Digital transformation and the legacy barriers
TL; DR
Everyone talks about digital transformation and barely some are REALLY doing something about it. Reminds me of what my mentor @massimopascotto said years ago about Big Data “It is like teenage sex where everyone is talking about it but no one is doing it”
If you want to transform your business into digital, you should have the guts to take this leap of faith and trust people who have skill sets outside of your comfort zone and how you are used to drive your business.
Too long to read
I have had interesting discussions about digital transformation recently with colleagues, friends, professionals in the digital domain and digital recruiters for that matter. I have been baffled by how everyone perceives digital transformation. Sadly, the majority think if you haven’t done the job you used to do then you are not gonna succeed. It means you must be stuck in the same role all your life because the employers prefer someone who has been doing the same jobs for years and has the expertise in your domain. Organizations should be open minded to welcome candidates which has different expertise and skill sets within other industry because digital shouldn’t discriminate between someone who has been doing digital for banking, insurance, airlines, food chains, retail or healthcare. Digital fundamentals remain the same, products and/or services are being made available for end consumers by utilizing technologies. So, a digital leader within banking or healthcare or airlines should be able to digitally transform their business, for instances, a warehouse operation and maintenance can easily be digitally transformed to determine the size, spaces, seasonality of the goods etc by deploying trendy technologies without the need of having the experience of warehouse operations. Same apply for any other industry, a digital leader understands the business objectives and customer needs and execute his digital strategy according to that.
“If you always do what you’ve always done, you will always get what you’ve always got”
Then Digital transformation and customer centric and innovation can go to hell if you have this mindset of having people who have experience in your domain and they have been doing only that.
There is no doubt that consumers expect every brand to provide them with a seamless digital experience regardless of their demographics, devices or what platform they use. It is not difficult to deliver customer and digital centric products and services.
Some of the legacy companies who have been running their business before the digital age might shrink, hence companies must adapt quickly to the digital era before they shrink and to remain relevant.
I have notices during the years of working on digital products that many of the companies that struggle digitally and have a strong digital vision from the executives also struggle to achieve their vision and execute their strategy. Here I am listing some of the biggest challenges that I have been observing.
Lack of a clear vision, strategy and future roadmap
Most of the large organizations unfortunately lack a clear vision about their future digital roadmap and existence and they are not clear about their customer needs from a digital perspective. Some don’t even see the value of seeing through the future for the upcoming three to five years. Some are used to my product is selling itself so why bother! It is obvious those companies won’t survive when they don’t have a clear picture about where they want to be or where they are heading. Future vision and clear roadmap is vital for the companies to endure rather than doing and developing the features on adhoc basis.
Even if the business is mature and is forward thinking, the organization should even look into other fundamentals of the future vision for not only what the end consumer expects but also a clear vision about technology, people, infrastructure and the brand.
Change the mindset and organization culture
Organizations -especially those who are used to run business in the legacy way- have difficulties to accept the change and do things out of their comfort zone. Digital transformation seems to make decisions maker uncomfortable; thinking that change might carry a lot of risks. Even if there is a clear and strong vision, it might be faced by a lot of resistance especially for the decision makers who have no control over the funding, product ownership, resources or responsibility of clear KPIs. They are always being questioned and asked to justify the return on investment in short term which is not feasible all the times.
Lack of customer data utilization
Large organizations and small for this matter sit on huge amount of data that they have been collecting through the years. Very few of them grasp the importance of data and how they can link it to their business vision and map it out to their users pain points.
Business should have this in the back of their head to back up any strategy with what their customer data is telling about them. They should utilize this to define the roadmap that will solve the end user pain points and in the same time achieve the business objectives. Get away of I know my business better. Google, Amazon, Facebook etc spend billions in building and refining their products roadmap based on data trends and patterns, you shouldn’t be different.
Legacy systems and technology development processes
Digital transformation goes hand in hand without saying with deploying new and trendy technology stacks and usage of niche technology frameworks that do one thing very well rather than having All in one software that do bits and pieces of everything. Dare to try new technologies. The same way you have design thinking for business products design, you should have the same approach of testing and trailing new technologies. Do small PoCs and see if it is successful, implement it, if not, you won’t lose much. Test, evaluate and reiterate. You should have an inventory of your legacy systems that don’t cut it anymore and are an overhead cost to your organization. Dare to change technology to be able to execute your digital transformation strategy.
Processes and the way you develop your products
You can be as visionary as you want to transform your business but unless you oversee your legacy processed, you won’t succeed. Take an inventory of how you run and develop your product and kill the processes the frustrate your resources and cost you money.
Conclusion
Digital transformation is not only about providing the same products or services but a strategy of changing mind set, processes, people technology and the willingness to cope with what users want. Successful companies within digital are those who rarely have a physical product to maintain but you are no different then them
Disclaimer: Article reflects my personal point of view and no way related to my company views.
