Digital Transformation: Building a Strategy, ROI, and Human Touch.

Over the last two years, many companies and industries have found themselves adopting or building technologies to catch up to a wave of digital transformation seen across different sectors. COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the speed and urgency of digital transformation within companies that needed to change how they engaged with internal and external users of their systems and tools.

McKinsey surveyed 1,140 executives regarding their current business models and found that 11% of those surveyed believed their business model would be economically viable through 2023, and 64% of those executives said their companies must build new digital businesses to stay ahead. 

With the increase of building and adopting new technology, how do you ensure the digital transformation is successful? Navigating this digital transformation can be difficult, but it doesn’t need to be. We’re going to explore how to create a solid digital transformation strategy, ensure that your ROI framework to guide your transition is viable, and how to keep the human touch to make your business stand out amongst your competitors. 

Creating a Successful Digital Transformation Strategy

Creating a digital transformation strategy is more than picking the right technology for your business; it includes people and processes that help execute your strategy. Before jumping feet first into the unknown, some thought should go into planning a roadmap for success. So before you can even think about “technology,” you need to think about…

• Align on a vision of where the world is going, what space you want to play in, and what you need to develop to get there. 
• Review your existing environment, from legacy systems and applications to business processes. Once this is done, it becomes easier to identify the gaps that digital transformation can improve. 
• Build out a digital roadmap
• Establish a timeline on how long each step on the roadmap will take. Make sure your timeline is realistic and provide benchmarks for the actual results. 

Target is an excellent example of a successful digital transformation. In 2016, Target took a leap of faith and started building out its digital roadmap, which has paid off.

ROI Framework to Guide Digital Transformation

Measuring your return on your digital transformation is tricky. The traditional business value calculations may not work with your digital transformation’s ongoing and evolving technological change. Instead, creating a plan and goals for your digital transformation will help keep you on target and on budget. Then, businesses can directly calculate the return on investment compared to the cost. Below are a couple of tips to help you create that framework:

• Focus on one digital transformation goal at a time. Identifying a single goal helps businesses plan and strategize on using appropriate measures and use current existing resources that the company has already. 
• Use a variety of metrics to build your ROI model. Doing this ahead of time will allow you to make sure you are tracking all the pertinent metrics such as:  
  • Adoption and perforation metrics – Adoption is one of the essential business transformation metrics. A high digital adoption rate is one of the key indicators to a successful digital transformation. For example, if 85% of users are utilizing the software, you can assume that the software adoption is successful; under 50%, you face a poor technology adoption. 
  • Time Saving Workflows and Error Reduction – Has your project resulted in users being able to do their job in fewer systems resulting in time savings? Perhaps they can perform the same processes with fewer steps thanks to automation? Has the system helped reduce the number of errors or work that needed to be fixed?
  • Cost of digital initiatives – While cost can be calculated by the overall cost of implementing a project, there are other things to consider as well; systems, tools, and sometimes even people that are no longer needed to perform work that was previously manual and error-prone prior to the transformation event. 

Global digital transformation spending is forecasted to reach $2.8 trillion U.S. dollars by 2025. Having your metrics and goals in place will help build a successful digital transformation framework.

Keeping the Human Touch

It is easy to get caught up in the technology trends and forget about the human element of the business. The human part is twofold, your employees and your customers. Keeping the human touch through the digital transformation is critical for the success of your business and the retention of your customers. 

Managing employees through digital transformation is very important. But, first, they need to know they have a voice in their company. By investing in training, creating a culture where experimentation is allowed, and encouraging collaboration, you can create a business environment for your employees that is open to digital transformation.

Customers expect good customer experiences or find a company that will provide it. Salesforce surveyed 15,000 global shoppers, and 85% of business buyers and 79% of consumers said the experience a company provides is as important as its products and services. Apple co-founder Steve Jobs knew the importance of customer-centricity when he said, “You’ve got to start with the customer experience and work backwards for the technology.” As a result, customer experience has overtaken other business goals and is a number one priority for the world’s major businesses. And you can’t have an outstanding customer experience without a human touch.

Digital transformation must focus on the problems that require the most attention in your organization. You can navigate a successful transformation with a strong strategy, ROI metrics, and people-focused culture.   

Blueprint Advisory works with companies of all sizes and stages to achieve their digital transformation goals, from building Salesforce products to managing enterprise implementations. Not sure where to start? Then Let’s Connect.