In our last post we covered some of the key tips for a successful digital transformation. And we’ve learned that a digital transformation is never really finished.
A clear picture of what you want to achieve by your transformation is key when starting out, but the business will change, your objectives will change and what your customers demand of you will change.
Ensure you always keep your front-line employees abreast of your DX strategy, and make it easy for them to feed back to you what is, and isn’t, working.
1. Collaboration with employees must be a major part of the process
Once you have senior management buy-in for your DX project, it’s important to ensure employee support and acceptance of the business transformation. Employees will be the ones on the ground, using the new resources to improve customer experience and other activities. It needs to be a joint effort and demonstration of the new systems and gathering feedback is key. Ensure you’ve clearly illustrated how the new systems makes life easier for employees, more beneficial for customers and more flexible and able to provide greater value to the business.
2. Validation and reporting of performance is key
Develop methods of analysing and reporting DX performance in line with business objectives, taking into consideration such things as financial investment, time to implement, impacts on the company’s culture, changes to operations and the response of customers. Implementing new systems without the necessary support activities such as testing and training, process documentation, performance measurement, analytics, management support and emergency response are destined to fail.
3. Ensure employees are well trained on new systems
Comprehensive training and awareness activities ensure greater employee support during business transformation programs. Training can be both in-person and remote and should include all employees, senior management and anyone else that will be a frontline user of the new technology. Feeling comfortable and eager to use the DX systems equals a greater chance of success.
4. Testing, testing, testing
Test systems extensively before putting them into production to ensure all possible bugs and issues are identified and fixed before roll out. Invite key customers and employees to participate in testing activities, as the way someone unfamiliar with the system uses it will vary greatly from someone who has prior knowledge of how things should work.
5. Develop disaster recovery plans for digital transformation systems
Emergency and disaster recovery plans are essential for any technology systems to minimise business interruptions should something go wrong. The vendor should be able to provide support to ensure their systems are properly protected, network services are always available and backups are frequently performed. Cloud-based systems must be properly secured and regularly backed up and stored in case of emergency.
6. Once training is done, adjust systems based on user feedback
The best resources for ensuring proper system performance are the people that use the systems regularly. Frequent users can suggest improvements to customer experience and will find new and innovative ways the system can operate.
7. Frequently review performance of new systems against business objectives
The digital transformation program will never truly be complete. Consistent review and analysis of performance and financial data against the pre-transformation metrics will highlight the value the new systems bring to the business. Report these to senior management. This data can also be analysed to determine further improvements and to reinforce to employees the value of they, and the system, bring to the business.
