“Digital transformation,” it’s the latest buzzword business leaders find themselves throwing around, but it’s surprising how many of them understand the definition of the term.
In a poll, more than half of all business leaders stated that Digital transformation was “aligning digital presence to enhance the delivery of your brand experience.” Just under a quarter of the respondents say that it’s about coordinating online strategies to generate more leads, and the rest think that digital transformation is using customer-facing tech to automate digital marketing processes.
In reality, digital transformation refers to two types of technology initiatives built for companies and organizations.
Digital Technology to Empower New Business Models
The use of new technology to replace outdated systems, such as replacing traditional wind farms with turbines connected to a digitized system monitored by IoT devices.
Digital Technology to Automate Business Processes
Leveraging multiple tech solutions, such as machine learning and AI, to revamp internal business processes and operations.
Digitizing Workflows to Achieve Core Objectives
When an organization starts to understand the importance of digitizing manual processes, they transform how employees manage workflows. Digitizing workflows helps companies achieve three primary business objectives.
Intelligence – Machine learning and AI help automate workflows, providing employees with useful analytics for a competitive edge in the marketplace. As a result, your employees and management make faster decisions with better quality outcomes. The best automation systems scale with your company and adapt to changing volumes of data.
Velocity – Empower your workers so they can help your customers efficiently. Speed up the workplace by implementing tech that helps your organization anticipate and reply to more business opportunities.
Experience – Enterprises need to focus on providing a mobile experience for both customers and employees. Expectations are high in both departments. Slacking on your customer experience will cost you business. However, failing on your employee experience will cost you talent.
Business leaders and managers that want to define the digital transformation of their organization must gauge digital maturity and assess all internal barriers resisting change. Here are three steps all leaders can take.
Prepare for a Cultural Shift – CTOs or CIOs are not the only execs responsible for driving the digital transformation mandate in the organization. You need the entire C-suite and the board if you want to ensure the success of the transition.
Demolish All Silos – To create improved experiences for customers and employees, companies must break down the silos between HR benefits, finance, support, and IT operations. Take the initiative to assess any barriers to communications and collaboration between business units and build an intelligent and scalable digital platform that digitizes all workflows across the entire organization.
Implement Digital Workflows – Analyze your existing processes, and look for areas where automated technologies can help employees streamline and reinvent their workflows.
Wrapping Up – It’s All in the Experience
Your digital transformation touches every department within the organization, from IT to HR, facilities, and finance. By implementing digital workflows, the company allows managers and employees to eliminate redundant processes.
Employees have a better understanding of what managers expect from their workflows, and managers have the data on hand to track and manage employee performance.
The key to launching a positive digital transformation is to ensure that you deliver a digital employee experience that enhances employee engagement by simplifying your processes.
