This blog is a playbook for CEOs on how they should own digital transformation journeys and drive the entire team bottom up towards a shared goal. Digital transformation is about building digital capabilities for product development, business processes, and customer experiences. We are already in the digital era and the pandemic has in fact accelerated the pace of digital disruption in businesses. Digital transformation is therefore now an imperative. The changing landscape calls for constant innovation in business processes in order to stay competitive in a dynamic environment and build resilience to deal with disruptions without business discontinuity or downtime. In this blog, we articulate 5 points that CEOs should keep in mind in order to ensure that the digital transformation journey creates value for stakeholders.
Reimagine business in a digitized environment
CEOs should embrace the dynamic business environment and think outside of their comfort zone to identify potential opportunities for value creation through digital transformation. Value innovation opportunities and objective scan exist anywhere along the value chain. It could be enabling scalability of businesses, achieving operational efficiency and speed through automation, letting go of legacy applications and equipment that are draining the bottom lines, or enhancing data privacy and data security controls. But the most critical role of a CEO is to be able to envision the opportunity, reimagine business in a disruptive scenario and visualize the value that it will bring to the stakeholders.
Evaluate Digital maturity level
It is not necessary that digital transformation should be taken up across the board all at once. Low-hanging fruits should be identified as a starting point for digital transformation. CEOs should envision business opportunities in the redefined environment and then prioritize areas where the digital transformation will create the most value. CEOs should assess the current digital maturity levels of the organization and then draw out a road map to take digital capabilities to the next level. This should then be prioritized as part of IT strategy with milestones optimized for business dynamics and budget bandwidth.
Make digital transformation a shared vision
While CEO will define the digital transformation strategy and roadmap, Chief Information Officers (CIOs) and Chief Technology Officers (CTOs) are the ones who build the engines for the process of transformation. But the Chief Marketing Officers, Chief Finance Officers, Chief Operating Officers, and CHROs are also important significant contributors to the success Therefore, bringing about a shared vision and a buy-in for shared responsibility is a critical role for the CEO in order to drive the success of digital transformation bottom up.
Data-driven value creation
A digital transformation initiative is of no value to the business if it does not translate into a competitive advantage for organizations over other players in the industry either in operational efficiency or enhanced customer experience. A data-driven approach will help businesses collect customer data, and translate them into deeper insights that can be used to steer the business to greater heights. CEO would do well to look into Investments in advanced technology for the acquisition, processing, evaluation, and analysis of data which can optimize the organization’s processes and services.
Result-oriented implementation strategy
All of the points mentioned above will not lead to desired results if implementation plans are not well articulated. This includes several aspects that CEOs should address right at the beginning of the digital transformation journey.
Resources mobilization to ensure the entire team has a digital mindset. This may have to include removing roadblocks and assigning clear responsibilities.
Freeing up resources so as not to allow operational budgets to compete with digital transformation.
Architecting a cohesive roadmap in terms of infrastructure and business processes and business intelligence
Managing culture transition to a digitized environment in a harmonious and result-oriented way.
Essentially, what is expected of a CEO is a conscious effort rather than leaving it to chance to ensure that the initiatives do not end up in mere fragmented technology changes which ultimately will not lead to a transformation in the way business processes will operate. Instead, it will only end up being a drain on the budget.
Digital transformation is disrupting businesses. A hesitant and half-hearted initiative to redefine business processes will leave organizations behind in a landscape where there is continuous emergence of new players who are reaping benefits by embracing technology. A customer-centric and last-mile digitization approach is the formula for the success of digital transformation journeys. Are you ready to embark on your digital transformation journey? Get in touch with us at www.goavega.com and we will handhold you all through starting with an evaluation of your current landscape, articulating the roadmap, navigating the complexities, and preparing your organization for stakeholder expectations that are constantly evolving towards higher value creation.