In the age of disruption, digital transformation has become a war cry for businesses seeking to thrive. Global spending on digital transformation technologies will reach a staggering $3.9 trillion, highlighting the urgency for businesses to embrace the digital revolution. But with so much noise surrounding the topic, many leaders struggle to translate this abstract concept into concrete action. The key lies in setting the right digital transformation goals.
Here’s the truth bomb: generic aspirations like improve efficiency or boost customer experience are a surefire path to disappointment. 70% of digital transformations fail to deliver on their promises. Why? Vague ambitions lack direction and make measuring progress an impossible feat. We’ll show you how to set digital transformation goals and be among the 30% that succeed.
A SMART approach takes your goals from wishful thinking to a success roadmap and helps you tackle digital transformation challenges with ease.. Let’s unpack the SMART framework in the context of digital transformation, providing actionable tips for each element:
Before you start setting digital transformation goals, you need to assess how prepared your team is to handle such a large undertaking. Consider the following:
How prepared is your company? Is your team experienced and educated enough to adopt new technologies, or what additional training or resources will they need to adjust?
There are several digital transformation models to choose from, and knowing your company’s digital maturity and digital readiness will help you determine which one is right for your business. Understanding your limitations or weaknesses can help you better prepare to overcome them when implementing new tools and technologies.
Digital transformation is a broad concept. What it looks like will vary from company to company, depending on the unique goals they need to achieve. However, there are there main technological areas of advancement:
Your digital transformation journey might focus on one of these technological areas, or it might cover all three. But understanding what you’re trying to accomplish and the requirements of the technology you’re introducing is crucial for a smooth implementation. To make things even smoother, you could also bring in an external digital transformation consulting company to assist with implementation.
Stakeholder buy-in has to go deeper than just getting senior management to approve your digital transformation budget. If employees impacted by the change don’t understand the importance of switching up the way they do things, it can create resistance and make change harder to hold.
Get the entire team on board—from finance and IT to marketing and customer-facing employees. Digital transformation is often an organization-wide initiative, so convincing employees from the start that the change will be good for everyone can help you see returns on your investment faster.
A strategic plan created by your IT team can make undergoing digital transformation easier—but it needs to go deeper than just setting guidelines and tool rollout dates. Here are things you need to include in your IT strategic plan:
Digital transformation typically impacts all departments of an organization, but some will face greater changes and digital transformation challenges than others. If you’re treating all departments equally, some teams might be getting too much attention while others are getting too little.
It’s important to understand how different departments will be impacted so you can create personalized implementation plans for each. Creating a unique approach to the digital transformation project will give everyone access to the information they need most, without wasting their time or creating confusion by introducing them to processes or concepts they don’t need. Ultimately, this will help accelerate digital transformation.
Like it or not, the practice of digital transformation is here to stay and the sooner you get on board, the better. But, simply throwing money at technology is not enough. Your digital transformation efforts should be rooted in delivering value to customers in every sense and guided by goals. Now that you know how to set objectives, it’s time to start transforming your business.
One more Friday, and once more yours truly Jordan is coming forward with another interesting article for this week. So, is it really a weekend if you don’t start it with one of our blogs? Okay, I am going too far 🙂 however, I really appreciate that you like these types of articles.
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