From theory to practice in going digital
How to focus on what you actually need and have control in your business rather than wanting what others have without preparation?
“Luck is what happens to us when preparation meets opportunity” — Seneca. We are building our own path, own luck and our perspective on things. That happens also in the Digital Transformation process, when you try placing your business in a bigger picture, thinking long term, having goals for the farther future, meet the opportunities and get key results.
A number of factors that are influencing the Digital Transformation process will have companies outline their key attributes at each stage: strategy, leadership, products, people, culture, operations, governance and technology implementation. The path is often unique to each enterprise, but it helps each executive throughout their process journey to understand better their progress.
Digital Transformation starts with a shift in perspective:
Going from the “If it’s not broken, why change it?” approach to “I need my business to evolve at the same pace as the market does.” is one of the perspective changes that are needed before starting this journey. In this evolutive approach you need to create your own sense of urgency and a useful roadmap to drive you on a clear and informed path.
Although there is no perfection or mastery vision regarding what digitalisation means for every single and unique organisations out-there, it is important to define what is the expected impact of starting the Digital Transformation process on your employees, customers and market.
The key is to start small with the right steps:
It is critical now to determine in this phase what challenges you are facing into your daily operations and have a clear list of objectives that you want to meet on short, medium and long terms. Therefore, you shall go into a journey of exploring overall what happens inside all the current processes, calling out a vision, motivation and specific needs.
The first step is to conduct a couple of brainstorming session to find out the current challenges: — take every department and all the key resources there and start by asking yourselves:
Because answering to the first three questions is very important, we recommend you to use some of the below listed approaches:
· Organise: brainstorming sessions, team meetings, 1 on 1s with your employees and focus groups
· Finding the most valuable processes by identifying:
→ the ones that are helping the company fulfil its objectives;
→ the ones that add the biggest value to your customers;
→ the ones that are not meeting the planned Key Performance Indicators
· Use one of the following approaches:
→ Retrospective meetings with the team
→ The Company Retrospective workshop
→ Management by Walking Around (MBWA)
→ Employee Surveys
→ SWOT Analysis
Once this initial phase is done, you should focus on finding ways of making your process more efficient.
Follow us into the next story where we will address this topic. Until then, if you have any questions, visit our knowledge share section on www.cicadatech.eu .
