Any level of change in business requires a thorough understanding of the systems and operations to be changed, and clarity of vision from leadership as to what they hope to accomplish from the program for change. Digitally transforming a business’ systems further requires a comprehensive understanding of the software to be implemented, how these digitised processes will affect business stakeholders and what training or upskilling may be required to prepare your team for a transition into the new system. 

There’s a lot of ground to cover, and a lot of technical detail to get right if your company is to pull off a successful digital transformation. Digitising your business is a costly and time consuming project, and it is the sort of thing you want to be sure to get right the first time to avoid any costly do-overs or disaster recovery programs. 

There’s why knowing where to put your best foot forwards is a crucial first step in your business’ digital transformation project. Understanding how to harness the core pillars of any major business change – your people; your business processes; and the technology you are implementing – will keep you in the drivers’ seat through the process and ensure your business hits the goals it’s set out to achieve. 

Why Your People are Integral to a Successful Digital Transformation 

Start with the obvious. Any change you are making to your business, be it digitising existing workflows or implementing bespoke software to help disparate systems talk to each other, is going to affect the people you work with. Most of all this means your employees, yes, but it also has the potential to affect external stakeholders such as suppliers and customers, too. Knowing how these changes are going to impact on the people you do business with, and how best to prepare them for that impact, will help your business sidestep one of the most common pitfalls encountered when attempting a digital transformation: A lack of buy-in. 

Buy-in starts from the top. This means your leadership team must not only be on board with the changed being implemented, but must share a clarity of vision for what is being suggested: 

• Is there a clear goal in mind for what this digital transformation seeks to do? 

• Is there a thorough understanding of what changes will be brought about as a result of this transformation? 

• Is there a shared vision for what success looks like at the end of this process? 

Your leaders are crucial not only in steering the project, and so needing to understand what it is you are aiming to achieve, but in setting an example for the rest of the organisation to follow. If you cannot achieve leadership buy-in, it will prove that much harder to garner support from the rest of the team for the digital transformation. 

With leadership on-side, encouraging support from the team is the next crucial step. Clarity and communication, always integral to any business relationship, are just as important here. Clearly state the case for why these changes are being implemented; what it is that is going to change in the everyday lives of your team and, most importantly, what you anticipate the outcome is going to be. If your people understand the rationale behind embarking upon a digital transformation they will have a much easier time accepting it. Assuage worries about digital transformation rendering jobs obsolete or redundant; indeed, some new systems may require a degree of upskilling, which should be framed as a major perk of the new changes to be made. By training your employees on the new software you hope to implement you are outfitting them with more skills, all simply for doing their job. 

Part of this involves knowing your team, and understand the skillsets that make up that team. Identifying who may require upskilling in light of the new changes to be implemented, or who works most closely with the processes to be transformed, can help ensure a smooth transition by highlighting skill shortages to be improved or identifying subject matter experts within your own organisation who can directly lend their expertise to the transformation process. 

Understanding the Processes that are Central to your Business’ Digital Transformation 

You cannot hope to change your business unless you know it, and know it well. This means understanding the processes that define your business, and that you are seeking now to overhaul in your program of digital transformation. 

Simply put, a process is a repeatable step in a business proven to produce similar results. It can cover anything from a sales funnel to a system for logging time when operatives are working with clients in the field. When companies embark on a digital transformation procedure, they are usually hoping to update outmoded processes and the systems which facilitate processes with more modern software solutions. 

In order for them to do that, and to do it successfully, they must fully understand those processes and how they interact with the technology they are hoping to implement. 

A successful digital overhaul of existing business processes should address these fundamental queries: 

• Will this change produce an optimal result? 

• Will it reduce costs? 

• Does it address redundancies or otherwise improve overall efficiency? 

Eliminating duplication of efforts; addressing redundant systems or processes; speeding up workflows and cutting down on human error are all major ways in which digitally transforming existing processes can add value to your business. But before you take an axe to your existing processes in a bid to improve them, it is crucial that you thoroughly understand them first. 

Having a bird’s eye view of existing processes and how they intersect with each other, and the stakeholders involved with them at every stage, will give you the oversight necessary to make cuts and edits without jeopardising the overall workflow. You don’t want to rush in blind, making wholesale changes to one process in one corner of your business, only to realise that in doing so you’ve decoupled it from the three other processes it was working in tandem with, which now no longer work as efficiently as before and have mitigated the positive effects of your digital transformation. 

In change as in construction, measure twice and cut once – ensure you understand exactly what you hope to be changing before you make any irreversible changes to it. 

Making Technology Work for your Business 

From word processing to generative AI, technological solutions now exist to transform every possible facet of how you do business, every single day. However, as we’ve highlighted in this article, there is greater consideration that must go into a digital transformation than simply identifying a piece of software and buying a license for your company. If your technology does not work for your business and your people, then your digital transformation program is likely doomed to a costly failure. 

By highlighting the integral role of people in helping to shepherd your change program to fruition, and by identifying the core processes that will be changed as a result of your digital transformation, you instead position yourself to make your technology implementation fit the existing contours of your business, rather than forcing your business and its stakeholders to work around the demands of new technology. 

Digitising your business operations will not fix broken processes or paint over an unstable business model. What it will do is streamline and optimise your existing processes, cutting down on labour, redundancy and inefficiencies, while opening up new opportunities to pull and collate data from your systems that unlock valuable strategic insights into your business. 

Most of all, a thorough understanding of the software solutions you plan on implementing is critical to planning how to organise your business, its resources, people and infrastructure to ensure the best possible payoff for your digital transformation investment.