Although we’re well into the digital age, it can be surprising how many organisations have yet to embrace the full potential of digital. Most will have incorporated digital in some way, a PPC campaign here and a new website there, but the greatest benefits will be found by embracing technology to permeate through all operations.
There are many benefits for expanding digital operations within your organisation, but to name a few:
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Greater data and insight can be gained through digital marketing
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You can improve customer experience and access from web and app technologies
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There are opportunities to test, learn and grow in a highly measured environment
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New products, services and markets can be accessed
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Improved productivity can be achieved by digitising internal processes
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You can increase opportunities for innovation and team upskilling
Whether you’re just embarking on a digital journey or pushing the digital boundaries even further, brush up on three must-haves that are vital for a successful digital transformation.
1. Get organisational buy-in
Digital can include and impact all teams and employees at all levels. Getting everyone on board is vital to make sure you can deliver a full digital transformation with benefits across your organisation.
One simple way to influence your colleagues is to take time to ask and understand the objectives of their role, and guide them through a digital solution that could help them. For stakeholders higher up the business focus on the overall benefits for the organisation.
Without buy-in you’ll be fighting an uphill battle against resources, budget and enthusiasm for your projects, which is more likely to result in little or slow digital progression. Achieve greater results by inspiring your colleagues with the opportunities for innovation, self-development and commercial improvements that a digital transformation can bring.
2. Choose the right digital partners
It can be expensive, and sometimes unwise, to rely solely on your internal team to have or develop the skills you need to adopt and create new digital technologies. So you will need to find a partner that can support you with specialist skills and tools.
Working with external partners has the benefit of gaining an expert and unique point of view. Although you will understand your customers and operations more intimately, a good partner will go to great lengths to align to these when presenting solutions and opportunities.
You will certainly need to work with multiple partners across a variety of digital disciplines, and it’s ambitious to think you will understand each area in great detail. When considering new partners ask the obvious questions, probe their offering and operational approach, and ask for examples of their experience and expertise. Digital is largely a service industry and you need to be confident you’re getting value.
Beware of any providers that don’t clearly articulate what they offer and how. Digital can have a reputation of being overly complex, but that shouldn’t mean you don’t know what you’re buying or how it works. As a minimum you need to understand enough to allow you to measure and justify how a solution is benefiting your organisation.
At Strange, we have extensive experience in digital solutions for web, apps and marketing. We go a long way to understand our clients’ organisational goals and maintain clarity and transparency so our clients can trust our advice.
3. Define a digital strategy
It can be tempting to start with the simplest or cheapest solutions first, but these can often be the ones that will have the lowest return or benefit. By creating a plan for your digital transformation you can define all areas that can be enhanced, the expected cost and return, and most importantly the alignment to your objectives.
Start with everything that can be achieved; list all operations and functions and set out their current digital status, a digital solution or idea, the benefit to your customer and high/medium/ low ranking, the benefit to your organisation and high/medium/ low ranking, and an estimate of the resource, budget and return expected.
Once you have a full list, you can prioritise each component based on the details you’ve included, and any other influencing factors. Plans are made to be changed and digital is ever-evolving so you should document your strategy in a flexible way so you can update it regularly. Set targets and timescales to help you stay on track where you can.
Your strategy can then be used to influence stakeholders and collaborate across teams to achieve what is set out.
