Accelerate your Digital Transformation! Dive into actionable steps: from understanding customer needs, leveraging data analysis, adopting agile methodologies, to investing in advanced technological tools.
Digital transformation is a key priority for all companies, regardless of their sector or processes. In a landscape plagued by disruptions, challenges and obstacles, all organizations need to consider how they can implement technological changes at scale — and do so quickly and at the level of quality that their customers demand.
#1 Think about the big picture
Transformation is not limited to a single individual, department or unit. It’s company-wide — so your efforts should involve everyone, too. While digital change may seem like the sole responsibility of the software development team, in reality, everyone is responsible for its success: the quality assurance (QA) team, marketing, sales, finance, operations, and so on.
Therefore, all employees must be informed about your digital redesign plan. They should be given business-wide objectives as well as their own roles in those initiatives. Furthermore, everyone must understand the motivation behind these developments and how their responsibilities will affect the transformation – in other words, the bigger picture. After all, the why is as important as the how.
#2: Establish a culture of disruption
Some employees may be tasked with innovating, like product managers, but everyone must share the responsibility for thinking outside the box and brainstorming ways to create and continue to drive your business forward. Building a culture of disruption – ensuring that all employees know they are encouraged to develop different and unique ideas – will help your organization persist and thrive in a world that is always encountering change and difficulties.
#3: Use data
All your business decisions must be supported by data. Fortunately, in the digital age, there is an abundance of data available at every turn. Use this information – from user patterns and habits to timely website and social media traffic trends – to make better choices as a team and company.
Capitalizing on data drives digital transformation because you can leverage your knowledge of consumers to drive innovations that truly matter to them. And given the sheer volume of information you have at your fingertips, this isn't as time-consuming or painstaking a task as it might have been before the digital age.
#4 Provide necessary resources
You must provide your team with resources to enable them to do their best work. After all, no one can work quickly or bring an innovative mindset if they don't have the necessary tools or environment at their disposal.
For example, they will likely need best-in-class cloud applications to facilitate document and file sharing, collaborative editing, remote access to various tools, and so on, along with powerful security measures. They may also require special programs, depending on the nature of their roles and responsibilities. Be sure to ask what types of resources and infrastructure your employees need to make decisions, create, and accelerate the pace at which they complete their work.
Perform routine audits of your systems and programs. Some applications may need to be updated to take advantage of new features that will enable greater digital change, for example.
#5: Embrace automation
In a world that increasingly relies on artificial intelligence, automation is a surefire way to complete tasks and encourage your company to drive transformation. There are many procedures and processes that can be completed by machines independently or with little human intervention, such as some types of quality control tests. This will be extremely useful when you are looking at accelerating innovation.
However, there is a risk of excessive automation. There are some tasks and responsibilities that need to be performed by humans. Be careful not to automate jobs that are not simple, repetitive, or otherwise lend themselves to the power of machine learning.
#6: Always Keep the End User and Goal in Mind
Ultimately, your products are aimed at consumers – the people who will use them. Keep this in mind in every phase and facet of your digital acceleration process.
A useful activity during this process is to imagine who your end user is. You can catalog your habits, experiences, demographics, likes and dislikes, and any other relevant information based on the data collected. This will help you get a clear picture of the typical consumer and how they will interact with your product, as well as what they are looking for in software of this nature.
To encourage all of your teams to embrace this mindset in pursuit of your ultimate goal – satisfying your demands – make sure everyone is familiar with this picture of the prototypical user. This will inform their ideas and decision-making and empower them to work towards a single, common goal. It will also help confirm that everyone is on the same page when it comes to creating and innovating.
Waiting anxiously
With so many changes occurring every day and even more on the horizon, all companies across all sectors must work to transform and thrive in different scenarios. This will help them protect themselves against the many obstacles that organizations continue to face on a daily basis. Digital acceleration is an ultra-important priority for any company, regardless of its objective or mission.
