goals and stepping stones that allow an organization to move forward.
For DX, a roadmap breaks down a complex process into just a few key goals that, when accomplished, will show tangible improvements in your business.
Modern-day employees expect positive experiences from technology changes. Without a plan, you risk overloading them by introducing too much too quickly, and you risk setting your entire transformation back by rushing implementation.
Security is also vital to business technology, and your network and business are at risk during states of change. Everything must be done with security in mind, being careful not to open new vulnerabilities.
At Impact, we have a six-step roadmap that has helped many businesses achieve a successful transformation. With a basis in security and a focus on improving the key areas of business, this roadmap will help you understand how a DX process works.
Impact’s Six-Step Digital Transformation Roadmap
- Secure your network—before you can move forward with new innovations and transformation, you need a secure and stable network to work on as a foundation.
- Modernize core systems—this allows you to keep up with competitors and continuously offer the best possible experiences for your customers and employees.
- Optimize key processes—use automation and other DX tools to remove any snags or roadblocks, allowing operations to run more smoothly with less human intervention.
- Boost productivity—using intranets and custom applications, we create custom solutions for your team to promote productivity and communication across your organization.
- Improve customer experience—we’ll help you create user-friendly mobile applications, streamlining transaction processes and improving communication.
- Introduce business intelligence (BI) and analytics—it’s not enough to collect data; you need to structure it in a way that makes it usable. Implementing BI gives you the tools to make more use of data to drive key decision making.
Maintaining Your Transformation Roadmap
The implementation process is just the beginning of DX. A sound strategy and comprehensive roadmap should mean a long-term goal—think five years down the road, not one. Monitoring and maintaining newly installed systems should be a top priority as you look to make the most of your transformation and achieve one, or all, of the main goals of your DX strategy.
A viable, meaningful DX roadmap helps businesses revolutionize the way they operate and achieve a sustainable competitive advantage in their industry. With increased staff productivity and decreased costs, companies can achieve new levels of productivity and engagement.
