Is Your Digital Transformation Strategy Driving Business Value? Here are the Initiatives to Monitor

The profound transformation of business enterprises and their activities, procedures, competencies and models has become more prominent than ever. Digital transformation completely strengthens the changes and opportunities of a combination of disruptive technologies and their footprints across society in a strategic and prioritized manner, keeping present and future perspective in consideration. In the current scenario, most of the companies are aiming at digital transformation initiatives.

Here is the research data from different surveys conducted, marking the trend of the businesses dealing in digital transformation.

•  Tech Pro Research's survey in 2018 illustrated that 70 % of respondents implied their companies had a digital transformation action plan in place or were working on one already. Except from "going paperless," one of the major focus areas of digital transformation is automation that makes business operations more efficient and productive.

•  IDG survey of 2018 depicts that introducing more automation for improvisation and efficiency was the topmost objective for digital transformation initiatives (64%).

•  McKinsey's research shows that consulting firm suggests that "as many as 45% of the activities individuals are paid to perform can be automated by adapting currently demonstrated technologies." Moreover, automation could become a crucial competitive benefit as the intensity of the advantages are "between three and ten times the cost."

More and more companies invest in digital transformation initiatives but something important is being ignored. According to McKinsey – "less than 30% of digital transformation initiatives succeed." Which means, more than 70% of them fail. The luring agenda of "faster", "easier" and "cheaper" can outshine a basic reason for automating tasks which is driving business value. Automation doesn't create value on its own rather it actually amplifies the value that is already existing.  If there's small-scaled or no innate value already, automation will not magically transform it into a valuable asset. Therefore, to drive more value from the digital transformation efforts certain set of precepts need to be considered.

Dodging the path of using digital tools for conventional approaches and setting free from past constraints

In process of digital transformation, you take a risk when you digitalize business models without questioning their effectiveness and efficiency. Instead of digitalizing the cowpaths, one needs to determine if the prevailing processes are worth the automation effort or not. It may lead to tailoring the report content to the business users' requirement before zooming in how to automate them. Working on a current inefficient, cumbersome paper-based process and making the paper digital, is not good enough for today's business ecosystem to operate with competitive efficiency, productivity and scalability. While considering "digital transformation," the focus should be more on Change.

Digital transformation initiative commencement demands your vision for the project that may not be biased by the limitations of your existing processes or conventional structure. Instead of designing an automation project by past restrictions, enterprises need to widen their perspective to consider novel and fresh possibilities that a digital blueprint can approach. In order to head towards the next digital transformation initiative, businesses should try to maintain a wider vision and measure its entire capability rather than just focusing on the instant and predetermined advantages.

Scalability of new ideas should not be done over preconceived notions

Y Combinator founder Paul Graham advised start-ups to "do things that don't scale."

In the high geared digital environment, business ventures often set their eye on the scalability of the new initiative or programme. But before measuring the scales at an early stage, one must consider the good ideas brought in by automation and avail them a chance to make their value evident. Value of initiative should be the core of every digital transformation. As none of the businesses want to get crushed by the rivals, therefore they cannot afford to introduce soulless initiatives presently. Considering digital transformation as a journey more than a destination, one can easily gain actual success with the process by remaining consistent to driving value from their disruptive technology investment over a period of time.