A GetSmarter survey of 5,808 professionals from 128 countries about digital transformation reveals several key findings.
The first is that all industries and job roles view digital transformation differently. It's not just focused on integrating and leveraging new technologies, such as machine learning (ML), artificial intelligence (AI), big data, and automation. It's about unleashing innovation and resilience by energizing and empowering a business' human capital.
Unfortunately, most companies are missing this: 74% of transformation projects fail to realize their full benefits because employees are not prepared for change.
Global digital transformation spending is expected to reach $ 2.8 trillion by 2025 . But to date, only 35 percent of companies say they have achieved their transformation goals and achieved a full return on investment. The few who succeed in this part are able to reduce costs and increase revenue.
To truly benefit from digital transformation, a strategic digital transformation framework is required .
A digital transformation framework must include practical steps tailored to the unique needs of the industry and organization. By doing this correctly, businesses will be able to critically examine their ideas and better anticipate any roadblocks ahead. The best part: Businesses and employees benefit from digital transformation.
Below are the five key elements needed to build a successful digital transformation framework.
1. Clear goals
To customize a digital transformation framework based on goals and long-term strategy, organizations need to define exactly what digital transformation means for the company and its employees.
According to GetSmarter's research, there is no common understanding or generally accepted standard: it reveals 19 different interpretations (below). This adds to the uncertainty of digital transformation.
The study also shows that digital transformation is often confused with digitization and informatization, which are processes belonging to digital transformation.
These differing interpretations lead to divergent goals among different people within the enterprise, resulting in inconsistent actions and outcomes.
If the goals of digital transformation are vague or miscommunicated, the end result will be dislocation and failure in the eyes of stakeholders. Additionally, gaining buy-in for new processes can be challenging if the business lacks a culture of inclusive transformation or employees are resistant to change.
The only way to solve this problem is to create an integrated, comprehensive digital transformation framework that leverages both technology and people to transform. Once a unique interpretation of digital transformation has been defined and applied to the business, the next step is to develop a long-term, industry-specific strategy with a digital mindset.
This clear sense of purpose can effectively motivate and optimize the entire enterprise, while motivating each employee to work together to achieve achievable goals.
2. Develop a strategy
The importance of the first two steps cannot be underestimated: only 59% of companies have overcome all obstacles to create a truly integrated digital strategy.
This is a clear vision supported by a set of strategic goals and sustainable transformation goals. Success will depend on the practical application of this comprehensive strategy.
According to GetSmarter research, most of the pressure felt by enterprises in the process of digital transformation comes from integrating systems and processes.
One of the mistakes businesses make is to focus on specific technologies to improve operations instead of developing an overall strategy to completely transform their business across all systems and processes.
Likewise, digital transformation often disappoints due to the dispersion of "innovative technology" into broken processes and teams that resist change.
Managers can improve business transformation outcomes by developing a comprehensive strategy that begins with purpose-driven processes and organizational design change management. This also includes all touchpoints in the customer journey.
“Digital transformation is all about enhancing customer centricity through technology,” said Misiek Piskorski, professor of digital strategy, analytics and innovation at IMD.
This is where the field of systems integration (SI) becomes crucial, as it is the process of interconnecting all of a company's IT systems, technologies, applications and software so that they function as one system. SI connects the entire business infrastructure and enables interoperability between different tools. It can increase the speed of information flow, reduce operating costs, increase productivity, provide consistent communication, save money, and even increase sales.
Once a business has defined its vision, goals and roadmap, six checkpoints (pictured below) can be used to measure the effectiveness of the strategy, increasing the odds of success from 30% to 60%.
3. Leadership
Digital leadership has never been more important. Business decision makers need to find emerging technologies to lead and support a workforce of employees, artificial intelligence tools, freelancers, and remote workers.
Managers must be creative and agile in their management style while finding what works best for the changing workplace.
According to the GetSmarter survey, the two most critical factors for digital transformation success are strong leadership and effective change management . Collectively, they ensure that all employees are inspired, motivated, and aligned with their business' digital transformation initiatives.
Leadership is an important area of scrutiny for such projects, with strategy and leadership, according to the research, the second most stressful area for respondents trying to implement transformation initiatives over the past 18 months.
One of the biggest lessons for managers is to understand that digital transformation is not only about harnessing new technologies, but about inspiring and motivating human change. Among the managers surveyed, 35% believe that digital transformation is a human-centered change, and 32% believe that it is a technology-driven change.
Digital success depends on overcoming human barriers to change. This includes motivating employees to reimagine the methods of work they have long relied on, and showing them that technology can help their careers, not hinder them.
George Westerman, principal research scientist for workforce learning at MIT, explains why leadership and change management are so important: “Digital transformation is not so much a digital problem as it is a leadership problem.”
Addressing people-centric challenges is the responsibility of management and requires the ability to drive change at scale. Leadership must be combined with talent in key positions, because no one person has all the knowledge and abilities needed.
GetSmarter research shows that the skills predicted to produce the greatest positive change in usability in the future are strategic planning, cultural intelligence and change management.
These areas emphasize that digital transformation is a shift in organizational culture, not just technology, and that for any type of transformation to be successful, managers need to have a strong transformation plan in place.
However, managers also need to understand the digital ecosystem and its possibilities. By mastering the intricacies of effective digital transformation, they can build the confidence to invest in digital transformation strategies and capabilities for sustained growth.
4. Adaptability and agility
According to the results of the Digital Transformation Study, 66% of the respondents experienced a large number of disruptions in the past 6 to 12 months.
The pandemic has impacted individuals and workplaces in multiple ways in recent years, and the trends of changing work patterns and emerging technologies will not slow down anytime soon. It also transforms digital transformation from a lofty optional extra to an operational necessity.
"Over the past year, no area has experienced faster change than the way we work," said Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella.
“We need a broader definition of productivity – including collaboration, learning, to advance the career development of every employee, from frontline and knowledge workers, to recent graduates and today’s workforce.
All of this requires flexibility in when, where and how people work. This was confirmed by the GetSmarter research, as respondents highlighted adaptability and agility as valuable people skills both in the near and long term.
Learning agility is an integral part of this – employees can learn from experience and apply their new knowledge to unique and challenging situations.
Executives with high learning agility are five times more likely to remain highly engaged, and companies with high agility are 25 percent more profitable.
Agile learners can also undo unproductive habits and think outside the box. This is a skill that all employees need, especially if you are in a managerial position. Research shows that the ability to make fast, agile leadership decisions through data analytics remains the number one driver of digital transformation.
Agile thinking needs to follow the following four basic principles:
1. Put people and interactions over processes and tools. This includes networking with peers and thought leaders.
2. Prioritizing building software that can be put to work quickly rather than producing comprehensive documentation can cause unnecessary delays.
3. Collaborate with customers rather than focusing on contracts and numbers, allowing them to inform product development and marketing.
4. Respond to change, rather than simply following a plan and constantly adapting. Digital transformation is a process that requires continuous optimization, adjustment, and openness to change.
As part of a manager's business and career development, an agile mindset helps to respond to rapidly changing situations.
5. Skill improvement
The success of digital transformation depends largely on the use of innovative technologies, and an agile, appropriately skilled workforce.
Change is happening so fast that existing skills are regressing and new skills are needed for all employees – not just IT specialists and managers.
Survey research bears this out, with 58% of GetSmarter respondents expecting they will need to learn new skills for their current job within the next six months.
Core competitiveness in the post-pandemic era will not come from a one-and-done approach. Growth and innovation depend on regularly improving a foundation of hard and soft skills, whether in the business, managers, or entry-level employees.
Conclusion:
A successful digital transformation framework is built on five steps: defining clear goals, developing a comprehensive strategy, leadership that drives change, adaptability, and upskilling. It has to be supported and driven by all employees, and it has to be an iterative process.
A digital transformation framework should be tailored to the industry, business goals and, crucially, the unique needs of each employee.
Returns for Business Owners and Managers:
1. Return on investment of digital transformation projects;
2. A skilled and agile workforce who can help the business succeed in the future.
At the same time, the framework should be promoted with the support of reliable tools, which should have the following characteristics:
1. Integration
Since the IT systems, technologies, applications, and software owned by enterprises are generally not from the same service provider and business, and cannot communicate with each other, how to use one tool to connect all the tools together to achieve overall control The aggregation of data everywhere is where the value of this tool lies.
2. Agility
Change is the main theme of digital transformation. People's changes often require tools to match their needs. When office scenes and work methods change, the tools must be able to quickly support these changes. Therefore, the tool must have the capability of development or secondary development. agility.
3. Learnability
The significance of tools for enterprises, in addition to improving production efficiency and management efficiency, also needs to provide positive assistance for enterprises in personnel management, so that employees feel that they can work better here and obtain higher benefits. If the tool allows managers and employees to learn a new technology, it can increase their loyalty to the company.
A digital tool that can meet these three points at the same time can better assist the establishment of the enterprise's digital transformation framework and improve the success rate of digital transformation.
As an enterprise-level low-code platform, Zhixin has the agility of low-code development and can quickly respond to the changing needs of enterprises; secondly, it can open up other tools of the enterprise to realize a platform to manage all digital tools; at the same time, Zhixin is not just a The system is a development platform that business personnel, technicians, and managers can learn to use. The system is just a bonus, and a development method and development platform that can help the enterprise progress is crucial. If your enterprise encounters difficulties in building a digital transformation framework, you can choose Zhixin. As the preferred solution for the digital transformation of enterprises, Zhixin focuses on solving digital problems in complex scenarios for enterprises, and supports in-depth scenario solutions in different industries.