As businesses face a never-anticipated or imagined situation, straight out of a fictional dystopian pandemic situation, where livelihoods are all that matters, digital transformation empowers them to survive the wave.
In recent years, those who adopted it seem winning the combat on Covid-19 without a fight, and those who have not fought it without winning. Gartner’s recent survey found that the plans of nearly 60% of CFOs contribute to a scenario that includes a second wave of the pandemic.
Moving forward, postponing agile work is not a choice, and making decisions based on impulses rather than real data analytics will be no less than hara-kiri. Isolated teams, over-reliance on legacy technologies and processes, siled data must make way for transformation in operations, experiences, and tech ecosystems. The only way to address this massive disruption is to adopt profitable digitization strategies and create value for customers.
A digital-centric approach focused on achieving agility, developing lean operations, making the most of technology, and freeing your people for more analytically inclined, complex tasks—remains at the heart of this shift.
While surveys have repeatedly shown that organizations are in the middle or have already implemented a digital transformation strategy, Gartner noted that the rate of digital change is slow and disappointing.
Here’s how to identify digital opportunities not only to help you navigate the Covid-19 minefield but also to develop competitive strengths for the new normal to come.
The pandemic has forced companies to wipe out their strategy. Top management buy-in must be followed by careful planning around specific objectives, metrics, and targets to address critical challenges quickly.
Analyze and determine what drove your competition to struggle and thrive during this pandemic? Transform this crisis into an opportunity, refocus your focus on strategic priorities, even if it means working overtime with your external partners, which exist beyond the walls of your organization.
To respond quickly and flexibly to uncertainties, C-Suite executives must complete all ramifications of the digital initiatives. They need to adopt practices relevant to their business, clearly define the corporate IT governance structure, establish accountability throughout the value chain, and find ingenious ways to rearrange business processes.
Start building a flexible, cutting-edge digital workplace.
At the center of your digital transformation, success lies in identifying ways to make your workplace a capable space. Determine which new technologies need to be introduced to achieve maximum impact and facilitate tool adoption and staff training. Efforts should rotate strategic planning and employee experience, business alignment, governance, change management, statistics, and operations.
Digital workspace managers, IT managers, architects, and application managers all need to come together to visualize the communication, collaboration, and agility of a large workforce. Technological investments must be made; workers should be encouraged to embrace disruption to create opportunities to improve productivity and efficiency through enhanced digital agility. Accepting a data-driven culture, automation, and advanced analytics can help mechanize and expand a range of businesses.
Use your force multiplier resources to execute the tech strategy.
Preserving your business’s financial health by maintaining a stable and robust pipeline during the pandemic is a necessity. Refreshing technology for sales and service channels, establishing new collaboration systems, allowing partners and suppliers to operate remotely should be your top priority.
It can’t be left solely to your company’s IT.
Your power multipliers, the people who create innovative solutions and solve customer problems, need to be included. CIOs need to ensure that coherence and cooperation are encouraged to develop a practical digital base. It must be accompanied by distributed decision-making so that business units, functions, and teams can make tactical decisions that align with broader business strategy. Not only will it empower employees, but it will also help avoid bureaucratic, top-down decision making, which is often slow and listless.
This pandemic: revive your customers’ trust in you
Your customers deserve your attention, and they deserve it now. Ask yourself the following question: Would a flawless customer experience (which offers them convenience) in these challenging times improve your comparison with them? Would providing personalized service and adhering to timelines make them happier? Will consistency across purchase touchpoints interest them more? Would well-structured processes respond to their concerns or grievances more quickly? Does greater efficiency within the company make it easier to audit customer activity leads? Will this help convey correct and consistent messages to customers and persuade them to purchase again?
No customer-conscious business can afford to say “No” to any of these answers! A well-thought-out digital transformation strategy can help you respond to the change that is knocking at your doors through streamlined processes and customer-centric innovation.
Conclusion: continue to define and measure success
In return for cash, this pandemic provides the perfect opportunity for business executives and decision-makers to prioritize and systematically fill gaps in their existing strategies. Whether they want to eliminate the use of legacy systems, implement third-party technologies, choose efficient, affordable, and scalable solutions – everything needs to be aligned with their future goals, resources, and capabilities.
They have to set goals, develop metrics that match their digital business journey, assess what they need in digitizing their existing business model in every possible area such as marketing, sales, operations, services, products, supply chain management or service customers and ties to their vision for more significant growth and better return on investment. As the challenges businesses face are often unique and complicated, there is hardly any room for a one-size-fits-all approach.
