How your business can survive (and even thrive) through digital transformation?
Digital transformation (DX) is currently the single most important force in business and innovation. Leveraging its 13,000 agencies-strong network, DesignRush reported that companies with digital-first strategies are 64% more likely to achieve their business goals than competitors and to succeed in the Future of Work. In contrast, as many as 55% of companies that have yet to digitise believe they have less than a year before they suffer financially and begin losing market share.
How can you be Digital-First’?
Well, there’s a method to successful digital transformation which McKinsey encapsulates in five key factors:
1. Leadership factors
Impactful leaders are committed, enthusiastic, wholly change-driven and digitally-savvy.
“Top leaders realise that it’s imperative for senior management to keep up with everything from AI to e-commerce to data analytics, or they risk the company’s viability and their own careers,” says the Executive Monitor report from Boyden Global Executive Search that surveyed 1,200 CEOs.
You need leaders who are agile, committed to change, and ready to invest – recognising that investments do result in payback over time. Research by both McKinsey and Boyden demonstrates that organisations that hire digitally-savvy leaders into the C-suite, such as chief technology officers, are more likely than competitors to report successful digital transformations.
2. Creating the workforce of the future
PwC suggests that by 2030 we’ll see four possible “worlds of work”. There’ll be the Red World of innovation; the Blue World where corporations dominate; the Green World of a strong social conscience; and the Yellow World where companies recognize that humans come first. To succeed in this Future of Work, PwC insisted that:
“Leaders need to own the automation debate and realise that Automation and Artificial Intelligence (AI) will affect every level of the business and its people. It’s too important an issue to leave to IT (or HR) alone.”
Indeed, McKinsey found that companies that digitised for this world of the future, not only hired digitally-savvy persons, but also upskilled their staff to align with the goals of their transformations. Most companies also had “integrators” who served as bridges between the company’s traditional past and its digital future, integrating new digital processes into existing ways of working.
3. Facilitating new ways of working
Digital transformations require cultural and behavioural changes in areas that include accelerated collaboration, calculated risk taking, continuous learning and open environment. As McKinsey found, organisations that reported improvements in even one area, such as customer centricity or agile business processes, were more likely than competitors to report successful transformations. That was particularly so when stakeholders and employees were encouraged to contribute their own ideas on where digitisation could support the business.
4. Upgrading tools the workforce uses every day
Almost all organisations that reported success told McKinsey how upgrading their day-to-day tools contributed to structural change. Examples include streamlining repetitive tasks and paperless processes with automated processes such as automated emails, NDAs, legal forms, documents, approvals and so forth across desktop, web and mobile. You can create and manage all aspects of your automations from a central portal, across stakeholders and on the go. Businesses that use AUTTO’s no-code automation platform report that it helps make information more accessible across their organisations, gives them more time to market and innovate, supercharges their services, and removes human error from their processes, among other benefits. British-based financial crime consultancy, FinTrail, for instance, said that AUTTO’s no-code solution helped triple its membership and reduced their workload by 75%.
5. Communicating via traditional and digital methods
Effective communication may well be one of the single most important factors when it comes to digital transformation. The same 2018 McKinsey report found that successful transformation was at least three times more likely when staff were fed a compelling change story that dramatised why digital transformation would generate profits. McKinsey’s survey also showed that managers influenced when they communicated with a sense of urgency, providing teams with clear roadmaps and accompanying metrics.
Wrap-up
Digital transformation is one of the biggest risks your business will ever face – and one of the biggest opportunities. Over the past six years, it has mostly been the traditional companies like travel agency Thomas Cook, Revlon and retailer Arcadia Group that filed for bankruptcy. Those that embraced digital transformation – consider Vodafone, Shell, Bayer, and Audi – reported they made tremendous strides forward. Change is risky – but clinging to dated methods and processes almost certainly augurs disaster.
Digital transformation is here to stay. Embrace it, and you will be rewarded with faster revenue growth, customer loyalty and a competitive edge in the marketplace.
Using tools like AUTTO’s no-code automation platform is one step closer to becoming digital-first.
