According to Forbes, digital transformation can be defined as “incorporating digital technology into a business”.
Perhaps you have championed digital transition in the past and invested significantly in upgrading your infrastructure – only to fall short of your goals. If this is the case, you are not alone!
Inside this guide you will discover reasons to embrace digital transformation, the barriers to successfully achieving it, and how to overcome them.
Looking Back to Move Forward
Looking back to understand how we arrived where we are helps to clarify the potential of the future.
1. Digitization was the process of moving information from analog (papers, binders, faxes) to digital (files and folders on computers).
2. Digitalization involved finding ways to automate complex processes to work faster and more efficiently.
As you can see, up until this point, technology was used to speed up the old way of doing things. Cue digital transformation!
3. Digital transformation is altering the way business is done and even generating entirely new types of businesses. A leading CRM company sums it up best: “A key element of digital transformation is understanding the potential of your technology. Again, that doesn’t mean asking “How much faster can we do things the same way?” It means asking “What is our technology really capable of, and how can we adapt our business and processes to make the most of our technology investments?””
One pivotal difference between digital transformation and its predecessors is that it aims to add value to interactions with your clients and customers.
Exciting times!
Reasons to Accelerate Digital Transformation
Because digital transformation encourages organizations to reassess everything, the benefits listed below are only the tip of the iceberg:
- Future-proofing companies with the ability to quickly adapt to new ecosystems.
- Beat the competition with offerings driven by real-time data, innovative methodologies, and valuable metrics.
- Scalable with digital technologies such as cloud services etc.
- Better decisions thanks to centralized and integrated information.
Barriers to Digital Transformation
Actress Lauren Bacall noted, “Standing still is the fastest way of moving backwards in a rapidly changing world.”
Yet there are valid reasons* why many organizations struggle to successfully adopt digital transformation:
- Organizational silos affect every aspect of digital transformation from strategy to funding and implementation.
- Budgetary constraints fueled by overly cautious decision makers (often in silos).
- Resistance to change by frontline staff.
- A shortage of IT skills and resources.
- Little collaboration between business and IT.
- Rapid growth resulting in multiple stop-gap functionalities with too many satellite applications or point-to-point connections.
- The increasingly complex data landscape makes it difficult to collect, integrate, and govern. (IDC predicts that “the global datasphere will grow from 45 zettabytes in 2019 to 175 by 2025”!)
*Note how few challenges are based on tech infrastructure, and how many are organizational and process related. This may explain the frustration described at the beginning of the article.
Simplifying IT for Digital Transformation
So how do you overcome these challenges?
Simplification.
Once you have simplified IT and eliminated complexity in preparation for digital transformation, you can highlight the link between investing in digital technology and the strategic value it produces for your business.
- Outline your goals. Only when you define what you’re trying to achieve with the transformation can you determine what processes need to be changed and how they should be changed.
- Use intelligent demand management to clarify the IT resources and their cost drivers required to maintain daily operations and initiate new projects.
- Simplify the data landscape by consolidating and decommissioning applications and interfaces.
- Eliminate bottlenecks by reducing management layers, enhancing extents of control, and ensuring that business and IT functions are aligned.
- Cut down on capex and system management by moving to cloud-based infrastructure.
- Partner with the professionals to help you radically simplify the complexity of digital transformation.
Has your organization already implemented new tech to perform old functions better or faster? Are you now ready to shift mindsets and unleash the capacity for innovation that will drive the firm’s success for years to come?
Then you are in the right place! Grace Federal Solutions provides a network of systems operations personnel, database developers, and IT consultants. We also conduct organizational assessments and initiate interventions to optimize your network effectiveness. Contact us today to boost your digital transformation.
