More businesses are embracing digital transformation due to the enormous benefits it offers. Therefore, it’s crucial to approach it in a systematic and goal-oriented manner. The route toward digital transformation requires a commitment to follow evolving marketing conditions and embrace any digital disruptors that appear along the way.
These days, there are various definitions, plans, and executions involved in discussions about digital transformation. However, positive stories are less numerous than companies might anticipate after all is said and done. Only a very small fraction of businesses that attempt digital transformation are successful.
Often, businesses get stuck at a certain point in their journey toward digital transformation. Here are four questions businesses need to address to help advance their digital transformation efforts.
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Enterprises are continuously being pushed to accomplish more due to the speed of change in the current business environment. IT leaders frequently adopt concepts and execution methods depending on what has previously been successful. But in doing so, they could overlook crucial information that they later learn about after it’s too late to change direction. Leaders must determine what digital transformation signifies for their enterprise and ensure sure that their approach is based on those objectives rather than simply seeking inspiration from others.
Businesses frequently get caught in a cycle when attempting to improve several aspects of operational efficiency, customer experience (CX), business model innovation, etc. Customer experience, for instance, is the most frequently stated business driver for digital transformation. However, enterprises know that operational efficiency is equally, if not more, vital as they adopt it—through mobility, chatbots, and front-end workflows, for example. They then make the necessary backend fixes only to discover that their business model is flawed. As the cycle continues, it becomes challenging for businesses to scale outside of CX use cases in customer support and marketing.
A better place to start is often the end-to-end consumer journey. It’s not too late to start that way, even if businesses didn’t start that way.
The intention of any company to transform holistically is rarely in question. However, it becomes harder to accelerate as outcomes continue to move further into the future. The main reason is that they failed to establish a strong foundation for long-term transformation during the pilot phase. As a result of their inability to expand their scope or impact, businesses are trapped.
A weak foundation is frequently the result of segmented operational operations or disparate, poorly integrated technology.
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The main barriers to the digital transformation process, from design to operations, are silos. Processes, departments, and systems become siloed when they are not designed for seamless integration. This is even worse when plans for digital transformation lack a strong foundation. Modern technologies being thrust on top of pre-existing silos causes fissures.
Ironically, a significant number of current technologies, such as chatbots, RPA, analytics, and mobile interfaces, increase silos by requiring IT teams to build and maintain technology towers, which increases technical debt.
It’s difficulty to deal with legacy technologies and technical debt.
A comprehensive digital transformation can be made possible in the long run with a clearly defined architectural plan early on.
When core components are balanced with fast wins, it can assist in identifying the optimal use cases. To advance, companies must address the issue of technical debt if they are in the middle of their journey.
Early in the cycle is the ideal time to make important technological infrastructure decisions. But it’s never too late to find a workable long-term technology strategy that enables companies to capitalize on the current while preparing for the future.
When all important variables are taken into account, such as handling the end-to-end customer journey, attaining long-term holistic transformation, and overcoming operational and technological silos while balancing quick wins, a platform-based strategy makes sense. Whether silos are found in operations, tasks, systems, or people, a technology platform is necessary to break through those barriers.
Multiple technologies are used in a digital transformation platform that allows enterprises to integrate their activities and overcome silos. A comprehensive digital transformation requires a number of components, including contextual engagement, process automation, multichannel communication, and intelligent automation powered by AI/ML.
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Prangya Pandab is an Associate Editor with OnDot Media. She is a seasoned journalist with almost seven years of experience in the business news sector. Before joining ODM, she was a journalist with CNBC-TV18 for four years. She also had a brief stint with an infrastructure finance company working for their communications and branding vertical.
