The task of managing digital change is challenging – but also ripe with opportunity.
Deploying technology to improve the way tools, processes and culture work in an organisation is a proven solution for addressing market drivers and delivering better service.
Whether the focus of digital transformation is improving your business’s processes, increasing employee satisfaction, building a more collaborative culture, or creating a more positive customer experience, it can make the future much brighter for any company of any size.
For CIOs to lead internal change and the strategy behind it, some important changes must emerge from the process.
Sustainable competitive advantage comes from the evolution of the customer experience
Customer experience is now inevitably digitally driven by every business.
Given the important role that customer experience plays in creating a strong growth path for any organisation, the connection to sustainable competitive advantage is clear.
So digital transformation should lead to the creation of a lasting competitive advantage, and one of the easiest ways to do this is through the impact that digital tools can have on the customer experience.
Changing behaviour across the organisation
An important part of the digital transformation process is to drive change in the way people, especially management, are within the image of the company.
No matter how much is invested in technology, it will not reach its full potential, without reactive leaders who are fully aligned with the strategic importance of technology today.
One of the most important changes that should result from digital transformation is a change in ethics and culture throughout society.
Replacing reactive thinking with strategic thinking that focuses on innovation - and explores how it can benefit society - can improve what can be achieved in the long term.
End IT shadowing
These are projects that are not assigned directly to the IT team, but by other departments within the organisation to work on what they see as deficiencies in the existing IT infrastructure.
Any investment in digital transformation should lead to the end of shadow IT by providing more comprehensive, and better-tailored business solutions.
At Incubus, we know that the right approach to digital transformation can be individualised for a specific business – while there are best practices, there is no 'one size fits all solution.
Shadow IT will always highlight opportunities and provide insight into where change needs to be made.
When a change occurs, the organisation must always "roll back" all shadow IT projects so that the CIO has a complete view of the total IT spend.
Democracy in decision-making
A more democratic approach to decision-making allows a wider range of people to make positive decisions than those in corner offices.
This approach can transform the digital life of any business by giving team members at all levels of IT the opportunity to use the tools they can.
Decision frameworks designed to put power in the hands of those working on the front lines of IT can help people innovate solutions and create new opportunities to solve internal problems, as well as create new opportunities for growth.
As a next step, organisations can democratise and then contribute to decision-making to provide SaaS-enabled platforms to citizen developers themselves.
This is the opposite of the traditional "ivory tower IT" mentality that many companies hold.
Be ok with failure
Failure is an inevitable part of the innovation process that leads to success, and one of the big implications of digital change is that it has to create the space for it to happen.
IT teams need the opportunity to experiment, push boundaries, and take risks that can lead to truly exciting innovations as the new digital infrastructure becomes available.
The driving factor behind this is the need to achieve greater speed when it comes to internal change.
For many CIOs, legacy data issues can be a serious problem that inhibits growth and limits the potential of digital investments.
Free and efficient changes can open up new avenues to increase the speed of change and provide more opportunities for the IT team to respond to the demands of business functions or internal partners in your organisation.
A more comprehensive approach to data and analysis
Moving data and analytics to the heart of the enterprise architecture is a must for every business.
This is why it has always been a high-priority consequence of investing in digital transformation.
However, it is not a simple change and has many moving parts.
The key to this is a new approach to data management that includes both structured and unstructured data, as well as a focus on ensuring high-quality data is essential for analytical optimisation for better decision-making. Infrastructure designed to help a company unlock insights from data - and make information available to the entire company - is a big part of the process.
The "as a service" model.
Digital transformation can be a tool to support companies to move IT functions into a service model with all the benefits needed for the wider organisation.
This approach enables the building of dedicated IT resources designed to support specific goals and teams within the company.
One of the great advantages of this approach is that each project retains its allocated resources. A change in financial thinking IT budgets have long been dominated by maintenance – in many ways always a game changer when it comes to IT investment.
This kind of sensitive approach makes it difficult to generate ROI from technology investments within the company. However, now that it has become so important to demonstrate the value of technology – and to continue the evolution started by the digital transformation process – a shift in thinking is required.
This shift moves IT budget spending from dominant to maintenance, creating room for resource utilisation and innovation.
CIOs are currently investing about 43% of the IT budget in innovation and growth, which is more than in previous years.
The process of digital change will create an opportunity for organisations that are not yet innovating to prioritise themselves to fit into that percentage and move on.
Enable SaaS orchestration and support strategic sales relationships
The future business architecture requires SaaS and engagement has always been one of the critical priorities of digital transformation.
The key to optimising available resources for SaaS is sales relationships cultivated by the CIO. Reaching SaaS Orchestra and having strong business relationships have many benefits for any company, including:
Reducing the costs of data security that may have become high when attached to legacy systems.
Achieve improvements in the use of IT architecture, from speed to productivity.
Simplifying IT architecture for the future.
Achieving improved connectivity to meet the growing need to meet IoT and mobile devices, driving forward strategic planning and innovation.
Leverage customer relationships that lead to access to the latest product and service innovations at the right price.
Change is best delivered from the inside out.
While the support of a team of experts like Incubus can be essential in ensuring that these fundamental changes are the result of digital transformation, we can’t do it alone.
Embracing it all not only ensures that changes like these are embedded at a much deeper level, but that CIOs have the tools and vision to keep up and continue to adapt and improve.