Top 5 tips for executing your digital transition strategy
When you transition to new digital systems it can be difficult and you can face more challenges in the journey than you originally thought. We tell you our top 5 tips which will help make the move a lot easier for you and the rest of your team.
Envisage your future and understand your goal
To get staff excited about the digital transition, you need to create a vision of what your company could be like with your newly proposed ideas. Think about the kind of working environment you want your business to have when you digitally transform and who you want to be?
Would you like an efficient working environment where everyone knows what needs to get done, by who and by what time? Or are you looking to have a continuous learning environment where all staff are learning every day, continuously improving skills and knowledge to boost your sales and customer satisfaction levels?
What value will it provide for your customers and how will it change their experience with you?
Identify the technology gap between where you are now and where you would like to be
You need to identify how far away you are from your ideal digital state. This helps with timeframes, budgets, forecasting and overall strategic planning.
You can’t transition if you don’t know what technology it is that you are missing. It is essential to choose the right technology. We have created a few steps for you to figure out your technology gap:
Write down the list of challenges you face that you are hoping to overcome with new technology.
Research and assess the technology solutions currently available that solve the problems which you have listed.
Write down a list of the processes or methods you currently use to get things done. Assess which of these are slowing you down, causing problems or just generally not working that well.
From here you can work out what new technology you need, what needs replacing and what problems you face.
Allow your teams to have input
The less input your employees have with your new digital solutions, the less they are going to be engaged and interested in them. Digital solutions which are used by staff should be designed to address their problems. Ask staff what they are having difficulties with and what changes they think would be useful or would make their life easier. Collect all of the ideas together and highlight key themes. You can then work out the biggest barriers that your staff face which are hindering success and performance.
The fact that you have spoken to them and made them part of the decision process when selecting new digital solutions will make them feel involved and more engaged in the whole process.
Get the buy-in from all of your senior management
We can not stress how important this point it. Even if you find the most mind-blowing digital solutions and create a perfect digital strategy, it will never take off if you don’t have the buy-in from your senior team. They need to be the ones championing your strategy and vision, so you will need them on your side.
You need to fully explain and communicate your vision and the reasoning behind it. Demonstrate facts and figures as evidence for your points and why you know the strategy will be a success. Once you have done this, they can then begin introducing the idea of change to their teams, which will make the process a whole lot easier.
Mark Blizard from BPI Management Consulting said “As an Operations professional, I would say one of the biggest obstacles is organisational change readiness. Do people in your organization know about the change? Are they bought into why the change is being made? The benefits of the new system may be obvious to the leadership, but unless those benefits are understood throughout the organisation, people will lament the old system going away.”
Set your targets and be as clear and detailed as you possibly can 🎯
You need to make it incredibly obvious what you think you can achieve with your digital transition. By setting targets, you put your ideas into context and make people realise exactly how much better you expect their performance to be.
The whole point of digitally transforming your business is to make things easier and more efficient for your employees AND your customers. This means employees can do double the work with no more effort required than what they already put in. You shouldn't be happy with your employees doing half the amount of work than they could be doing if they used your new digital solutions!
The only way you can make them realise this is by ramping up their targets and goals and speeding things up.
You should detail exactly how you think the targets can be achieved and which employees will be responsible for ensuring those targets are hit every month. Let's say that you believe your customer service team can achieve an 80% satisfaction rate from your customers by using your new automated software and ticketing system. You will need to detail why and how this target should be met and who is the person responsible for ensuring it is.
The key to a successful digital transition is communication with your staff and making them aware of the change. The more transparent you are with your employees and the more you involve them, the less likely they are to resist change. Make sure you involve them every step of the way for maximum success.
