Digital Strategy - Practices That Can Help

Digital journey, digital maturity, digital transformation - choose the phrase that sounds best to you because they mean the same. Lot of hue and cry, awareness and benefits of digitalization have been discussed already in more detail by experts and every software professional service company is weaving their service portfolio around digitalization and how they could help businesses realize the potential of digitalisation. Nevertheless, my intention is not to repeat what has already been discussed and debated. One thing that seems missing from all the available data is how exactly businesses need to approach the whole idea of digital and what is the starting point. While it’s true there is no defined standards or agreed upon step by step approach to digitalization, there are certain guidelines that can help identify the right course of action for businesses. Here I will highlight where to begin and what to keep in mind.

Vision: Without setting a vision for what you want to be with random organizational directives to digitalization is like shooting in the dark! Digital initiatives & solutions that discounts a larger vision may bring temporary relief to certain areas of the business but in the long run those initiatives may turn out futile because a larger picture was not thought through and a cumulative vision was not established. Businesses usually struggle in this stage due to various factors, typical being the difference of opinions and perceptions among the stakeholders, gaining a common ground is difficult but not impossible. In most cases, a third-party consulting firm may drive and facilitate the vision setting exercise. The outcome of this phase is a strong vision and mission statement that will serve as a goal blueprint for future.

Your vision setting exercise should consider the following at a minimum

• Acknowledge problem persistence
• Conduct collaborative workshops between key stakeholders of the business
• Feed market trends, opportunities and competitive intelligence into the vision
• Set a vision that aligns with business goals

Current State Assessment: Taking stock of your current state scenario is as important as the whole digitalization effort. A thorough review and assessment of each area of your business, systems & processes gives food for thought and puts things in perspective. Typically, businesses are skeptical during this stage because they are too accustomed to legacy practices and aversions arise to such an exercise. The final outcome of this phase is a comprehensive documentation on current state systems and processes supplemented with recommended future state digital improvements.

Points that can help

• Leverage techno-functional experts specializing in your industry. Domain - businesses can leverage outside consulting firms.

• Assuming you have chosen the right consulting firm who are experts in your industry, a comprehensive study of the current state should be carried out to identify potential focus areas. It is a common misconception that digital applies only to consumer facing aspects of your business operations whereas the fact is digital transformation applies to every aspect of your business operations be it marketing, merchandising, user experience, technology, operations, business processes and anything specific to your industry. It is imperative that an assessment is carried out in all areas of the business to identify opportunities for digitalization.

Strategic Roadmap: With a clear picture of business vision accompanied with a documented future state solution, a strategic roadmap with directives should be formalized. Creating roadmap aligns and directs your organization through the journey toward accomplishing your strategy and developing practiced maturity. In a world of continually changing landscapes, the journey towards a destination is often fraught with challenges. A plan which places guideposts along that journey to denote milestones that represent your progress and provide the opportunity to reassess the travels ahead needs to be framed.

Your strategic roadmap should cover

• Digital initiatives with defined milestones
• Strategy & solutions accompanying the initiatives
• Transition plans & activities accompanying the transition
• Business process transformations

Define Tactical Projects: Your roadmap reflects the larger picture of the overall digital strategy and digital solutions you want to embrace but it may not give you a clear picture of what exactly is the work involved and how it needs to be accomplished. With each area in perspective, tactical projects for execution with defined milestones for releases needs to be identified. You may have several tactical projects identified in different areas and necessarily they may not have a linear path for execution, a strategic directive for execution should be laid out with clearly defined KPIs and a traceable progress. Another hurdle usually businesses face at this stage is the aversion from internal stakeholders that are directly impacted by the change a tactical project is going to bring in. A new technology or business process is obviously going to impact the day to day operating procedures of internal stakeholders, this is a challenge for leadership to address and bring on board all the impacted stakeholders.

Addressing tactical project challenges & people issues

• Create an environment & culture of positive changes that addresses people challenges and process alignments.

• Leverage existing resources & people for execution of tactical projects, this gives them confidence and they feel secure about their jobs.

• Initiate system & process trainings for existing resources prior to launching new systems.

• Keep people updated about business initiatives, goals and upcoming changes so they are prepared to handle it.

5. Directing Execution: The Execution of your roadmap represents the activities and effort it requires to get from one milestone to the next on your journey to maturity and strategic success. How you execute will determine how efficiently and effectively you achieve those milestones. Poor execution can hinder progress or result in costly resources being lost to misaligned efforts.

Key points you should focus on for successful executions

• A well-established execution methodology to continually align and assess tactical efforts and improve results is required during every stages of the execution.

• Due diligence has to be shed across project scoping, planning, launching and calibrating the systems.

Continuous Innovation: Your path to digital strategy does not end when you attain a future state solution. Today’s digital economy requires continually evaluating market trends and adapting solutions to keep up with customer expectations. At the same time, a channel for continuous evaluation by collecting feedback, monitoring performance, and calibrating operations to address unexpected results. A culture of continuous innovation cycle must be inculcated in the organization to be competitive.