Leading Digital Transformation With Purpose

It's very much possible to bring technology to do what you need

In today’s business world, the term “digital transformation” is ubiquitous — to the point of being overused. Every consulting company has a digital transformation practice. Every manufacturer realizes they need digital transformation to remain competitive. Every C-suite executive wants to execute digital transformation. It quickly becomes overwhelming.
 

Despite the relative newness of the term, digital transformation has been with us since the 1970s when people first started using computer-aided design. The popular use of the internet in the 1990s propelled us into the digital age, and the current thinking is that without digital transformation, a company cannot survive. The rubber manufacturer thinks, “We have to conform to tire-manufacturer requirements.” The physician thinks, ”I need to work with the pharmaceutical industry.” The banker thinks, “I have to abide by government regulations.”

Every company, in a sense, is operating as a technical company, as a digital company. It's almost immaterial what your end finished product is — whether you are manufacturing electronics or medicine or airplanes. All of these areas utilize digital transformation. What differentiates you from your competitors is how well you are executing your business.

Define Your Purpose, Then Implement

Business leaders know that customers (both B2C and B2B) have high expectations for their digital experiences. Gartner has found that 84% of people are underwhelmed with these experiences. As such, businesses rush to implement new software or build their own. But rushing can lead to folly. Leadership needs to undertake digital transformation with purpose.

You need to clearly define what your end goal is and understand that you are not reinventing the wheel but making the wheel better — more effective and efficient. For instance, a software company exists because its goal is to improve business processes. It wants to optimize manufacturing processes, supply chain delivery, and customer engagement. A well-planned and well-executed digital transformation can make this possible. Every digital transformation revolves around data and customer experience. This pertains to doctors as equally as it does to internet marketplaces or nonprofit organizations.

Good outcomes in customer experience and data management are paramount to reaching the overarching goal. Before a digital overhaul can take place, everyone — the C-Suite, HR, and middle management alike — needs to achieve consensus on the vision of the organization. Leadership cannot rely just on marketing or HR saying, ”We need to buy this software now.”  

Businesses need buy-in from the top down. How does the software or any technology you are considering fit into your ecosystem? The cost of operating definitely deserves consideration. Some of the leading vendors may be providing everything you need to run your business, but is it a good decision? You could be purchasing a different software from the same vendor because you bought from them previously without taking into consideration that their product is substandard.

These decisions need to be evaluated in the context of what's more important, getting the right software, supporting the same vendor, or getting a new vendor that would require training. And learning curves are hard. These are the key criteria you need to consider — even before you start looking at new features and capabilities.

In order to launch a company-wide digital transformation, leadership must define its goals and objectives, communicate those to all stakeholders, and be prepared for the naysayers — in other words, a classic SWOT analysis (which preceded the digital age).

Trust the Cloud

I believe that we are on the tail end of the resistance point to accepting cloud technology. A lot of companies initially registered the cloud as akin to a data center. That was two to five years ago. They were not sure if they could move to the cloud or if it was safe. I think — and hope —  that we have gotten over that hump. Most companies now recognize the only way to achieve a solid digital transformation is by migrating to the cloud.

Scalability, flexibility, and agility are necessary for any company to move forward in the digital age, and cost-efficiency can only come from operating in the cloud. In reality, the only people who questioned the cloud and its security had to ask themselves, ”Am I more powerful than Microsoft, Amazon Web Services, and Google to manage my own data center, my own security, my own office, and everyday internet threats?” The answer is no. The majority of businesses do not have those kinds of resources. It’s not their primary business, which is the business of making their unique product. It's important that we trust this large-scale technical care the cloud provides us. I'm not saying it's a blind trust, but I think those companies have earned that credibility. It makes sense to tap into that — to trust the cloud.

Appreciate and Celebrate Incremental Victories

Not every business or organization can afford to adopt a fully-stacked digital do-over in one fell swoop — either for financial or personnel reasons. In that case, leaders should embrace incremental changes. Consider this scenario: You have a system that has run well for the last 10 or 15 years, but everyone knows that although this system is nearing the end of its lifespan, no one wants to touch it for fear the whole thing will collapse.

People need to look for incremental victories and low-hanging fruit. Implementing a good master data management system fixes your customer database. It may not show up in the front end on day one, but it will enable you to have fewer problems in the future. Deloitte conducted a study on digital transformation in the summer of 2022, concluding that “These transformations affect all parts of the organization and require intense collaboration across the C-suite. Moreover, they often need extensive and ongoing change management throughout the organization.”

Create AI-Driven Models

It's very much possible to bring technology to do what you need — the ultimate success path. This need derives from a defined goal. Here is an example: In the life-sciences industry, our primary operations have many customers and in life sciences, and the number one customer is a doctor. If a doctor needs medical information for an ongoing clinical trial, or how a certain drug works best for the patient, do the existing workflows provide the best way to relay the needed information? That's a part of the digital transformation journey.

On the other end of the spectrum, consider a company that requires a number of field-based employees who have a difficult time connecting with the home office. If you are a sales representative, your job demands that you have access to certain resources. You need to identify what tools these reps need, understand the problems that need to be solved, and have an end in sight before implementing a digital transformation. You utilize new technology because it provides a solution, not because it’s the latest and coolest technology in the market.

Digital transformation is progressing quickly, and one of the most powerful things happening right now is that we are collecting huge amount of data. It’s happening at a large scale, but it’s in the background, and it’s not a part of your daily work life. AI holds a tremendous amount of potential for the future. Companies need to prepare for how they will use this data. They need to keep collecting the right amount of data, identifying where the value is, how it can be used, and how to train those models. That is the way to look at digital transformation as a whole — taking into consideration the breadth and depth of the organization’s need and how the technology can best serve it.

Author Bio

Anupam Nandwana is the Founder and CEO of P360, a leading developer of technology for the life sciences industry focused on building solutions using artificial intelligence, SMS text messaging and the Internet of Things. Connect Anupam Nandwana