By Rajesh Srinivas Rao, Senior Vice President of India Delivery Operations, CriticalRiver
The value of digital transformation (DX) technologies, such as data analytics, IoT, automation, AI, ML, and others, lies in their potential to help an enterprise achieve greater productivity and profitability. However, research suggests that around 70% of DX projects fail. Also, it takes about three years for a company to become competitive in its market, even if it starts getting the expected outcomes from digitalization.
While replacing their old technologies and tools with new digital solutions, there are a few things that organizations can do differently to maximize their DX success. Here are four magic mantras that can help organizations excel in delivery and operations :
1. Thinking beyond technologies
The move to digitalization is not simply about downloading a few applications and software. In fact, a Bain report suggests that DX leaders spend much less on technology than others. What makes them successful is that they simply direct their investments into innovative products and services instead of keeping legacy systems active. Strategic DX project managers also plan ways to cover their transformation costs by selectively implementing technology in areas where they can maximize their ROI. They maintain transparent records of all expenses and source essential tools from the service providers who can fulfill requirements most closely. Such leaders also take care to keep new system configurations simple and scalable.
2. Being agile is good, but not enough
Although adopting an agile approach helps software development teams transform their operations and business offerings rapidly, the team members involved in the process are deeply dependent on each other. To make consistent progress while using this strategy, the three elements that organizations must focus on include the business model and frameworks they follow, the possibilities of scaling with agile, and the ways to enhance collaborative project management. Also, they must supplement their progress on agile DX projects with other efforts to modernize infrastructure and develop new skills. In an agile work environment, companies also tend to evaluate DX outcomes at their key milestones or the project end. However, assessing the impact of every process change is more efficient. Effective DX success comes when teams continually understand metrics such as features that build business value and the capabilities that remain underutilized in any department. Based on such knowledge, a company can rework its backlog and build better go-to-market strategies. Agile provides you a approach but agile should be embedded into mindset that should drive the outcome for Software Development.
3. DX success needs more than data analytics and front-end digitalization
Digitalization has many aspects, and even though improving customer experiences and augmenting data analytics capabilities are critical areas to focus on, there is a lot more to achieve. Successful DX leaders keep upgrading their foundational setups and progressively eliminating legacy deadlocks. They do not neglect any core technology issues and work to integrate and optimize a service-oriented architecture. Amazon, one of the top DX leaders today, started investing in architecture modernization in the early 2000s, when it modularized its monolithic technology stack to initiate the process of explosive business growth it had planned. Such examples show that DX is not merely a technology project for one or two functions of an enterprise – it concerns the entire business. Digitalization journey should encompass the IT Landscape where Organization wide Processes are included to look at Faster, Better & Efficient way of delivering services to customers.
4. Slow and steady wins the race
According to Forrester, 21% of organizations believe (falsely) that they have already completed their DX tasks. Such companies will soon realize that DX at any level is a slow and ongoing process with no shortcuts. Each entity needs to design its own journey and set priorities for transformation plans that lead to improvement. While none can maximize success in every category of business functions, they must focus on what matters most to their growth in their industry. Also, while companies must plan their DX tasks in multiple fields and most operational processes are interdependent, radical changes are likely to fail. It is wise to adopt an incremental approach and take measures to ensure sustainability while handling a DX project.
An organization can also leverage a discovery-driven planning model to test assumptions on what works, build new knowledge, and minimize risks. As its workforce becomes more comfortable with horizontal communications and the tasks that digitalization enables, it can embrace new ways of working at an incremental pace. Organization wide transformation starts with identifying key processes and understanding all inter dependencies which can be prioritized into your DX Strategy, with the ROIs calculated and how new technology can be implemented into this framework to expand the business and make it robust against economic & competition. The Digital landscape is expanding boundaries and enabling businesses small & large, closing in the differentiation of Size & Revenue, with an active eye on what can be achieved and implemented, One can build an effective strategy around DX initiatives.
Conclusion
Digital transformation is a complex process. Many projects do not deliver the expected results because of process orchestration across multifaceted architectures, the constant evolution of new technologies, increasing business transaction volumes, and coordination between multiple stakeholders.
It is vital to revisit your older legacy systems and architecture and assess if that’s scaling to next generation and expansion needs in enhancing your organization goals and meeting outcomes. Invest in new technology and frameworks to have efficiency built into your new DX journeys. Start now. As they say: Change is the only constant. Don’t resist change, embrace it with planned steps and fulfill your current and future customer landscape needs for delivering customer delight.
Business competition is fierce, and the external economic environment will force businesses to think outside the box to undertake the DX journey earnestly, making transformative initiatives more important than ever and creating a heightened need for cost and operational efficiency, and making it an integral part of their corporate growth strategy.
