Technology is evolving at an unprecedented rate, and it can be a challenge for companies to keep up with the changes. However, to remain competitive in today’s global landscape, it is vital that organizations embrace digital transformation. An effective digital transformation strategy is the key to embracing new technological advancements and using them to enhance the physical aspects of your business.
What Is a Digital Transformation Strategy?
A digital transformation strategy is a plan that helps an organization implement and integrate emerging digital technology at every level of their business, making it possible to meet business and operational goals more efficiently. This includes ensuring that there is adequate technology in place to meet the needs of customers and employees who have a digital-first mentality.
Why Develop a Digital Transformation Strategy?
The benefits of creating a digital transformation strategy are many. They include:
- A better customer experience – You will be able to give customers easier access to your apps and systems, and you will understand the customer better so you can develop a business strategy centered around their needs.
- Improved employee engagement – Employees will enjoy streamlined processes and the ability to collaborate and complete routine tasks more easily while reducing administrative errors.
- Reduced costs – While you will have an upfront investment when implementing your digital transformation, over the long term, you will reduce your overall costs through increased efficiency and automation. You will also boost revenues by attracting and retaining more customers and discovering new sources of revenue.
Steps to Creating a Digital Transformation Strategy
When approaching the creation of a digital transformation strategy, it is important to keep in mind the four types of digital transformation, including:
- Process transformation
- Domain transformation
- Business model transformation
- Organizational/cultural transformation
With this in mind, here are the steps to creating a digital transformation strategy:
1. Align Digital Transformation with Business Goals
You shouldn’t be embracing digital transformation for the sake of keeping up with technology. Instead, any digital transformation you choose to implement should be based on your business and operational goals. This will require you to look at your short-, medium-, and long-term goals and determine how technology can help you reach those goals.
2. Determine your Budget
Since there is an upfront investment, you need to set your budget for the digital transformation and ensure you have approval from the executive level. This budget will include:
- A summary of digital transformation projects
- A department-by-department breakdown of the budget
- The anticipated ROI for each aspect of the digital transformation
- A timeline for the completion of each stage of the transformation
- A timeline for reporting on your progress
3. Prepare Employees for the Change
Digital transformation is an organization-wide change that will affect every employee at every level. For this reason, you need to ensure that everyone is on board and has an understanding of the changes that are coming, the goals behind the transformation strategy, and how it will impact their role in your company. You also must support a culture of change and learning, which includes making mistakes and learning from them.
4. Choose your Technology
Determine the specific technological solutions you need to meet your business and operational goals and implement and integrate that technology. When doing so, be sure to compare the various vendors based on criteria such as pricing, implementation timeline, scalability, and support.
5. Track Metrics
After implementation, track metrics and get feedback from users to determine how successful the digital transformation has been and where you can make improvements. Potential metrics can include the adoption and usage of the technology, customer satisfaction and acquisition, revenue, ROI, and time to complete tasks.
6. Scale as needed
As the technology environment shifts and your organization grows and changes, be sure to scale your technology as needed. In other words, the technological and business landscapes are dynamic, which means you will always need to evolve your digital transformation strategy to adapt.
Contact Platinum Technologies today to find out how we can help you plan your digital transformation to get the most out of today’s technology.
