How to Succeed with Digital Transformation in Your Organization — Recommendations for the Architecture, Engineering and Construction Industry
Are you someone who has been trying out new technologies on your projects with little to no long term success? Do you think a lot more needs to happen in order to digitally transform your organization?
You are not alone. Only 14 percent of 1,733 business executives polled by McKinsey in September 2018 said that their digital transformation efforts have sustained performance improvements, with only 3 percent reporting complete success at sustaining change.
Construction is traditionally a fragmented and labor-intensive industry, it is one of the least digitized and tech adoption in the industry has been pretty slow.
It’s not all that bad though. In the last few years, the industry has realized the importance of digital transformation. According to a 2019 KPMG report, 70% of construction companies believe that if they don’t digitally transform their businesses they will go out of business.
There is no silver bullet for digitally transforming your organization but here are five steps you can take to get started and succeed with digital transformation.
1. Prepare a digital strategy for your organization
Identify the use cases and pain points in your organizations and projects that you think will benefit the most from digital transformation. Then prepare a digital strategy to empower employees, enhance customer satisfaction and improve operations.
Take a long term and holistic approach while preparing your digital strategy. The technology should not only be implemented on projects alone but should be tied neatly with the back-office processes as well. Make short term goals more “specific” and long term goals more “fluid” to allow for continuous improvement and technology changes.
2. Get buy-in from the top executives
In order to succeed you will need the top executive team’s buy-in. Someone from the top executive team will need to take ownership of the digital transformation process.
Without their commitment, leadership, and sponsorship, it will be really difficult to adequately fund the digital initiatives and get broader organizational adoption.
3. Start small and double down on what works
Identify the use cases that will benefit the most from digitization and implement the tools and technologies on a couple of projects. Assess the results from these projects and implement successful solutions throughout the organizations.
Not every process improvement or software solution you implement will succeed. So you will need to try out various opportunities for process improvement and partner with software solution providers. Weight the pros and cons and then double down on what works best for your organization.
4. Organize company-wide seminars and workshops to educate and train people
Educating people on the benefits of digitization and digital transformation using real case studies from your previous projects can be really effective.
Once you have the buy-in, train people on different tools and technologies.
Train your team members on the importance of staying curious and open to continuous improvement as a cultural value.
5. Upgrade digital strategy and technologies as you go
After completing digitally-enabled projects, bring key decision-makers in the room and share the lessons you have learned from those projects. Use these case studies to further your message of digital transformation to more people in the organization and enable more projects and organizational processes.
In conclusion, the digital transformation will be an ongoing team effort. Don’t feel as if you have to do it on your own. Work with technology evangelists, startups, advocates and top executives to leverage their expertise to drive transformation.
Your goal should be to take advantage of the latest and greatest technologies and solutions and build a digitally enabled organization.
It is important to understand that just buying a piece of software won’t do the job. Focusing on the processes that need improvement and that can benefit from transformation is also important.
Thinking holistically and digitally enabling all functions of the organization is important. For example, it is not enough to just capture punch list items through a mobile app or make project drawings available on a mobile device.
You have to make sure that the processes causing the issues in the first place are also improved. And you will have to make sure that the back-office technologies also talk to the project management system that is used to manage the punch list items.
Solutions that address a wider range of use-cases and technologies that tie everything together will help you reach the transformation goals faster.
A successful digital transformation can make a significant positive difference to your bottom line. Construction productivity can be boosted by 14% to 15% by infusing digital technology and a cost reduction of up to 6% can be achieved with a successful digital transformation.
Not transforming your construction business now or giving up on it all together can mean going out of business.
