What Does The Data Say? - part 2 of 4.
In the first part of this series titled The Challenges Of Digital Transformation we identified several issues leading to squandered opportunity and money as businesses look to implement digital transformation initiatives.
In this episode we look at the two key components of an inclusive and transparent digital transformation strategy.
Firstly, a balanced and enduring digital transformation strategy should form part of your overall Business Strategy, not sit in isolation from it. Without alignment to the vision and direction set in your formal Business Strategy, any project purporting to be a digital transformation initiative is nothing more than BAU with a trendy title.
Central to your digital transformation strategy is a rigorous Prioritisation program coupled with a “whole of business” Decision Support Data Baseline to help test the prioritisation initiatives, and to baseline their subsequent ROI or other success metrics.
In short, one simply must have a consolidated and optimised view of the critical data on which investment decisions and returns are based. The Microsoft Australia report titled “Understanding Your Journey to Data-Driven Digital Maturity” paints a dire view on this issue, citing very few businesses as having this critical data platform in place, which essentially compromises their digital transformation journey from the get-go.
There are more organisations that share little to no data at all than those with a holistic strategy. As you can imagine, with no all-inclusive strategy, organisational maturity to intelligently extract value from data is low. This leads to poor performances across the four [digital transformation pillars of Engaging Customers, Empowering Employees, Modernising Products and Services, and Optimising Operations].
Developing this Decision Support Data Baseline is one of Transfit’s core strengths. Our Data Scientists, Quality Engineers, Analysts, and Visualisation Developers come together to integrate, consolidate, optimise, analyse, and visualise all your disparate data sources in to a single “source of truth” data asset essential for supporting your critical digital transformation decisions and investments. Without this, it is very difficult to test the problem hypotheses and baseline success metrics for the various project priorities that come from the following Prioritisation program.
As highlighted in the first part of this series The Challenges Of Digital Transformation, prioritising digital transformation initiatives can be tricky with key stakeholders espousing many differing opinions about where the real problems or opportunities lay.
Transfit’s Prioritisation program engages all key executives and stakeholders either at a whole of company, a departmental, or project specific level, by applying sound methodologies and techniques such as Design Thinking, Diverge Converge, and Win/Lose Testing, and by leveraging the Decision Support Data Baseline above. The program iterates through all possible projects and initiatives to deliver a well understood and balanced program of works across the four digital transformation pillars above.
This roadmap and program backlog may reflect many years of work and investment however it will be constructed following Agile principles to ensure the initiatives with the greatest agreed impact will always be prioritised for execution.
Up next: Engage For Success? - part 3 of 4.
About the author: Graeme Armstrong started Readify in 2001 and held the post of CEO then Sales Director through their sale to Telstra in 2016 and his departure in 2018. Returning to his entrepreneurial roots Graeme has now launched Transfit, a specialist digital transformation consultancy, purpose built to help clients of all sizes with a holistic blend of management and technology consulting.
If you feel Transfit’s capabilities and approach can assist your company’s digital transformation program, or you feel you have what it takes to join our elite consulting team, please connect with us via LinkedIn or at www.transfit.com.au.