The 3 Pillars of Successful Digital Transformation

Today's digital technology is far more vital than ever for the growth of businesses. The ubiquitous presence of giants like Google or Amazon has changed the customer's expectations about online services. Furthermore, given the lack of human resources, SMEs need to invest in technology to improve their effectiveness and profits.

How do you begin making an investment in technology that is successful? How do you determine your requirements? What are the best ways to prioritize what's most important?

In this blog, you will figure out the essential steps you must follow to make an effective digital transformation to increase your efficiency and make your business more profitable.

Develop a digital strategy

First, you'll need a comprehensive plan to plan your efforts and identify the most promising projects. For this, your business needs to integrate technology into business operations through a digital plan.

• Technology should be at the center of your business plan. Select the right technologies to be aligned with your company's goals.
• Establish connections between the departments and the various projects.
• Make a list of initiatives that will profit your business the most
• To be more effective, digital strategy needs more than technology investment, alongside buying new software or hardware and establishing an environment of digital business supported by specific training for your employees. It's part and parcel of the continuous effort to increase the efficiency of your operations.

Three pillars of digital transformation

1. Optimizing key processes

Optimizing processes are essential to reduce risk and maximize return on investment. Processes are a set of transactions or activities that have to take place in a particular order to add value to the customer as an item or service. The inefficient critical processes must first be discovered and optimized before any new system is introduced.

After this, you have to map out the processes. Sometimes it isn't easy to comprehend the way a process function completely. Beyond the theory of operation, speaking with employees who perform the tasks is essential.

The aim is to determine inefficiencies and identify the problems which need to be addressed. It will also allow you to evaluate your current technology, how you utilize data, and which skills or resources are lacking.

Process optimization allows you to solve problems such as delays, production with inconsistent quality (do-overs or rejections) or inefficient working methods, the high number of complaints from customers, etc.

• Solutions that you can implement are:

o The mapping process is to eliminate steps that have no value

o Define roles and responsibilities to ensure that employees know what's required from them

o The use of a dashboard to monitor and measure the performance

o Making use of technology to automate certain jobs

o Eliminating silos by cross-training, and implementing open workspaces that promote collaboration

2. Cultural shift

Successful digital transformation requires a change in how people think about the company. It is crucial to achieving this with employees' involvement at every business level.

• The processes that are at the core of the process of change in culture

In traditional companies, decisions are usually made in silos. For example, the operations manager is responsible for decisions regarding operations, while the sales manager makes sales decision,s etc.

With a process-centric model, the decision-making process is shared by the entire team in the affected areas and helps to create synergy across the entire cross-section. This method assists in:

• Stop silos from being broken down

• Concentrate on the overall operations

• Concentrate on the needs of the customer

3. Integration of information

One of the most important aspects of digital change is the increased use of data to make quick and informed decisions as possible for staff and management.

• Systems that integrate

One of the biggest problems with efficient information integration is that many technologies work in silos. Information flows between silos, but it is difficult to get from one department to another. In addition, rather than being saved digitally, data is often saved in Excel files or on paper. This results in data being processed, re-transcribed, and then assembled a number of times.

Complete integration into an all-in-one system eliminates time-wasting and reduces the possibility of making mistakes. This unifying system allows all the systems of your business to be connected.

• Be aware of the data usage

Beyond the technical challenges connecting all computers for collecting data, it's crucial to supply relevant information to the appropriate individual at the appropriate time to make decisions more decentralized.

Although there are workplace-related processes for everyone, there's more practical knowledge regarding equipment performance and team capabilities. It is unnecessary to have advanced computers to gather and analyze this data; however, you will need business models to make the right choices. Once you have the models in place, the information you collect will allow you to make both strategic and operational choices that you can track and evaluate as necessary.

The formula for a successful digital transformation

In the end, your technology investments should be backed up by initiatives that will improve the efficiency of your operations and establish an environment of digitalization in your organization. This method reduces the risk and will more likely be successful in digital transformation.