According to digital transformation statistics, 89% of businesses are either planning to adopt digital transformation or have already adopted digital transformation. Digital transformation can not only help businesses improve their operational efficiency, respond to ever changing customer expectations in a much better way and minimize operational costs like cheap dedicated server hosting.
Sadly, this is only one side of the coin that most people talk about when it comes to digital transformation. There is also a dark side that no one talks about. Did you know that 70% of digital transformation initiatives fail? Yes, you read that right. There are many reasons for digital transformation failure. Some of them are lack of maturity, lack of interest from the CEO, choosing the wrong technology or approaching digital transformation the wrong way.
If you don’t want your digital transformation initiative to suffer the same fate you need to follow the proven digital transformation principles. That is exactly what we will discuss in this article. In this article, you will learn about seven digital transformation principles that will help you drive your digital transformation to success.
7 Digital Transformation Principles You Should Follow
Here are seven digital transformation principles you need to succeed with digital transformation.
- Decide Where To Start
There is no denying the fact that digital transformation can be challenging but if you know where to start, what goals you want to achieve and where you need to go, it becomes a whole lot easier. Treat digital transformation as a long journey. When you reach the starting point, milestones and the end point you are more likely to reach your destination. The same goes for digital transformation as well. Decide where to start, set SMART goals and measure progress along the way.
Develop a digital transformation story, map out the steps and stay focused on your end goal. Sometimes, you might have to take multiple steps simultaneously and divert resources to each task so be prepared for it. It is highly recommended that you start small and then take it from there. Implement digital transformation in one department and if you achieve success, expand it to other functional units as well.
- Get Buy In From Leaders
One of the biggest reasons why digital transformation initiatives fail is lack of interest and buy-in from leadership. Your digital transformation team should be technically sound so they could convince business leaders about their digital transformation initiatives.
You need to make them realize that your digital transformation can deliver immense business value, boost overall business efficiency while reducing the costs just like cheap dedicated server hosting. You could even think about hiring a chief data officer as businesses who hire chief data officers to lead their digital transformation initiatives tend to fare 1.6x better when it comes to achieving success with digital transformation as compared to companies that don’t, according to a study conducted by Mckinsey.
- Develop A Change Culture
Your organization culture can have a huge impact on the success and failure of your digital transformation initiatives. That is why it is important to first develop an organization culture that embraces change. Once you have done that, the next step would be to create an organization transformation strategy.
Encourage experimentation and collaboration. This will help you uncover and test new ideas and innovate quickly. The faster you can test new ideas and decide whether to implement or ditch them, the faster you can digitally transform your company. Instead of confining digital transformation to a particular functional unit, you should gradually scale it across the enterprise. This will allow you to enforce best practices and rules uniformly across the organization. Try to be as transparent as possible in order to minimize resistance to change.
- Choose The Right Approach
Another important reason why the majority of digital transformation initiatives fail to achieve their goals is because they are not approached in the right way. Taking the wrong approach to digital transformation will increase the chances of failure. That is why it is important to decide which approach works best for your business instead of copying others.
The digital transformation approach you take must be practical and should accommodate for technological evolutions as well as changes in day to day business operations. Closely analyze your business environment and it will give you a better idea about which digital transformation approach could work best for your business.
- Digitize Your Value Chain
If you want to achieve success with digital transformation, it won’t be possible without digitizing your core business functions. Whether it is your shahid functions such as supply chain or customer facing interfaces, digitizing the value chain with VPS Singapore will deliver true benefits of digital transformation. Your digital transformation initiatives should also trickle down to user experience design and not just stay limited to digitizing some business processes.
- Select The Right Metrics To Track
Businesses who want to achieve better outcomes with digital transformation should measure their progress. This would only happen if you track the right key performance indicators. Make sure the metrics you are choosing are closely tied to business objectives.
Start off by tracking KPIs for different business activities and technology infrastructure such as Chicago dedicated servers. This will help you decide which metrics are right for you. This will also help you uncover areas where your digital transformation efforts would be most effective and least effective.
- Leverage Data Analytics
Data can be your best friend throughout your digital transformation journey. Invest in analytics tools that help you make sense of data in your mission critical systems. The more visibility you have, the more accurate data driven decisions you can make, which will drive your digital transformation initiatives to success.
If you lack the tools that give visibility into these critical systems, your digital transformation initiatives could hit a roadblock. Another benefit of data analytics is that it helps you identify areas that need improvement and tells you what’s working and what is not. This enables you to bring improvements to every facet of your business.
Which digital transformation principles do you follow? Share it with us in the comments section below.
