Digital Transformation
Imagine IT helps you to survive and thrive, stay relevant, avoid disruption, engage your team, and enhance customer experience
What is Intentional Digital Transformation?
It is the integration of emerging digital technologies into every area of your business, fundamentally changing and improving the way you operate and deliver value to customers, employees, communities, and stakeholders,
However, digital transformation isn’t just about technology; it’s an evolution of your business, people, and your entire culture.
“Digital Transformation is Business Transformation”
The Business Value of Digital Transformation
Through intentional digital transformation, you can offer exceptional and personalized customer experiences throughout their entire journey, leading to increased loyalty and customer retention.
Digital Transformation is the automation of business processes
- Improves operational efficiencies
- Boosts employee job satisfaction
- Collects critical data allowing you to analyze trends
- Improves go-to-market times
- Offers a customer journey that builds trust
- Prepares you for an ongoing digital journey
How Do You Measure The Performance of Your Technology,
… and Your Digital Transformation?
How do you measure your company's financial performance? Most companies use a definitive metric like EBITDA (Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation &
Amortization) to evaluate their company's financial performance. This metric allows them to get a clear picture of how the company is working, and more
importantly, will enable them to make strategic business decisions now and in the future.
Without that metric, companies would be lost!
What EBITDA-type metric do you use to evaluate your Digital Transformation?
Technology is the thread that connects you to customers, employees, partners, suppliers, and the community. There is not a piece of your company not influenced by technology. Do you know the true impact of your technology investments on your company's overall business performance?
Have you linked your technology investments directly with your business strategies?
Are you able to determine what technology projects affect what areas within your company? And can you put a definitive number on it so you can evaluate its performance, and make educated decisions when a new technology comes along?
If you are tentative at all with your answer, then the first thing you should consider is assessing exactly where your company is now regarding technology and your Digital Transformation.
And that begins with understanding your Digital Maturity score.
Achieving Digital Maturity
Adapting Your Company to Compete in a Digital World
So, what is Digital Maturity?
Although Digital Transformation is the term used to describe a company's technology journey, Digital Maturity is the assessment tool used to understand how far
along a company is on their digital journey.
Digital Maturity is about adapting operations, people, and business strategies with technology and digital processes to compete in an increasingly digital
environment.
Technology is the thread that connects you to customers, employees, partners, suppliers, and the community
Digital Maturity allows you to finally generate a metric like EBITDA to understand how
digitally mature your company is, and to help build a roadmap for the future
Digital mature companies achieve success by tying digital strategies to business strategies, increasing collaboration, and becoming
talent magnets.
There are 7 Elements of Digital Maturity
- Digital Strategy
- Customers
- Technology
- Risk (Cybersecurity)
- Operations
- Culture
- Data
Adapting to a digital market environment and taking advantage of digital technologies to improve operations are critical for every
business. Yet, few companies appear to be embracing the changes that are necessary to achieve these goals.
Why? Because in the past they haven’t had an EBITDA-type measurement tool
to get a clear picture of their Digital Transformation efforts.
The Digital Maturity Assessment
The Digital Maturity Assessment is a framework used to understand how far along a company is in their digital journey. But more importantly, it will finally generate an EBITDA-type number, so you will know exactly where you are at with your Digital Transformation,
The Digital Maturity Assessment follows a two-phase methodology:
- Assesses your organization’s digital maturity
- Identifies initiatives to reach your desired digital maturity level
Digital maturity is not only about technology
Your culture, people, organizational structure, and your processes are much more important than the technology itself. Raising your digital maturity level is crucial to your organization's digital transformation and success.
The Digital Maturity Assessment will …
- Help you optimize your internal operations
- Empower your employees to be more efficient by exceeding their technology needs and make their IT experience easy.
- Integrate your technology-environment for customers, employees, partners, and suppliers
Creating a digital vision and strategy
The Digital Maturity Assessment is a tool that will allow you to clearly understand your technology strengths and weaknesses. It will help you make a connection between your business strategies and your technology roadmap. It effectively prioritizes noted areas for improvement to align with your overall company objectives.
“Companies that change will survive, but companies that transform will THRIVE!”
Why Some Companies Fail With Digital Transformation
Most digital transformations efforts fail due to an inadequate budget, lack of commitment from leadership, and a resistant workforce!
The most common reasons companies struggle with their digital transformation:
- They don't know where to start
- They assume changes will be too costly
- They are not aware of the resulting benefits
- They go it alone
- They don't embrace emerging technologies — they wait and see!
The New Digitally Conscious Customer
Improving the Customer Experience
The need to embrace digital transformation is led by the new digitally-conscious customer. Mobile devices, apps, automation, and the interconnectedness of everything allows customers to get what they want, almost exactly at the moment they need it!
Customers expect and demand that you provide an interactive and meaningful way to use, benefit, and connect with your products and services online. Customer retention is a key driver of digital transformation, and having engaged customers allows you to gather valuable insights from your customer data.
As they strive to be digitally-mature, companies are improving digital experiences and developing people and systems to “future-proof” their companies.
Successful Digital Transformation is Not Really About Technology… It’s About the People
Digital transformation is first and foremost “human transformation”. Successfully transitioning into digital always begins with people. First, with customer demand, then the commitment of leadership, and then the full buy-in from employees.
“Do not put technology at the heart of your digital transformation, because, in reality, it’s the people that drive success!”
Implementing a successful digital transformation is only achieved when your employees, customers, vendors, and partners adopt a digital mindset.
And all that begins with leadership!
5 Major Phases of Nurturing a Digital Culture
Digital transformation, digital maturity, or technology transformation — whatever you call it — is proof that technology is transforming entire organizations. This change requires a work environment that not only embraces digital from top to bottom, but also ensures your people are informed, engaged, and empowered.
The 3 main reasons why manufacturing is facing a workforce crisis….
Create a Digital Business Strategy
Involve and Engage Leadership and the Entire Team
Uncover Specific Improvements and Technologies
Put Data at the Center of Decision Making
Invest in Employee Training
“Put employee experience at the center of your digital transformation strategy”
Big Data and its Role as Driver of Digital Transformation
Big Data sounds like it is reserved for large enterprise companies like Amazon, Facebook, and Google, but that is not the case. With cloud computing and the ability to access enterprise-level technology through the right IT partner, small to mid-size companies can now use data to transform their business.
How small to mid-size businesses can use data:
- Provide valuable customer insights
- Identify trends
- Do competitive analysis
- Improve 0perations
- Attract and retain top talent
- Handle routine tasks and save time
- Reducing costs
- Launch effective marketing campaigns
- Real-time analytics
“The goal is to turn data into information, and information into insights.”
Formulating a Digital Transformation Strategy
The 6 Essential Steps To Drive Digital Transformation Success
Clearly Define a Purpose
Engage key staff and partners
Retain proven expert partners
Make it Customer-Centric
Choose Scalable Solutions
Keep Everything Cybersecure
Digital Transformation and its Impact on Cybersecurity
Regardless of what your digital footprint is now, or what it will become as you travel down the digital transformation road, it will be put to risk as small to mid-sized businesses are now the perfect target for cyber-criminals.
Why? Because cyber-attackers know they are the most vulnerable!
Protecting infrastructure, your employees, data, and customers’ private information from being stolen or accessed has become one of the biggest challenges that companies face!
“Digital Transformation is Business Transformation”
To survive and stay relevant, all companies are going through some type of digital transformation, to be more profitable, efficient, or their customers are demanding it. The catch is, with this increase of digital technology, mobile devices, and the interconnection of things, there are a multitude of endpoints that criminals can attack.
It isn't 'if' you will be attacked and breached; it is "when!" There is a hacker-attack every 39 seconds. Over 1,600 IT decision-makers found that security is the greatest digital transformation hurdle.
“Cybersecurity is a business-critical problem, and over 60% of
small businesses close their doors in 18-months after a breach.”
Creating A Digital Transformation Roadmap
A digital roadmap is a blueprint for action, allowing you to align digital initiatives with business objectives. The roadmap typically focuses on the short or medium-term initiatives set in full detail, with later needs outlined more broadly.
What’s the Value of a Digital Roadmap?
A roadmap will help align your stakeholders with your team. It will help you prioritize key initiatives, reduce changes in direction, avoid cost overruns, help you stick to timelines, and track and measure your performance.
You Digital Transformation Roadmap Should Answer These Questions:
- What are your business goals?
- How can they be achieved through digital?
- What's our current position compared to where we want to be?
- What is each initiative going to cost?
- What are the barriers?
- How long will they take?
- How will we measure ROI?
- How will we measure success?
“If you don’t know where you are going… how will you get there?”
Future-Proofing Your Business By Outsourcing
Your Digital Transformation
It doesn’t take businesses long to understand that “going digital” is easier said than done. Small to medium-sized companies, especially in healthcare, manufacturing, and professional services, realize that becoming “future-proof” in today’s climate is directly related to technology and their digital transformation.
Digital Transformation is all about leveraging new technologies to improve every part of a business. And emerging technologies like the cloud, AI, IoT, augmented reality, and collaboration tools are changing the way every organization operates.
“It is estimated that over $400 billion a year is misguided when used in digital transformation efforts!”
Becoming a digital-mature company is a multi-year journey, and will include many bumps along the road. As you focus on your business, connecting with a company that has in-depth knowledge and experience with all of the technology challenges, cyber-risks, changing regulations, and the demands of the new digital customer is vital.
5 Reasons to Consider Outsourcing Digital Transformation
Digital transformation demands broad company changes that require expertise in a wide array of technologies.
While a digital transformation can seem daunting to business leaders, it's a normal day's work for a skilled IT service provider. They know what steps you need to take and when to take them.
Small to mid-size companies are now the target for cyber-criminals. Protecting your company from a cyber-attack and breach can be an extinction event and is a critical part of your future.
Partnering with an experienced IT provider gives you the ability to control costs by scaling both the size of your team and your technology uses according to business demand. No more large infrastructure costs once you are utilizing the proper digital technologies.
When you partner with the right size IT Service Provider, companies don't have to add all of the capabilities they need for their digital transformation. Tapping into the enterprise-level tools of a Manage Service Provider allows you to fill the technology gaps efficiently and cost-effectively.