Crafting a Winning Digital Transformation Roadmap

Business leaders cannot just pen down the digital transformation of their business process; they must communicate a vision of what must be achieved, how, and why! 

Were you able to recover from the onslaught caused by Covid-19? If yes, then we are happy for you. You are the 40% that made the cut and came out victorious in the battle! How much did the pandemic affect your business process, customer turnover, and overall revenue cycle? Because what we have witnessed during this pandemic put the digital transformation agenda on the fast track for many businesses. 

The biggest and most important question we want to ask you is, "Did you feel your entire business process got paralyzed because of the lockdown placed to deal with this crisis?" 

Many business leaders took the high road towards digitally transforming their legacy business process and were untouched by this pandemic and the lockdown. This entails a straightforward fact that predicting the future and keeping up with dynamic business trends is crucial for businesses to be profitable and scale up. 

Successful business operation in this modern age is different from what it was around a decade ago! The technological advances and abundance of information in this new world push business honchos to rethink their product and service strategy. 

125,000 enterprises expect revenue from their digital initiatives to increase by 80% by 2020 – Gartner 

Companies in the last 4-5 years know more about digital transformation. It is encoded into their business DNA, while the ones that have existed for the past 15-20 years find it challenging to adopt digital transformation. 

In this article, we will help you understand what digital transformation is, why you need it, and how you can successfully go for a complete change of your business processes.

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What is digital transformation?

Everything is part of digital transformation, from modernizing your IT infrastructure to digitalizing your legacy systems to implementing modern business processes. 

Digital transformation is the foundational shift in the way businesses provide value to their customers. 

You consider customer needs by analyzing their behavior and implementing technology to improve the end-user experience. The end users can be your customers or even the employees of your organization. 

The digital transformation initiative has already become a crucial part of the future strategy for many business owners. However, in the wake of this pandemic, there has been a shift in its priority now. 

Some interesting statistics that highlight the importance of digital transformation for business owners 

Creating a digital transformation strategy 

To thrive in Industrial 4.0 and beyond, businesses must move away from legacy, an analog business process, to digital solutions. 

• In 2009, Uber transformed the entire taxi industry 
• Retail behemoth Amazon launched its cashier-less checkout store Amazon Go in 2019 
• Google's self-driving vehicles venture 

Undergoing a digital transformation is much more than 

• adopting a new technology 
• investing in fancy tools 
• upgrading current systems 

It is about disruption but in a planned manner. It would help to develop a strategy or the execution of your digital transformation, as it helps business leaders get answers to these critical questions: 

• Where are you now? 
• Where do you want to be?  
• How are you going to get there? 

You need to adopt a data-driven model for intelligent decisioning to wade safely through your plan of organizational digital disruption. 

Here is how you can create a winning digital transformation strategy: 

1. All aboard 

You need everyone aboard, from the top, before you go into this endeavor, as it affects every part of your business. You can't implement a strategy without buy-in and alignment from all key players in the company.  

2. Assessment or procurement of funds 

"So, what budget do you want to allocate to this initiative?" Before answering, remember that a digital transformation is an ongoing approach to how your decision will touch on all parts of the organization, including operations, employees, and customers. 

A planned budget allocation helps you structure your strategy as you 

• identify priorities, 
• allocate resources, and 
• determine scope 

3. Assessing your current business state

After getting crucial members to buy in and create a budget, start laying the groundwork for your strategy. Start by assessing your current business state.  

Analyzing the current state of your business allows you to  

• Assess organizational culture 
• Evaluate your workforce's skill 
• Map out existing processes, operations, organizational structure, and roles 
• Identify opportunities and pain points that you need to address  

4. Identifying your goals and desired outcomes 

• "What are your digital goals?" 
• "How do you hope to achieve them?" 
• "What experiences are you trying to create for your customers and employees?" 

Consider these questions and remember that the focus must always be on the long game. Being bold and ambitious with your vision allows you to achieve your business's fundamental, long-term goals. 

5. Creating the digital transformation roadmap 

After identifying the gaps and outlining your goals, now is the time to develop your strategic roadmap. This roadmap will help you achieve your vision. Create the map of how you will reach from present point A to future point B. 

This will include - Infrastructural reframing, employee training, new talents, technological stack, and transitioning to a more agile development process. 

What are the stages of digital transformation? 

First Stage – Business as usual 

Businesses operate with old customer perspectives, processes, metrics, business models, and technology. 

Second Stage – Being present and active 

Businesses have recognized the need for transformation. They are doing so with smaller experimentation targeted at improving specific processes. 

Third Stage – The formalization 

Businesses now conduct intentional experimentation at a more favorable rate where the change agents seek executive support for new resources and technology. 

Fourth stage – Being Strategic 

The work culture roadblock has been crossed with individual groups now realizing the acceleration of work advanced collaboration brings to the entire process.

Fifth Stage – Converging 

A digital transformation team will guide strategy, operations, and customer-centric goals. The support for digital transformation is solidified now.

Sixth Stage – Being innovative and adaptive 

The business is now digitally transformed. Executives and strategists adjust to the new ecosystem and start acting upon current and future technology trends to scale the business. 

Examples of successful digital transformation achieved by companies 

Let's now look at examples of companies that have genuinely aced in digital transformation. 

Nike 

The company took note of the opportunities new technologies created for retail and focused on boosting its digital presence to outpace competing brands. They

• updated their e-commerce strategy powered by insights from customer and product analytics. 
• experimented with digital campaigns on social media and used insights from online interactions with customers to improve the offline shopping experience. 
• made headlines for launching one-of-a-kind concept stores, which blend the digital and physical experience.

Nike created a well-thought digital transformation roadmap. As a result, they stayed resilient and profitable even during the pandemic.

In the latest earnings announcements, Nike stock soared to 11%, reflecting an increase in online-order and passing Wall Street estimates Harvard Business School Digital Initiative. 

Home Depot 

At the end of 2017, Home Depot spent $11.1 over the next three years to transform itself into a more digitally focused business. 

The result was a revenue increase from $101 billion in 2017 to $115 billion – $120 billion in 2020. 

Home Depot hired an extra 1,000 IT staff to speed up the process, including software engineers, user-experience designers, and product managers. 

Amazon Go 

Digital transformation has impacted retail customer experience and in-store and online retail operations. 

Here are some examples of digital transformation in retail 

• Personalized product recommendations powered by AI and Machine Learning 
• Loyalty apps 
• Virtual shopping assistants
• Smart mirrors in changing rooms 

Amazon Go is the best example that depicts emerging technologies  transforming shopping. It's the first brick-and-mortar grocery store where customers can skip checkout. They can easily achieve this by

• scanning a QR code on their phones upon entrance 
• pick up the items they need 
• leave the store 

Concluding thoughts: Empower your business and workforce to achieve business goals 

Businesses must empower their organization by enabling the employees to work in new ways. Digital transformations require cultural and behavioral changes like 

• calculated risk-taking 
• increased collaboration 
• customer-centricity 

Successful transformations businesses achieve are empowering employees to embrace technological changes in the organization. And businesses that have not taken the road to digital transformation must start taking initiatives toward the same. 

With Rapidops as your digital transformation consultant, you can experience flawless legacy migration and integration using the best technologies. We assisted one of our clients in automating their delegation, discounting, and other functions. This helped in decreasing human interaction or dependency. We helped them integrate, automate, and digitize disjointed systems and processes to grow their business. 

Do you want to transform your idea or vision into a final, ROI-driven project? Let's chat and discuss how Rapidops can become your visionary digital product development partner in launching your next digital initiative to stay ahead of the curve.