How to Prepare for Digital Transformation

Digital transformation depends as much on preparation as it does technology, so, how you prepare for it?

As we’ve talked about before, the act of acquiring digital tools for your company is only one part of the digital transformation process. There is a larger mindset that your company needs to adopt in order for its digital integration to go smoothly.

Once your company has got the baseline demands for digitization in place— company commitment and the necessary investment lined up—there are a series of steps your company needs to take to ensure successful digital integration.

This week, we at Innovexa Solutions take you through the preparation needed for digital integration.

Outline Objectives

Just like an other business undertaking, it’s important to have goals in place so that there are benchmarks for it. Your company needs to know what success looks like. Otherwise its digital journey will feel aimless. Have a clear, achievable, yet ambitious set of goals and get senior management to sign off on them.

In turn, by having goals, a strategy falls into place for achieving those goals. You can’t plan and strategize when you don’t know where you’re heading. But, when you know where you want to go, as well as how and what do to get there, then all the strategizing falls into place.

Choose Your Decision Makers

It’s of the utmost importance that there are knowledgeable leaders in place to oversee the transformation. The reason for that is so that the objectives you have outlined have oversight and aren’t strayed from. Moreover, leadership also means that the day-to-day strategy for achieving those objectives are kept top of mind.

Overcome the Skills Deficit

It’s natural that your company will have a skills gap in terms of digitization. Until a company goes digital, there’s little reason for the workforce within it to be knowledgeable about digital tools. As a result, most of the workforce won’t be able to make the most of them, rendering the transformation meaningless.

Thus, it’s vital that a company preparing for digitization doesn’t stay in this state of ignorance. Through one, or a combination, of education and hiring digital experts, get the company to a standard of understanding that allows for digital tools to be used to the best of their capabilities.

Foster the Right Culture

Finally, it’s worthwhile to foster a business climate that is pro-digital. This doesn’t only mean an acceptance of digital tools but a kind of thinking that makes their use easier and more straightforward in business processes. For example, incorporating the need for insights and analytics when considering the behaviour of potential customers.

Ultimately, these are all fairly straightforward approaches to a smooth digital transformation. Yet, straightforward and easy are not the same thing. Digital success involves commitment and diligence, just as most worthwhile undertakings do. Don’t make the mistake of getting the investment for the transformation without the proper framework in place that will make that transformation amount to something.

Key Takeaways:

• Takeaway 1: For a successful digital transformation, preparation is just as important as the technology .
• Takeaway 2: Set out ambitious yet achievable company goals for its digital journey.
• Takeaway 3: Have leadership in place that provide oversight for the companies’ digital transformation.
• Takeaway 4: Educate the workforce on digitization so that it can make the most of it.
• Takeaway 5: Encourage a business culture that embraces the digital mindset—a way of thinking that makes business operations closely in line with the uses of digital tools.

To participate in the digital readiness survey we’re currently conducting, click the following link: http://bit.ly/insurvey-07