Research from the Boston Consulting Group shows that while most businesses want to scale successful digital transformations, only 35% of these businesses worldwide do. They have accelerated their digital transformation achievements by putting humans, which includes customers and employees, at the centre of their growth strategy. Then, technology is deployed at speed to make it easier to exceed expectations and deliver value.
Finally, companies who have completed the initial digital transformation phase can leverage these skills to innovate better and faster to reshape industries and beat their competition. So, here are three ways to become a winner rather than a laggard when advancing your digital transformation efforts.
1. Deploy Cloud Technology to Harness the Value of Real-Time Data
To quickly adapt to evolving customer needs and behaviors, your company can accelerate your transformation process by utilizing cloud computing to gather and analyze various data sources on one online business platform. For instance, to continually improve the online shopping experience, you can collect data from multiple touchpoints along the customer journey, such as their previous purchases, items that received the most clicks, or their browsing patterns.
Then the agility and flexibility of the cloud can enable businesses to move at the required speed for customers or markets as a representative from each business unit is taught about the value of gathering data insights in this single data source. Over time, this data is updated in real-time so as to create a rich, personalized view of the customer.
Using Google Cloud’s Big Query data warehousing and analytics tool, furniture store Crate & Barrel was able to turn more than ten internal information sources into insights that it could use to shape the customer’s next interaction.
For instance, by using this tool to analyze omnichannel data about their customers’ buying habits, they were able to shift from direct mail to digital advertising, which allowed them to improve the view of their customers at critical moments.
2. Use a People-First Mindset To Drive Technology Adoption
While digital transformation does benefit from an upgrade in technology, these types of investments will only lead to success at an organization if it trains its people to get the most out of these tools. Fortunately, Wyndham Hotels & Resorts did not find the concept of putting its people first before technology once the pandemic began, as it prioritised its talent, culture and teams before any other goal.
Instead, as it has started building a community of trust with its people, people were encouraged to adopt digital tools to continue working together and communicating remotely. It continued to ensure that people did their best work through its Affinity Business Groups (ABGs) which supported underrepresented groups through mentoring and pay equity practices so that all employees could feel valued.
Moreover, it also began conversations with the heads of their franchises once Covid-19 started. This practice was so that it could understand what each part of its business needed to thrive in uncertainty. These people-centric conversations led to the development and usage of its mobile app and touchless payment solutions for business customers.
As a result, Wyndham used technology to improve the employee experience and informed them about it before adoption. Similarly, DBS Bank in Singapore also built a natural language processing (NLP) model to capture negative qualitative sentiment from employee surveys so that it could monitor any problems and create a better working environment when working remotely.
3. All Business Units Must Own Innovation Efforts, Not Just Your Leaders At The Top
Once you have completed the initial phase of transformation, upping the ante on this process requires a focused innovation strategy to be owned and coordinated by all parts of the business. Before adopting a strategic innovation strategy that all business units had a hand in shaping, Société Générale (SocGen) ran too many innovation projects with no direction or cohesion.
By working with various digital transformation experts, it cut down its 116 live innovation projects into five main strategic areas. As the bank’s 25 business and service units now had a smaller, more strategic pool of innovative goals to focus on, it was easier for them to work together on these priorities rather than in siloes.
First, the focus of each of the five core areas was defined and signed off by the board. These areas of innovation included banking-as-a-service, personalized financial advisory services for professionals and SMEs, and data-driven lending.
Next, one person in each of the bank’s 25 units was picked to act as an advisor to the head of the business unit. In this way, SocGen’s digital-based innovation strategy allowed it to compete with fintech businesses. All business units were working as a cohort to fund the distribution of innovative services, which allowed differentiation in the market.
For instance, SocGen now has more than 200 partnerships with startups to improve its commercial viability and has created eight of its fintech businesses through an intrapreneurship programme, including Kwiper, a software-as-a-service (SaaS) wealth management solution for professionals.
Expedite your digital transformation process by using your people to drive its success. Don’t get caught up in the novelty of technological solutions. Educate your talent on the purpose and benefits of any digital investment before implementation.
Then, continue to monitor this change so you can co-create this transformation together with every part of your business. Involving your people at every start of the process so that they can make a difference in your customers’ lives will be the change you need to accelerate your transformation process and turn you into a winner.
Author Bio:
Efrat Vulfsons is the CEO & Co-Founder of PR Soprano and a data-driven marketing enthusiast, parallel to her soprano opera singing career. Efrat holds a B.F.A from the Jerusalem Music Academy in Opera Performance.
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