Digital transformation efforts lacking an efficient business strategy also lack success. The implementation of successful digital transformations could add to business value, revenue growth, and greater customer satisfaction while giving you a competitive advantage.
Statista shows that 43% of global businesses are using a digital transformation process to reach more consumers, while another 42% of companies are improving efficiency in business processes with new digital capabilities. Furthermore, 40% of companies use digital investments for efficient data analytics.
Streamline business operations by adopting digital channels, enhancing digital literacy, and implementing a business-forward digital transformation set to help you remain competitive in an ocean of software adoption. Start today with our digital transformation best industry practices.
What Is Digital Transformation?
A digital transformation journey looks unique for every business. However, some descriptions can better define software adoption in a digital economy for all businesses. A digital transformation initiative describes a transition allowing businesses to implement new business models on a digital platform.
Digital transformation projects provide a roadmap, showing how companies establish automation and digital initiatives using the right technology suited to employees, product owners, and stakeholders adapting to a new method of conducting business, ultimately achieving a successful transition.
The Key to Successful Digital Transformation Initiatives
The right digital transformation strategy should enable executives and other stakeholders to address key challenges within a company, ultimately redefining how the company culture, productivity, operational efficiency, customer satisfaction, and business models evolve the business value.
Digital strategies differ, with some adopting a complete transformation process while others simply invest in software automating routine tasks. Still, transformation success for good business outcomes relies upon a critical factor: transformation efforts must follow digital journey best practices.
A business-forward digital journey starts with setting goals for process efficiency and the successful adaptation of technology to enable new capabilities and opportunities. Statista reveals that business goals driving digital transformation worldwide include the following:
- 32% of companies are trying to expand into new industries
- 40% of businesses aim to improve product and service delivery
- 48% of organisations aim to reduce their carbon emissions
- 76% of companies make cybersecurity one of their top priority initiatives
- Strategic cloud migration is another one of the top priorities for digital transformation
Why Digital Transformation Efforts Fail
The vast majority of digital transformation failures relate to a lack of individual initiative and impatience. Deloitte reveals that 70% of business digital transformation strategies fail, which is primarily due to a misunderstanding of the time-consuming and strategic commitment to the strategy.
Deloitte suggests it takes roughly three years to meet customer expectations and customer demands while implementing individual initiatives tailored to a specific business. Furthermore, the Everest Group reveals three more reasons why digital transformation fails for 73% of enterprises worldwide:
- Leaders fail to add value to the strategy
- Companies overlook their core business goals
- A lack of decision-making capabilities to adapt quickly
What Happens When Digital Transformation Initiatives Fail
Digital transformation without success can lead to drastic consequences in different business areas, with such changes limiting digital scalability, inconsistent training, staff who can’t be flexible, poor knowledge sharing and retention, and high costs and wasted company time. Stay ahead by following the best practices to implement an efficient digital transformation strategy with a framework.
What Is a Framework for Digital Transformation Initiatives?
A digital transformation framework ensures leaders capture and focus on all valuable aspects of the journey, creating a roadmap that embraces change on a strategic level while reducing costs and time. Every digital framework must focus on the following ten elements for greater efficiency:
- Customer needs and experience
- Market demands
- Cultural change
- Effective leadership
- Workforce empowerment
- Operational efficiency
- Business objectives
- Prioritising higher-value activities
- Digital technology integration
- Advanced technologies integration (where relevant)
Best Practices for Successful Digital Transformation
Digital transformation requires commitment, and strategic planning. It also requires companies to adopt new technologies and new tools that meet future goals. A recent survey by Broadridge found that successful transformation initiatives resulted in 71% increased revenue and 62% improved decision-making. Let’s reveal expert practices and tips to help enterprises be competitive.
Understand Digital Transformation Needs and Business Goals
Digital solutions start with needs or goals, typically resulting from customer demands. A successful digital transformation journey begins with customer experience and market pressures. A comprehensive user, business, and market analysis will reveal gaps your product or services can fulfill.
A business analyst can reveal the gaps within your organization, services, or products, including any related to the shortage of employees’ skills, the need for digital training, and business needs regarding operations and even operational costs you wish to reduce.
The first step is to answer why you need digital transformation by connecting business goals to your upcoming strategy. Consider how digital transformation can improve business processes, supply chain management, revenue growth, legacy systems, and even manual processes to outline the goals.
Focus on Better Customer Experiences
Improving customer experience leads to better customer satisfaction and retention. Aim for a better customer experience with data collected in your business. Gathering advice about improving customer experience in person is one of the most powerful tools enterprises can use.
Experiment with workshops, in-person surveys, online data analysis tools, and digital surveys to collect the data you need to know what your customers need. Outline the pain points facing customers today, focusing on their challenges using your services or buying your products.
New opportunities often represent themselves when an enterprise delves deeper into the needs of everyday customers and their challenges and pain points. Current consumer behaviour is real-world examples that drive top-priority enterprise changes to create innovation at a rapid pace.
Commit to a Digital Transformation Strategy
Fundamentally changing a business strategy to achieve future goals and digital transformation goals with cost savings and increased efficiency in mind requires leaders who commit to the transition. Forbes suggests only 7% of companies commit to digital transformation strategies.
New ideas can’t flourish if a lack of commitment exists in your business, including your employees, customers, and leaders. Meanwhile, stats on digital transformation show that 55% of companies believe they will lose their market-related share if they don’t embrace the transition.
Success follows everyone in your company who embraces change. Creating employee and stakeholder buy-in shows dedication and commitment to your digital strategy before it starts. Read the full article originally published by Forbes to understand why you must prepare the company and employees.
Have the Right Leadership
Many business leaders know it’s crucial to have strong executive leadership to steer your digital transformation ship toward success. Collaboration matters, but strong leaders and executives play an important role, integrate the right resources, and engage the employee teams to commit.
Select a digital-savvy leader with knowledge and extensive expertise. Any team about to transition requires a leader with the expertise and skills to drive progress, deliver constructive feedback, and provide insights about complex digital processes and products.
Agile Methodologies Implementation
Investing in a digital transformation strategy for business growth across all departments can contribute to groundbreaking solutions. Stats show that loyal customers are five times more likely to reuse your product or services and four times more likely to refer you to family and friends.
Transform your business strategy with the Agile methodologies to ensure all customer expectations are met. The model can support continuous improvement to achieve industry solutions to overcome any challenge. An Agile team welcomes feedback, embraces learning, and will respond iteratively.
Hire the Right Talent
Developing skills among employees is crucial to digital transformation success. However, efficient leaders will hire the right talent and skills in the case of shortages. Various case studies will show that the relevant skills can deliver critical industry digital transformation to achieve good outcomes.
Collaboration with highly skilled employees is pivotal, but it’s essential to scale in-house teams lacking the necessary skills. Outsource your IT solutions to a leading custom software development company in the industry to share a vision with like-minded and skilled individuals.
Implement Key Performance Indicators
The inability to track progress in your digital transformation could prevent leaders from identifying project challenges and insights. Enhance operational efficiencies by using data analysis tools and key performance indicators (KPIs). Govern data management to develop the right software products.
Improve productivity among your employees with KPIs and identify anyone failing digital adoption. KPIs can keep motivating the company goals as teams see the progress, but they can also help leaders respond to employees failing to adapt.
Build Future Workforce Capabilities and Skills
Stats reveal that 68% of global business leaders believe AI and human skills drive innovative digital transformation. Developing workforce skills benefits collaboration, a shared vision, and a better return on your investment. Workplace empowerment is about training employees. Scale your investment with formal training for new technologies essential to transformation initiatives.
Using the Right Technology Investments
Innovation begins by choosing the right technology from emerging technology to create products suitable for your business operations, process, and value. Leveraging technology benefits the entire process. For example, a new technology could create seamless business operations.
More digital technology can add more value and create innovation in multiple company areas. For example, stats reveal that 70% of leaders use multi-cloud computing solutions while 80% integrate AI-powered chatbots and 76% of enterprise leaders adopt emerging technologies.
Additionally, implementing machine learning (ML) technology and artificial intelligence (AI) plays a critical role in today’s global data-driven world. Use data analytics tools to gather the right information about customer behaviour or AI to remain available with chatbot automation.
Invest in Cloud Computing
Forbes statistics reveal that 86% of companies believe cloud infrastructure is crucial to digital transformation strategies. Cloud computing enables leaders to provide digital technologies and services to customers with a wider reach and lower operational costs. Our cloud migration services also improve speed and transform your products to widely popular Azure cloud platform, GCP, or AWS services.
Approach Change Management Systematically
Many CIOs or chief information officers realise change management or business transformation is a long process to be victorious. Furthermore, create value by leading the process and employees systematically. Avoid prolonged delivery times when you start small. Launching an entire systems transformation strategy on employees overnight won’t get any buy-in for technology changes.
Empower Employee Productivity in New Ways
Your employees are the well-oiled engine inside your enterprise, and leaders should empower them in every process, operation, or task. For example, the implementation of technology for higher productivity could ensure faster delivered tasks. Improved employee productivity occurs with the right technology to create seamless processes. Adopt efficient CMS or task management tools for in-house projects.
Engage Employees
Encourage employees to aim for the same digital transformation goals all business partners have in mind by engaging current employees in decisions, innovative projects, and development processes. Employee resistance can derail the entire project during digital transformation initiatives. Treat your teams like partners on every project and step of your digital transformation journey.
Upgrade Day-to-Day Digital Tools
Develop new technology to replace legacy systems and outdated digital technologies used in your enterprise. The development of new products and technologies to replace legacy technology should be the first step in digitisation to succeed and evolve among competitors. Establish a reputation for having the ability to provide the latest tech based on research or partnering with a trusted development firm.
Risk Management Implementation
Gain insight into your tech risk involved with a digital transformation strategy. Risk management is essential to support digital transformation initiatives. Many technologies will reduce the risk. For example, digital immunity systems mitigate the risks involved in complex data systems. Gain the ability to protect digital transformation and other areas of your past and future software adoption.
Encourage Open Communication Channels
Advance toward a common goal when you communicate with all departments involved in your transformation efforts. Encourage open communication with every partner, whether in-house or with an outsourced development team. Communicate frequently using digital adoption platforms and traditional methods. Clear communication creates a clear understanding and shared vision.
Encourage a Cultural Shift
Explore a new company culture to solve gaps in your business models. Evaluate the current culture to determine which cultural change mechanisms will benefit your processes. Nurturing culture or changing company culture over the course of weeks could upgrade the organisation’s hard-wired habits. Institute a culture change of working faster, more efficiently, and more productively with digital tools.
Adopting Continuous Learning
A clear understanding of all partner expectations in the experimentation stages of digital transformation efforts help everyone on your team succeed. Learning and training remain priorities for all employees. For example, teach an employee how to effectively use new sales, marketing, and cross-functional technologies. Serve your employees every opportunity to learn beyond existing systems.
Successful Digital Transformation With a Leading Company
Digital transformations in organisations are challenging without the right guidelines, knowledge, expertise, tips, and tools. Many organisations stay competitive by outsourcing software development services to trusted software companies like Pulsion.
Our 28 years of expertise, clients, and case studies showcase our custom software development strategies to help companies with digital transformations. At Pulsion, we follow the best industry practices when developing web design or custom mobile app development projects.
We’ve worked with various organisations and enterprises in multiple industries to serve the best solutions that align with company goals. We can outline several reasons to contact us to discuss digital transformations for sales, marketing, or any other software adoption strategy, whether short-term or long-term.
Summing Up Digital Transformation Best Practices
Enabling better customer satisfaction based on expectations can affect your business future in more ways than imagined. Ensure all prepared roadmap practices and tips are in place before initiating digital transformations with highly accessible and user-friendly designs tailored to align with your needs.
Develop evergreen organisational resilience for enhanced efficiency, and exceptional experiences catered to your customer needs. Contact us today to ensure enhancing efficiency is a priority while reaching more consumers with fewer industry pressures remain prevalent.
FAQs
What are the five main guidelines for successful digital transformation?
The top five practices for a successful digital transformation strategy are focusing on customer experiences, implementing cultural changes, choosing the right leadership, investing in emerging technology, and the ability to align digital transformations with business goals.
What are the 3 R’s of a digital transformation strategy?
Some leaders use the 3 Rs in digital transformations to simplify a business strategy. Digital investments using the 3 R’s focus on reimagining, roadmapping, and resulting. The transformation process must reimagine the digital strategies, roadmap the steps to achieve them, and show the desired results.
What are the 5 domains of a successful digital transformation strategy?
There are more than five domains or elements related to digital transformations. The five primary domains are innovation, customers, value, competition, and data. However, other domains for success in digital transformation initiatives include process transformation, data consolidation, goals, KPI tracking, skill alignment, team empowerment, and changes to business models.
