The 6 Key Pillars of Successful Digital Transformation

After years of debate, it remains difficult to understand what digital transformation means for already established companies. The digital transformation project can be overwhelming for leaders who feel pulled in different directions by competing demands from sales, IT, marketing, and operations.

It is important to understand that digital transformation isn’t a single thing. It is a multifaceted journey with different goals depending on your industry’s maturity and industry. Here are five key pillars for an effective digital transformation strategy. Your company’s context, needs, and digital maturity will determine which pillar is best for you.

Understand your Customer and Their Needs

While digital transformation depends on technology, customers are key to its success. To begin with, it is important to gain a better understanding of your customers to offer the products and services they need.

Data

Data is the driving force behind successful transformation if customers are the key. It powers new analytics, AI, and machine learning applications and releases insights that enable more informed decisions. It is vital in improving customer service, engagement, and support. It is a valuable tool for public sector organizations to understand the use of public resources and make critical decisions that will inform future planning and policies.

Organizations must ensure that data is at the heart of their transformation strategies. Organizations understand their data, how they use it, where it is stored, and how they can access and combine data from different sources. They must know how to prepare and clean it and ensure it complies with internal and external privacy and compliance regulations.

Organization Processes

Although data-driven insights can be transformative on their own, they must also become part of everyday organizational processes. It will allow employees at all levels to act on trends and business intelligence. It is possible to replace non-digital processes whenever possible with digital ones. It makes the analysis more insightful.

Upgrade IT Infrastructure

Many companies begin digital transformation with the upgrade of their IT infrastructure. It includes mobile infrastructure, data lakes, and the cloud. It is essentially a chance to use the budget allocated for “digital initiatives” to modernize your IT and communications systems within your company. An IT upgrade allows your company to use up-to-date tools that will improve employee productivity, reduce IT maintenance costs, and increase employee satisfaction.

Innovation

Innovation is possible when the right combination of people, processes, and data is used. It allows for new products, services, and business models. AI, ML, and automation technology can improve the employee experience by speeding up difficult or demanding tasks. However, they can also be used to enhance customer experience with personalized recommendations, accurate predictions, or efficient triage of service and support calls.

Governance

For most employees in large companies, governance is a four-letter word. It can be used to help you move your digital transformation plan forward. Digital transformation is a multiyear program. It requires openly sharing priorities, key drivers, investment needs, and timing.  You can use it to reprioritize as the market changes. You can also see the impact of each business unit on its peers.

These dashboards show investment dollars shared and allocated across business units. Each functional area should have its targets. The dashboards also show priorities for revenue growth/new business models, cost reduction, and efficiency. Transparency is a must for everyone.

Final Word

Digital transformation refers to a series of small and large projects carried out across your company. It creates efficiency and increases revenue. Although everyone will not be perfect, it is important to share a common understanding and provide transparency. Your chances of success will be increased if you provide a means for change. You can do a retrospective to learn from your mistakes and create a new operating model. These six pillars and an IoT strategy allow for alignment and prioritization, which allows you to maximize investment in people, technology, and time.

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