You want growth for your business, but how do you achieve it? You can try to predict which departments you can most easily scale—but that growth can sometimes be temporary, as 67% of strategic plans fail because they don't adapt as challenges arise. The answer might be to adopt digital transformation, which can help you in many areas now and in the future. Digital transformation and automation will see a higher investment in more technology (35%). However, you may not know how to best implement these changes. Working with your internal team to develop a solid digital transformation roadmap is vital, as there are many points to consider.
Read on to learn more about developing an effective digital transformation strategy for your company.
What is digital transformation?
Before working on a digital transformation strategy, you need to understand what it is and why you need it.
First off, it’s important to understand what digital transformation is not. Contrary to some beliefs, it is not just limited to data collection, organization, and storage.
In a nutshell, digital technologies can streamline existing business processes or create new ones. For example, automation can significantly reduce the time your Customer Success team spends on repetitive tasks such as client onboarding and internal reporting and can also help you reduce your overhead costs.
Consider that the digital transformation market is expected to grow at 16.5% per year until 2025, with its value topping $1 trillion. This suggests that many of your competitors will undergo a digital transformation soon (if they haven't already).
More than 70% of businesses have already adopted or plan to adopt a strategy. If you plan to implement one soon, you can learn from others who have tried unsuccessfully. Creating a detailed framework is an important starting point.
Creating a successful digital transformation roadmap
Don't be intimidated by the term "digital transformation roadmap." It's not as complicated as it might seem when you have the right approach.
However, you want to ensure you execute your plan right the first time to avoid pitfalls. In an article about digital transformation benefits, McKinsey & Company notes that less than 30% of initiatives are successful.
But, if you have a detailed plan and rollout strategy, you can be among the group that benefits from a digital-first initiative. Read on to find out how you can develop a winning digital transformation framework that will help your company, your staff—and, of course, your clients.
Get executive team buy-in and establish a budget
Your first step starts at the top with your C-suite executives. They are the ones that will ultimately give the green light on any digital strategy.
Like any major company move, you must make a sound business case for the change. This means you'll have to present the business benefits of digital transformation. You'll also have to develop a rough budget of how much the initiative will cost the company. But don't forget also to stress how much the move will save the company through better efficiency.
For example, you can highlight digital transformation business benefits such as increased productivity, less mental stress for your teams, and increased customer engagement (and more business opportunities). That can all translate to a healthier bottom line, your overall goal.
Start small
Trying to build a digital transformation roadmap too quickly can be your downfall. The process should be developed in steps, with input from your teams, to identify areas that can benefit. Research shows that 55% of firms with strong execution believe the free flow of information across organizational boundaries is advantageous.
Talk to your staff across various departments who do the work every day and find out which tasks in each could easily be streamlined. Then you can better focus on which processes and types of digital transformation should be adopted.
For example, you could take advantage of Wrk’s Marketing Wrkflows, which can automate the time-consuming and repetitive tasks of email nurturing campaigns and lead generation, both keys to success.
Identify key players and form a cross-functional team
When building a cross-functional team to lead your digital transformation framework, you'll want to identify key members across various departments to be part of it.
Getting your Chief Digital Officer on board to help guide the process is the best place to start. If you don't have one, then you might consider hiring for one. They will oversee and lead any digital initiatives for your organization.
If you don't have the budget to hire a C-suite officer dedicated to digital, that's okay. You can still move forward with confidence. Turn to exist team members with the most technical expertise to help develop your digital plan. They don't necessarily have to be part of the department you're looking to implement digital strategies for.
While you're at it, get a reliable Finance team member to join the group. They can ensure your decisions are within the budget and make suggestions where needed. A Compliance team member is also a good idea to keep you on track with any requirements and regulations to consider.
Establish goals and identify KPIs
Before choosing actual solutions to implement, make sure your goals are clearly stated. You could miss a key element of your framework if you buy into tools that won't serve all of your needs.
One effective way to help with this process is by identifying key performance indicators (KPIs). They are quantifiable measurements that tell you about your company's long-term performance.
KPIs can show you important financial data, such as your ratio of cash availability versus liquidity. But more importantly, for a digital transformation strategy, it can show you what your per-customer efficiency is—and how well you're retaining existing buyers.
Research and pick your solution
Next, you're ready to choose the right solution provider.
Make sure your team members can use the solutions effectively. Ideally, these will be tools that are easy to navigate across the board. You don't want to be eating up hours of productivity on the phone for tutorials from a solution provider. You'll also want to ensure the solutions won't take up a lot of time to implement.
The Wrk platform was designed explicitly with simplicity in mind. Our unique ‘building block’ structure breaks down automation barriers so anybody can build workflows that leverage bots, API integrations, Robotic Process Automation (RPA), and humans without technical skills. That means more time realizing digital transformation business benefits and less time updating everyone on processes.
Start a testing and phased approach
Once you've confidently chosen the right solution to move forward with your digital transformation strategy, your initial instinct might be "full steam ahead" since you've already completed all the preliminary work to get to this point. But starting in smaller steps rather than sprints is important to ensure a smooth transition.
Roll out your strategy in phases, so you can get a better picture of how each step is impacting your operation. Gradual approaches to following your digital transformation roadmap can also ensure there are fewer hiccups.
If there are issues, you can more easily identify specific processes causing them with a phased approach.
Measure your results
Once you've rolled out the full digital transformation strategy, you'll want to know if it's helping your company and tracking the impacts.
You can look at individual performance markers, such as how much time a particular solution saves your team. This can also be achieved by discussing the changes with your team and hearing about their experiences firsthand.
You can also look at trends to determine how much digital transformation will save the company. This is also helpful to keep the rest of the decision-making team on board for the future.
Create your digital transformation roadmap today
If you've started rolling out your roadmap in measured phases, you're well on your way. This can allow you to more accurately measure the results of each rollout to judge how digital transformation might benefit other areas of your company.
You can identify additional repetitive tasks in other departments that can be streamlined with various types of digital transformation, including automation.
These automated digital solutions can be utilized in a variety of ways. They are helpful for the task of onboarding customers more easily, which can help you retain them. Digital transformation can also support remote teams, which is more relevant now than ever, as 72% of employers recently expressed they plan to stick with a work-from-home or hybrid model.
Of course, it all comes down to the bottom line. Digital transformation can help you connect with existing customers more effectively while automatically qualifying leads. It also means freeing up time for your teams to do what they do best, boosting their productivity while taking some unnecessary pressure off them.
Hybrid Automation can be the ideal solution that you've been looking for to increase your company's efficiency and productivity. We designed the Wrk platform to ensure it’s easy to execute and simple to use.
Want to learn more? Book a call with one of our experts today.
