If you read our 5 Digital Transformation Success Factors article, you already know that accepting digital transformation as a holistic change is a first step toward success. Even if the need stems from one department, recognizing the ramifications outside of departmental bubbles is key. By taking on digital transformation, you need to be comfortable with and prepared for a total culture shift. Now that you know what success factors contribute to the best digital transformation implementations, it’s time to uncover how to achieve those successes for your own organization.

Important steps to prepare for a successful digital transformation project:

[ez-toc]

Business team and digital transformation consultants discussing how to prepare for digital transformation

 

Identify Pain Points

Digital transformation does not mean buying new tech and hoping for the best. Strategic planning is required to ensure your digital transformation solution has successful, wide-reaching impact that helps departments work together. To achieve success, you must consider what those impacts may be and how further opportunities can enhance your business processes. This takes careful consideration and strategic planning.

If you are at the point of undertaking a digital transformation, you probably already know your pain points and needs. But if you have ever lost your glasses only to find them on your face, you know it can be easy to miss things that are right in front of you. A digital transformation consultant can help you gain an objective understanding of your business landscape and determine best how to address your needs. But a helpful first step is to begin listening your teams, customers, and competitor’s clients to prepare your discovery. Here are some suggestions:

  • Listen to your teams: Your team is what makes your business run, so knowing what is or is not allowing them to perform at their peak is critical to your overall success. What are the challenges your team encounters most frequently? What issues are having the most detrimental impact? Are certain processes particularly problematic? Are certain tools constantly failing?
  • Listen to your customers: No business can stay alive without customers, so ensuring their needs are not just met but exceeded is vital. Are your prospects able to easily engage with your products or services? Are you able to quickly react to issues and requests? Are you retaining existing customers? How do you reach them? If via a website or app, are they user friendly? Do prospective customers or existing clients have reason to question how you are collecting or storing their sensitive, personal information? Are you in compliance? How seamless are your transactions? Can you streamline processes such as onboarding or payments?
  • Listen to your competitor’s customers: You undoubtedly have a pulse on what’s happening with your competitors, but this sleuthing can also help you improve and plan your digital transformation. Read their customer reviews and identify common praise and complaints. What are they able to deliver that you don’t? What are they unable to deliver that you could do better? Research your competitors, learn from their mistakes, and see how you can solve their pain points to fix your own.

Take Stock of Your Team—and Your Clients

User adoption is critical to digital transformation success, so evaluating the skillset of your team is an essential step towards that goal. Now that you have listened to the needs of your people, it’s time to step back and evaluate their capabilities. Think about the skills of your team members; are they capable of implementing the changes you need, or will you need to bring in experts? How much training will each department require? How much training will your end users need? Will some customers require accommodation, such as more in-depth training or even retention of traditional processes, to offset steep learning curves? While you won’t have solutions to these questions yet, it’s important to keep them top-of-mind as you prepare for digital transformation. Which is why you must…

Plan Your Communication and Curriculum

Springing new tech on teams may be exciting, but not everyone will have Christmas morning elation. Be prepared for some team members to need more education than others and make accommodations for trainings. Consider training modalities like webinars or knowledge base articles to help support user adoption. The same goes for clients who are accustomed to your platforms.

Additionally, some members may find it difficult to transition away from old habits, which is why early communication is key to prepare employees (or customers) for change. Set realistic goals for transitioning to new working environments and methods, and ensure you factor those deadlines into your project timeline. And be open to feedback. Understanding what is and is not working will help you make enhancements or adjustments that will improve efficiency in the long run. A digital transformation consultant should have training modules baked into their strategy. They will help you navigate how to introduce new working methods to team members, train teams on new tech, and provide resource documentation to help guide the process.


“One of the big roles of leaders [during a digital transformation] is to create a safe, supporting environment where people are able to learn.”

Kristine Dery, Research Scientist at MIT Center for Information Systems Research
How to Nurture a Digital Workforce


Audit your tech

Take stock of the technology that you use. You may be surprised to find that services you already use can be integrated for a more robust solution or include tools that serve your unmet needs. What’s more, you may find tech that you are paying for but not utilizing, or duplicates of the same tools across multiple departments. A good digital transformation consultant will take a deep dive into your IT infrastructure ahead of a digital transformation engagement, but having a basic starting point is a good practice, even if you have an idea of the services or platforms you want to use to modernize your operations.

Consider Your Timeline and Budget

Next, consider your timelines. How urgent is your need? How quickly can your teams realistically adapt to change? Additionally, how massive is the change you are undertaking? Don’t bank on overnight results that are unachievable. Consider working in phases to keep progress at a steady pace without being overwhelming.

Also consider how much you want to invest and what makes sense for your organization. What already exists in your tech stack? What features do you really need? Do you have the right, or enough, people in place to support your initiatives? This can include leveraging ongoing support for managed services versus hiring a whole team.


How a digital transformation consultant can help you prepare for digital transformation:

Partnering with a digital transformation consultant can help you identify your pain points, devise an effective roadmap, and put together a comprehensive action plan that fits within your budget. Coretelligent’s digital transformation solutions, CoreDTS, are crafted to match the business goals of clients, pinpoint any challenges they are facing, and construct technology-driven solutions customized to meet their needs. Using agile methodology, our build-and-operate approach keeps projects running smoothly while managing costs and maintaining clear expectations for tasks. From development to deployment, to maintenance and enhancements, our clients are fully supported throughout their journey. To learn more about how we can help you on your digital transformation journey, contact one of our experts today.

« »

Latest Insights / Articles