Does your Business Have a Digital Transformation Strategy?
Over the last few years we have seen the business world taken by storm with a laundry list of chic new buzzwords, headline-grabbing phrases, and fresh business trends and concepts — we have even touched on a few of the higher impact concepts, like hybrid work, in our own past blogs.
Digital transformation is one of those concepts that is disrupting the way we think about the future of business. In short, digital transformation — sometimes shortened to just DT — is a broad definition meaning: adoption of digital technology by a company.
In reality, the concept is more complex. Digital transformation does indeed rely heavily on the adoption of modern or cutting-edge tech, but the real value lies in the outcome of a digital transformation strategy: dramatic, sometimes radical changes sparked by re-thinking processes, strategies, workflows, etc.
At the root of it all, many organizations are striving toward common goals with the implementation of their strategy: improve efficiency, value, or innovation.
With that in mind, creating your own organization’s own digital transformation strategy is obviously about more than just doing company-wide OS Updates on the office desktops.
It is important for your organization to really dissect what is currently going on in the business world and ask a few very important questions — how are individual industries evolving, what does innovation mean to you, how can operational workflows be improved, and how can technologies offload work for human employees, making their jobs more efficient?
These questions, and by extension your entire strategy, cannot be answered or completed overnight. It will take considerable thought, time, and input from many different parties to devise a holistic approach that sets up your company for immediate and long-term success
Seems daunting, right? It’s not just you — businesses across the world are thinking about digital transformation and what it means for them. In fact, in a survey conducted by the research & consultancy firm McKinsey, only 11% of 1,140 business executives believe their current business models will be economically viable through 2023.
What Has Accelerated The Need for a Digital Transformation Strategy?
The need to address digital transformation is more pressing for some organizations than others, but current trends indicate that most businesses, regardless of size, location, or industry should at least begin an inward examination to determine where they stand.
Three main factors have led to the increased global focus on digital transformation:
Increasing consumer demands
Difficult market competition
COVID-19 and the growth of remote and hybrid work
Consumer Behavior: Over the past decade, thanks in part to the rise in technology and the exponential increase in the amount of freely-available and easily-accessible information, consumers have become increasingly expectant and demanding.
Modern consumers expect quick answers, solutions, and delivery, and are not afraid to take their business elsewhere if a business cannot deliver.
This evolution in behavior has led to consumers pressing companies to move faster on production and operations, as businesses can’t afford to miss out on potential revenue.
As a result, the infusion of newer tools and technologies are needed in order to meet consumer timelines and expectations.
Stiff Competition: In part due to the change in consumer demands and behaviors, the market has gotten more competitive across all virtually every industry.
Businesses now find themselves are competing with countless local, national, and even global companies that provide similar products and services.
In order to stay ahead of the competition, organizations need to adapt to be able to meet consumer expectations.
This is true for every aspect of a business, not just the supply chain. Modern businesses are expected to provide great customer service, excellent product/service development, and key differentiators, not to mention constant improvement and innovation.
Key to staying ahead of the competition is advancing to more comprehensive digital tools across an organization.
COVID-19 & Remote Work: In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic flipped the world economy on its head and forever changed how businesses think about operating.
Now, hybrid and remote work models are seen as a dependable, modern way of doing things. However, this sudden dramatic change in infrastructure means that businesses need a digital transformation strategy that can support a new work model — especially those models that are positioned to stick around and be scaled.
How to Form a Digital Transformation Strategy
In order for a digital transformation strategy to be successful, it needs to be holistic — meaning it can’t revolve around one department, but needs to consider the business as a whole, from people to product and process.
Step 1: Start with a Business Assessment
What are you doing well?
What are you doing poorly?
What tools would make workflows more productive and powerful?
What capabilities are your employees lacking on a day-to-day basis due to slow innovation?
Step 2: Brainstorm & Define Goals
Gain input from all stakeholders and employees, regardless of title.
Collect data on what roadblocks exist for your people, and possible solutions to these gaps.
Outline short- and long-term goals with your digital transformation needs (e.x., We immediately need a new cloud-storage solution. In the next two years, we need to incorporate machine learning into our data analytics workflow).
Step 3: Research Solutions & Competitors
Now that shortcomings are clear, it is time to find transformation tools that are worth the investment and will deliver on the desired result.
To find the best solution, this requires market research and competitor analysis to see what others in your space are doing to innovate.
Step 4: Educate & Implement
A digital transformation strategy is only as good as the buy-in from the company and the people.
This requires education on the importance of digital transformation, as well as how processes will change, how to interact with them, and adequate training for all employees with new technologies.
From there, a gradually roll out of these improvements is recommended to ease the growing pains.
Pro tip: try one of Stormboard’s 260+ smart templates for a structured approach to each step.
An Essential Tool to Help With Your Digital Transformation Strategy
Stormboard is a tailor-made solution for planning and implementing a new digital transformation strategy for your business (not to mention that Stormboard itself fits in with the theme of taking your organization digital).
Whether you find yourself in step one, just starting your internal evaluation, or you are all the way down in the last stages of education and implementation, Stormboard can provide your teams with the collaboration, brainstorming, networking, and sharing platform that you will need to ensure the successful kick off the next phase of your organization’s future.
Contact us today or book a no-obligation product demo to find out exactly how Stormboard fits in your digital transformation strategy.
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