Almost every company in today’s world is investing in digital transformation, but few have a carefully-formulated “digital transformation roadmap”. We’re living in an ever-more complex and competitive world, where customer expectations, global regulations, and even professional environments are constantly changing.
Digital transformation, implemented correctly, is the key to ensuring your business can out-perform the competition, while preserving customer engagement, employee productivity, and reducing operating costs. Unfortunately, while most companies can benefit from digital transformation, few implement their strategies correctly.
According to McKinsey, around 70% of all digital transformation initiatives fail. Issues can stem from everything from challenges adopting new technologies, to lack of stakeholder alignment. The right digital transformation strategy can help to minimize these problems.
The question is, where do you get started?
What is a Digital Transformation Roadmap?
Demand for digital transformation is accelerating. The World Economic Forum (WEF) believes by 2025, the societal and industrial value of digital transformation could exceed $100 trillion. However, no matter the nature of your digital transformation strategy, the focus of “DX” is often in implementing and enabling change throughout an organization.
Change, as many businesses know, comes with a host of challenges. A digital transformation roadmap is essentially a change management tool, designed to outline the steps a company needs to complete in its journey towards effective “transformation”.
These roadmaps serve as guiding documents to help organizations navigate everything from unintended business process disruptions, to technology acquisitions. A well-defined roadmap aligns employees and stakeholders around a shared set of visions and goals, providing clarity and structure.
What’s more, these guides act as tools for keeping businesses and employees focused on measurable outcomes from digital transformation initiatives.
Considerations for your Digital Transformation Roadmap
Just as digital transformation initiatives can come in many forms, focusing on different goals and priorities, roadmaps can vary too. Defining your ideal roadmap starts with assessing crucial considerations in your business plan, such as:
1. Goals and Opportunities for Digital Transformation
Successful digital transformation initiatives don’t just focus on embedding new tools and technologies into your workflows so you can “keep up with the competition”. The right strategy will focus on implementing solutions that address specific problems in your workflows, or help you achieve certain business goals. To define opportunities, companies will need to bring stakeholders from throughout the business together, to identify core priorities.
For many companies, digital transformation isn’t just an opportunity to reduce operational costs, boost productivity, or unlock new revenue. It can also be a crucial tool for addressing bigger challenges. For instance, investing in digital transformation can be an excellent way for companies to reduce their carbon footprint, and become more sustainable.
Many leaders in the technology world are facing increased pressure from customers, stakeholders, and governments alike to reduce their negative impact on the environment. By switching to cloud technologies, working with sustainable vendors, and rethinking your approach to data management, you can make your company more competitive, and ensure you’re ready to address the changing priorities of consumers, alongside new regulations, and initiatives.
A focus on sustainability as a core factor in digital transformation will likely become more important in the years ahead. Already, consumers are making purchasing decisions based on their understanding of which companies share their values and priorities. Additionally, as carbon emissions continue to grow, government groups are imposing stricter regulations around how companies use energy, technology, and innovative products.
2. Securing Budget and Buy-In
Once you’ve considered which goals and priorities you want to address with your digital transformation initiatives, the next step is figuring out how to secure stakeholder buy in, and financial resources. Virtually all digital transformation strategies, no matter how small, require significant investment. To engage all the stakeholders in a business, change managers need to think about how they can demonstrate the value of an initiative.
For instance, if your goal is to use digital transformation to become more sustainable and eco-friendlier, it’s important to look at all of the wider benefits of sustainability. Taking an eco-conscious approach to business doesn’t just reduce your negative impact on the planet. It can also improve your brand reputation and give you a competitive advantage.
This is particularly true in today’s world, where younger generations are becoming more eco-conscious. Around 74% of Gen Z consumers now say they would willingly spend more on products from sustainable brands. Additionally, a study from EY in 2021 found up to 74% of investors will abandon companies that don’t perform well on ESG initiatives.
Demonstrating the clear benefits of digital transformation initiatives to leaders will help them to approve the use of crucial resources and budgets. It will also encourage leaders to take an active role in driving the adoption of new technologies throughout the organization.
Keep in mind, securing buy-in may require you to focus on different priorities for different stakeholders. While some business leaders and executives will only be motivated by opportunities to improve cashflow and increase revenue, others will be influenced by other values. For instance, some business leaders may make decisions based on chances to reduce operational costs, improve efficiency, or enhance customer experience.
3. Paving the Way for a Successful Launch
There’s more to launching a successful digital transformation roadmap then making sure you get started on the right foot. However, how you initiate your project can make a huge difference to its long-term chances of success. Analysts like McKinsey recommend focusing initially on projects that demonstrate opportunities for quick wins and significant results.
For instance, investing in a cloud-based contact center can quickly deliver a range of positive outcomes to companies, from increased flexibility for workers, to reduced carbon emissions, due to the reduced need for travel. They also provide organizations with the tools they need to deliver exceptional service to consumers across a range of channels, adapting to changing expectations.
As well as choosing the right initiatives to focus on at the beginning, companies also need to ensure the right teams are in place to enhance the outcomes of change initiatives. The right “success team” for a digital transformation roadmap can include everyone from executive-level leaders, to analysts responsible for evaluating new technologies, and IT partners.
It should also include beta testers, responsible for helping to examine the benefits of new solutions, and train new employees on the use of innovative tools. Plus, it’s important to have experts on hand capable of analyzing the results of each campaign, and tracking crucial metrics.
4. Overcoming Risks and Challenges
Digital transformation isn’t just something that happens once in a business. It’s an ever-evolving and consistent strategy, for continuous growth. While it’s easy enough to launch new initiatives and experiment with strategies, it’s much harder to maintain momentum. Companies can easily fall back into old processes and habits without a consistent strategy.
With this in mind, it’s important to look for ways to mitigate potential risks and challenges in any digital transformation project. For instance, if your goal is to become more sustainable in your business operations, it might be harder to drive the adoption of brand-new technologies and tools, than it is to simply upgrade the solutions employees are already using.
Instead of asking employees to use entirely new systems, companies could consider using software to upgrade the operating systems and functionality of the devices they already use, reducing waste. Other ways to potentially overcome risks and challenges include:
- Nurturing an agile culture: Cultivating the right digital culture is crucial to the success of digital transformation projects. Companies need to encourage their team members to embrace change, rather than fearing it. Understanding the challenges that employees face, maintaining constant communication, and investing in transparency will help here.
- Developing training initiatives: Employees won’t adopt new tools and processes they don’t fully understand or know how to use. Training is essential to ensuring staff members can get the most value out of new initiatives, and improving the ROI of digital transformation strategies. Don’t overlook the importance of retraining and upskilling teams.
- Conducting regular risk assessments: Whenever a company invests in a new solution or strategy, they should start with a comprehensive risk assessment. Look not just at the security and budget challenges of a new solution, but how it might cause disruption to business processes and employees.
5. Becoming More Agile and Flexible
Finally, to maintain the momentum in your digital transformation roadmap, and pave the way for a more efficient, productive future, you’ll need to take a new approach to business. In today’s world, the needs of companies and consumers can change rapidly from one month to the next.
The only way to ensure your digital transformation initiatives continue to thrive, and deliver positive results, is to remain agile. For many companies, this will mean adopting a new operating model that aligns with the changing landscape. Replacing rigid strategies with a more adaptable one, focused on pursuing specific priorities and goals, from improved customer experience to sustainability is crucial.
Companies should ensure every sector of their team can work closely and collaboratively together, sharing insights, data, and opportunities for growth. A unified and agile company culture allows companies to shift and pivot more rapidly in an environment where constant transformation is crucial.
To boost your chances of success:
- Activate and connect employees: Employees are at heart of every successful digital transformation effort. To ensure you can execute your digital transformation roadmap effectively, ensure every team member is actively engaged, and connected. Invest in cross-team collaboration, create a feedback loop to learn from the voice of the employee, and empower every staff member to share their thoughts, opinions, and insights.
- Share and celebrate wins: Human beings aren’t designed to deal with constant change. We prefer structure and routine. This makes it difficult to preserve buy-in for digital transformation projects, as new challenges emerge. The easiest way to keep everyone motivated and inspired, is to regularly share and celebrate the results of each project. Ensure employees, stakeholders, and even customers can see the value of your efforts.
- Maintain a shared vision: One of the best ways to ensure your digital transformation roadmap is successful, is to get everyone aligned around the same vision. To maximize motivation and engagement, focus on a vision that aligns with the values of your stakeholders and employees. Don’t just look at opportunities for profit, think about the growing demand for sustainability, productivity, and simplicity in the workplace.
Mastering Your Digital Transformation Roadmap
True digital transformation is a long, ongoing process, that requires input and effort from your entire organization. The right digital transformation roadmap will consider all of the factors above, to ensure you’re not only motivating and inspiring your teams, but driving measurable results.
If you can take the right approach to your digital transformation strategy, the results can be phenomenal. Not only can you become more competitive in your chosen industry, increase sales and reduce operating costs, but you can achieve a wide range of complementary business goals.
The right initiative can make your company more sustainable, and give you the tools you need to “future proof” your organization against changing regulations, priorities, and market trends.
