Digital Transformation Is Not Merely A Technology Transformation (Part 1)

A recent survey of senior managers, CEOs and executives found that the digital transformation risk is their number one concern in 2019. However, 70% of the number of digital transformation initiatives failed to achieve their goals. Of the $1.3 trillion that was spent on digital transformation last year, an estimated $ 900 billion was wasted. Basically, if a leader lacks the right mindset to change and some of the existing organizations are still lacking, digital transformation will simply bloat those shortcomings. Here are FIVE important lessons that help leaders organize their companies successfully through digital transformations.

Lesson 1: Find out your business strategy before you invest in anything

Leaders who are interested in digital transformation will often be interested in some specific tools to improve their company’s productivity. There are many companies that are considering digital transformation with the application of machine learning in all activities of the organization. However, digital transformation should be strategically more explicit, rather than merely disseminating a certain tool.

In Li & Fung, leaders have developed a three-year strategy to serve the market where mobile applications are as important as brick-and-mortar stores. They choose to focus their attention on three areas: speed, innovation, and digitization. Specifically, Li & Fung sought to reduce production time, speed up marketing, and improve data usage in its global supply chain. After specific goals are established, the company continues to decide which digital tools to adopt.

No single technology can possibly bring together “speed” or “innovation” at the same time. The best combination of new tools helps an organization make certain changes based on leaders’ visions.

Lesson 2: Take advantage of internal experts

Transformational (digital and other aspects of) organizations often bring a team of outside consultants who tend to adopt one-to-all solutions with nominal “most effective”. However, there are also many companies that choose to take advantage of Insider – employees with deep knowledge about the company to convert companies in digital form.

We can take the example of Santa Clara County in California. The Ministry of Planning and Development has redesigned the workflow with the goal of improving customer efficiency and experience. Staff exchanges with customers based on interaction with residents, to create a better-unified process. Therefore, Kirk Girard and his team adjusted many of the core tools, processes, diagrams, and proposed elements when they redesigned the workflow. Therefore, license processing time has been reduced by 33%. Often new technologies may not improve the productivity of the organization, not because of the fundamental flaws in technology but because the knowledge of internal employees has been ignored.

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>>> Continue to read Part 2 featuring the rest of the vital lessons that help leaders organize their companies successfully through digital transformations.

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