When you Google “digital transformation” and attempt to figure out what it is, you’ll find a lot of different answers. First, you might find that it simply means performing data entry with spreadsheets rather than your old filing system because your team can’t afford to spend all that time getting papercuts while they search the cabinets. Next, it could look like adding a client management system with all the forms you need built-in—like a filing cabinet that does the filing for you.

But as you read, you’ll see that “digital transformation” now includes things like AI and machine learning that can go so far as to fill out those forms for you with information from an email before scheduling your appointments. And it can do it all before you even finish reading the email. There are a lot of possibilities.

Here at ISW, we have very specific ways of ensuring your digital transformation is a success, which you can learn about here, but we understand this can be overwhelming.

So, to clear up the confusion, we’re going to take a closer look at the topic and explain everything along the way. Below, we break down the main concepts surrounding digital transformation, including

• What digital transformation is
• Why it’s happening everywhere
• The four main areas to consider
• How digital transformation differs from a business transformation
• The most common challenges
• The stages of the process

By the end of this guide, you’ll have a clear understanding of what digital transformation is and what it would take to make one happen in your organization.

What is Digital Transformation?

As we discussed, digital transformation has become a widely-used term that can often lose its original essence and intention. For some, the term can include switching from paper processing to digital forms of documentation, as in keeping data on spreadsheets instead of in filing cabinets. For others, it might look like embracing software tools (i.e., apps) to facilitate inventory management and ease the workload of teams by reducing manual counting and sorting.

To be clear, most define digital transformation as the adoption and use of technology in processes, procedures, and workflows to improve operations and the experience of those affected by that operation. It’s a big effort. There needs to be an intense level of collaboration and cooperation to pull one off and do so effectively.

The term “digital transformation” makes sense with context but is still quite flawed. Experts agree that the problem lies with the word “digital.”

While “transformation” is a clear concept, “digital” is an ambiguous term that can have different meanings depending on who uses it.  

In this article and in all of our content, we understand digital transformation as all of the above. There are many different kinds of technology and even more ways to apply it in your business. So, it makes sense that “digital transformation” is an umbrella term.

In recent years, technology has expanded to the point where digital transformation for your average business can include the utilization of artificial intelligence (AI), robotic process automation (RPA), and machine learning (ML), as these technologies have been standardized for industry use.

Undoubtedly, there will be even more innovations as companies explore new and exciting ways to streamline their systems, workflows, and processes.

 

Why Are Businesses Experiencing Digital Transformation?

There are few places in the world untouched by technology, specifically digital technology. It lives comfortably in the center of all of our lives.

With this in mind, you can see how any processes and business can easily become obsolete and deficient as the gap grows between what’s new and what a company currently employs. Technology tends to move fast. It moves so fast that people become accustomed to a certain level of speed, versatility, and utilization. Just imagine a bank that didn’t offer online banking.

Today, the most common reasons businesses are looking toward digital transformation include

• Inefficient Processes
• Lack of Agility
• Data Silos
• Increased Competition
• Reducing Paper
• Saving Time
• Inefficient Spending
• Declining Customer Experience

All of these are explained and have related examples below.

Inefficient Processes

Processes with multiple steps can easily become complicated, especially when each of those steps has its own set of complicated steps. You can picture it. Your team member has their brow furrowed in frustration as they try not to miss anything. That team member might have even been you.

If you add another hurdle, like a customer waiting impatiently, you can almost guarantee there are mistakes.

For years, companies have realized that messy processes and procedures can cost their business time, money, and good employees. No one wants to work in conditions of constant failure, right?

Take banking, for example. Most banks use multiple programs to manage their business, and most of these platforms are extremely incompatible. So, when a teller is looking to answer a seemingly simple question, they have to open a doc, take information from one platform, copy it, paste it into that open doc, and then open another program to compile that data together.

This isn’t even considering if the program is considerably touchy. For example, even the slightest mistake—no matter how small—can result in having to start over or backtrack, which isn’t very efficient at all.

At the end of the day, messy processes set your team up for inefficiency and failure.

And many businesses have their own version of this challenging and unproductive game that their teams have to navigate, leaving them feeling tired, dejected, and asking hard questions about both the organization’s competency and its ability to innovate into the future.

So, finding ways to eliminate unnecessary steps and increase ease and efficiency is becoming more and more popular, especially among businesses looking to succeed.

Lack of Agility

Change is inevitable, and this also applies to our processes. The older the components of our work become, the more challenging it becomes to adapt to new technologies, tools, and even new clients.

No matter what industry you are in, there will be times when you need to make a change. This could be triggered by new legislation that requires you to adapt your processes, unanticipated growth that demands your team to keep pace constantly, or it could be a moment when you notice your team is exhausted and on the brink of burnout.

But you are stuck because your current process offers no known flexibility or scalability.

Staying true to our banking example, take the issue of multiple systems. How long will team members tolerate that? What will they say to the line of customers stretching out the door? “I’m sorry. Our systems are slow.”

If the bank is growing at all, the processes need to be flexible enough to accommodate the increasing number of customers with ease.

Data Silos

As you may well know, data is becoming increasingly valuable. Data entry is a task almost everyone does. It dictates so much of our working experience and personal lives, and businesses tend to have loads of it. Depending on how it’s organized (and if it’s on paper), your team members can spend hours sorting through it.

Regardless of how companies get to that point, the issue remains. Important parts can be easily lost. Team members can get frustrated with being stuck in a wild goose chase. As a result, valuable time is wasted, impacting the company’s bottom line and team morale.

It makes sense then that so many businesses are turning to digital solutions on this issue alone.

Increased Visibility

They say in recovery that the first step is admitting you have a problem. People usually pursue digital transformation because they know their current ways are harder than they need to be, but they aren’t sure what that means.

As you work through this process, you must bring your current systems into the light and evaluate them wholly—something you may have never done before.

You are then able to see them, evaluate them, and compare them. You’ll be able to see and track issues like never before. And once you bring them out, you’ll never want to put them back. You’ll be empowered to continue to make changes as your business changes.

Increased Competition

Another reason businesses are developing digital transformation strategies is that their competition implemented helpful, scalable technology five years ago, and it’s starting to show. The competition is leaving them behind.

While there are plenty who still use paper processing, they aren’t nearly as pleased or relaxed as those who have switched to digital alternatives.

We admit that making the switch can be stressful in its own right, but your experience will keep getting better with usage, and your digital processes will never give you a paper cut.

Efficiency is a key factor for businesses to distinguish themselves from the competition, especially with the rapid expansion and growth of new technologies, which have expanded the competition. By running their operations more effectively, companies can reap the benefits of long-term compounding, which is crucial for staying competitive in the market.

Reducing Paper

Just like there can be digital data silos, there can also be paper ones. In our experience, this reason is not nearly as flashy as “efficiency” and “optimization,” but it’s definitely present. Paper is expensive. Not only that, it takes up space, and in 2023 space is even more expensive.

Organizations have been striving for a paperless work environment long before I was born, which means reducing paper consumption is another motive for businesses to consider developing a digital transformation framework or strategy. Preserving trees is important to everyone, and nobody wants to accumulate stacks of paper in their workplace, regardless of how well-organized or color-coded they may be.

Also, storing information in one place means that it can only be viewed in that one place at very specific times. Generally, data and information need to be reassessed again and again, which is very annoying with paper storage. Digital storage, however, allows documents to be reviewed, shared, and acted on by anyone with access.

Saving Time

It might be obvious, but a huge reason businesses look to digital transformation is to save themselves time. All of the issues we mentioned above can eat away hours of your life if you aren’t careful.

When your accounting team is overwhelmed with invoices to process, getting companies paid takes priority over accuracy and verification. Time is directly connected to money, so it makes sense that organizations want to access both precision and speed through digital transformation.

Inefficient Spending

The biggest motivation for turning to digital transformation isn’t just one of the issues above. More often, it’s a combination of multiple reasons that is tipped over the edge when someone in leadership realizes how problematic this all is. Specifically, they see how the wasted paper, time, and energy cost the organization, and then decide to do something about it.

Declining Customer Experience

If a bank’s internal processes are slow, the person standing in line notices every minute. If your office just cannot find that document your client needs, they notice those minutes, too. Time isn’t something we get back; eventually, those clients and customers will add up those minutes and decide they are better spent elsewhere.

Digital transformation can make it easier for your team to access the information they need to answer questions for the customer accurately and quickly.

 

Four Main Areas of Digital Transformation

If you Google “what are the four main areas of digital transformation,” you’ll quickly realize that they could also be explained as four pillars. Every concept has a structure that it is based on.

Thought leaders in this space will encourage businesses to take a bird’s eye view of this whole idea before jumping into any investment, and we have to agree.

Your business has to be ready for this kind of change—specifically, your team needs to be ready. Technically, you can give them no choice, but that will likely result in a much bigger challenge than just taking the time to prepare them and prepare your business.

We strongly encourage you to take a good, hard look at these pillars of digital transformation. Why? Because if not, you will have a lower rate of adoption and increase the risk of failure.

For example, your team might hear the term “AI” and think, “Well, there goes my career.” You’ll have to combat the belief that innovation and layoffs are synonymous, or else everyone will reject implementation to save their income. And who can blame them?

With all that in mind, here are the four main areas of digital transformation you need to cover before you begin implementation.

1. People
2. Processes
3. Culture
4. Tech

Each of these main areas is described in greater detail below.

1. People

As we stated, you can’t drag your team to success, or else this effort will be a complete waste of time. Successful companies understand that there needs to be an intention behind digital transformation that goes beyond saving money or cutting time spent on tasks. Specifically, there must be a drive to create meaningful experiences, not dismantle them.

What does this look like?

It means you bring team members into the conversation. Seek out their challenges and heavily consider their recommendations. Move through those discussions with an entirely open mind.

Another way to make this transition people-friendly is to keep the goals people-focused and give your team plenty of notice, say, and vision regarding your goals with digital transformation. Skipping this step is often a reason digital transformation fails for most companies.

2. Processes

Your processes are the next most important pillar supporting the notion of digital transformation. Another way this is often labeled is as “experience,” and for good reason.

Acknowledging this pillar requires business leaders to take a look at the experience of both the customer/client and the team. This includes 

• The journey, what they see, encounter, and have to work around as they move through the process
• Behaviors they exhibit as they experience the process
• Expectations at the beginning (before they’ve moved through the process)
• How those expectations were met
• The feelings at the end of the process

No one group or experience is more important than the other. Another reason digital transformation fails is due to a dismissal of either the team’s experience of the process or the customer.

For example, Amazon tends to prioritize the customer at the expense of the workers. Conversely, independent insurance agencies prioritize their team’s experience and completely dismiss the customer experience. So, be sure to find a balance when developing a digital transformation model.

3. Culture

At ISW, innovation is a part of who we are, and that doesn’t always mean adding a new digital solution. These solutions often come from people and are merely supported by tech. In fact, that’s where the best ones come from. These kinds are also the most lasting.

That’s why we believe that the company culture needs to be primed for innovation, inviting it in, and giving it a place to live.

A great example of a business whose culture is focused on innovation to benefit the customer experience is Apple. Their users are loyal because any time there is an issue with functionality, Apple quickly addresses it.

Also, this kind of culture we’re talking about cannot exist in the form of another obligation of the team. Instead, it needs to trickle down from the top. Innovation and growth need to be encouraged by management. There has to be a place or even a system that is completely dedicated to taking suggestions and working to implement the ones the team agrees they need.

People need to know that change, innovation, and other new concepts will not be used to make their lives harder (or take their jobs) but only to better the process for everyone.

When companies invite newness for the sake of a better quality of life, we can immediately see that they would benefit from a digital transformation.

4. Tech

The final pillar of digital transformation is the tech itself. It’s not uncommon for someone in a leadership position to attend a conference, become excited about a specific technology, and want to overhaul everything based on what they learned. This “game-changing” technology may be the only thing they talk about and believe will transform their business.

For anyone who’s been around tech for long enough, we know that just because it worked for one company does not mean it will work for you.

The technology that is implemented has to be right for you, your team, your processes, your budget, and your business as a whole.

Rarely, without seasoned eyes, are any of these factors taken into account. Take it from us that it is extremely important that you take a calculated and intentional path toward digital transformation, considering this and all of the other pillars as you go.

 

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Digital Transformation vs. Business Transformation 

Two terms that are often mistaken for each other are “digital transformation” and “business transformation.” While they are related and mildly similar, these two ideas look completely different in practice.

The definition of digital transformation is any implementation of technology to make a business’s workflows, processes, and procedures function more efficiently. At the same time, a business transformation is a cultural shift in how the business functions to meet evolving business needs.

In my experience, they go hand-in-hand. You can’t simply plug some tech into an inefficient process and expect results. A business (and its processes) have to be adjusted and opened to receive change optimally.

In the previous section about the four main areas of digital transformation, specifically the one on company culture, we mentioned that your business has to be prepared to invite innovation because the absence of that is often why digital transformation fails.

Business and digital transformations are needed to successfully bring about systematic change in an organization. Sometimes, leaders add new technology to the process expecting everyone to jump on board enthusiastically instead of including the team in the process, encouraging collaboration and innovation.

Often, a business experiences a transformation, which opens up the floodgates of change they pursue with a digital transformation.

 

Digital Transformation Challenges

Like with any change, plenty of factors actively work against digital transformation. From our experience, these are the most common reasons digital transformation fails.

• Cost
• Complexity
• Resistance
• Risk
• Lack of visibility
• Tech Gaps
• Knowledge of customers

These challenges are all explained in-depth below. But as you read them, please note that if your organization is facing one or many of these challenges, you are not alone. Many organizations, leaders, and team members find the idea of implementing new technological options to be overwhelming. If you find yourself dealing with one of these challenges and want help to overcome them, you can learn more about your options here.

Cost

Everything costs money, especially the procurement of new tech solutions that can be implemented into your business. So, why does the cost pose a challenge to successful digital transformation?

There is a saying, “Penny smart, dollar dumb.” Now, we aren’t out here calling people dumb, but we are saying that people often lose sight of the fact that digital transformation is an investment into the business—usually a long one.

Even though implementing new technology, training employees, and managing potential errors may come with a cost, it is an investment that pays off in the future. When digital transformation is done right, the initial investment is recouped and should yield significant returns. However, if leadership can’t see past the initial cost, the whole effort is a wash.

When people pull away from the concept due to the fear of cost, it makes us sad because they lose out on many other payoffs, including

• Eliminating or reducing the need for offsite storage of paper documents
• Reducing unnecessary fees and overpayments by increasing invoicing speed and accuracy
• Mitigation of the technology costs by leveraging currently-possessed tech in a more efficient and innovative way 

Complexity

Digital transformation is like a puzzle that keeps expanding and has hidden sections. Choosing an area or process to start with is great, but that single choice can snowball into a very expensive and involved problem to solve.

You could have a corner that you thought you completed and find out that that (in the grand scheme of your digital transformation) was just some random spot in the middle. How discombobulating is that?

Once you choose an area, a technological solution for that, and the exact type of tech you’ll go with, you’’ then have to figure out if other parts of your company can benefit from that same exact combination. Or do you need to change it?

Now, do that for every single process in your multi-department corporation.

Conversely, you might not have many departments, but you do have extremely complicated processes that have to sidestep just-as-complicated client needs, legislation, and other hurdles. It could be hard to pin down what exactly is needed.

Resistance

Few people actually enjoy change—especially in their work. Imagine you’ve spent the last decade mastering some process that no other person in the company really has right. You become the resource for other team members, and you develop a deep sense of pride in your skill. It becomes your thing. When you look at it from that angle, it’s not so crazy to see people start gatekeeping their thing when the company needs to expand or even change processes.

They hold to what they know and resist change. And while it is completely understandable, it’s also very difficult to work around, especially when people wield that resistance like a weapon.

For example, we expect team members to question the new options, processes, and technology we introduce. It makes everything run much smoother and allows the company to implement changes with certainty and understanding.

But that is much different from undermining the new technology and procedures at every possible opportunity by spreading doubt and misinformation. There is nothing that kills progress quite like that.

Again, the challenge to digital transformation is not in people asking questions but rather in allowing suspicion, discomfort, and fear to rule the conversation. Learning a new thing is already a vulnerable act. Add any other tense feelings, and you’ll watch any chances of successful digital transformation walk right out the door.

If this one sounds too familiar to you, you’ll need to adopt an attitude of “the more transparent, the better” and allow people to question every part of this idea. Answer each one. Ease your team member’s fears. Don’t push them away by laying down fierce rulings and ignoring their fears.

You should also consider the following.

• Holding an introductory meeting where you let the team know you are considering this route and answer every question, comment, and concern that you can (follow up with the ones you can’t address at that moment)
• Maintain transparency by having the ideal process laid out somewhere people can see, similar to exposure therapy
• Give them plenty of time to get used to the idea
• Help skeptical team members see how this will benefit everyone, including them
• Be very clear about your intentions from the beginning

If you keep a helpful, supportive, guiding attitude throughout this process, you’ll notice that “resistance” is almost non-existent.

The Perceived Risk

Depending on the kinds of processes a company is fixing, this can either be very relevant or not. When a company has processes that revolve around filling out forms (that aren’t very sensitive), then implementing changes to those processes holds little risk.

But when an organization often faces regulation, handles sensitive information, or works with money, they can see digital transformation as a risk—a big one. They might be afraid that the risk of something going wrong is greater than the reward.

Another way “risk” poses a threat to digital transformation is in situations where new processes are centered around invoice processing or payroll. Organizations might be afraid that if the system fails, they won’t be able to make payments.

Lack of Visibility

Sometimes the ways different processes and procedures have always been done aren’t evaluated, ever. They are simply handed from one professional to the next. “Legacy systems” or programs exist for this very reason. No one realizes that that is eating an incredible amount of time.

If team members and management never have the current processes in front of their faces, they’ll never second-guess them.

Also, on the topic of visibility, our clients tend to debilitate the digital transformation of their workflows by not bringing the right people in or by not bringing in enough people. They hand it to a select few (who might have very little to do with the current processes) and wonder why it doesn’t work.

Tech Gaps

Technology changes quickly and never really stops. So, it’s not wild to think that some organizations simply lack team members who are “with the times,” so to speak. Their team members are busy putting out their own fires, which doesn’t leave much room to develop expertise on new tech they’ve never touched before.

This challenge to digital transformation usually results in more expenses than initially planned.

With little to no warning, leadership will have to search for, interview, hire, and train new people for this technology that they don’t fully understand themselves because it’s not their specialty, either.

Another manifestation of tech gaps is outdated systems. Maybe you have a specific problem in accounting that some new technology fixes almost magically. That’s great, but that new tech doesn’t fit into your legacy system, which means you have to completely overhaul everything to fix this one thing. These are called integration challenges.

And while you might be able to acknowledge the usefulness of both the new tech and a new system entirely, that doesn’t mean your budget is ready.

Knowledge of Customers

Sometimes, digital transformation goes wrong because the organization ignores the problems affecting its customer base. Maybe the company isn’t processing customer complaints fast enough, but the organization works on its storage issues instead of focusing on that.

This challenge is also relevant to a digital transformation service’s relationship with its client (the organization), where they don’t take the time to understand the most relevant issues and their nuance. This could happen with a consultant or a technology developer, which is why here at ISW, we combine consulting practices with a highly specialized understanding of the technology we use. We work to bridge the gap between your team, customer base, and technology—benefiting everyone.

 

6 Stages of Digital Transformation

Digital transformation has become a critical aspect of modern-day businesses, and it’s no wonder why. It is a journey that involves the adoption of new technologies to enhance business operations, improve customer experience, and increase efficiency. We can’t think of many business leaders who wouldn’t enjoy that.

But what exactly does this whole “journey” look like?

Without any context, the process can look very overwhelming. And it can be. To successfully embark on this crusade for change, you’ll need to do extensive planning and meticulous execution.

We’ve discussed the details of some of that preparation in the sections above. And below, we will move through what each of the six stages of digital transformation will look like for you and your team.

1. Awareness and Assessment Stage

This is the digital transformation journey’s first—and arguably the most crucial—stage. It involves identifying the need for digital transformation and assessing the current state of the business.

This stage is often referred to as “business as usual” because it involves closely examining current processes, procedures, and workflows to determine their priorities, identify gaps, and pinpoint inefficiencies.

At this point, companies need to assess the following

• Their strengths
• Their weaknesses
• The blatant opportunities for growth – bottlenecks that limit output and input that team members are constantly fighting
• The less obvious opportunities for growth – things your team complains about when leadership isn’t in the room (Sometimes these tasks, although they may take little time, are often the worst part of an employee’s day.)

This stage also encompasses the evaluation of how digital transformation would affect both the business and the team members. Some questions to answer as you work through this stage include

• What is going right?
• What is meeting the company’s needs?
• Are there any bottlenecks involved in what is “going right” that you can detect?
• What is going wrong?
• What is taking too much time?
• What is negatively affecting the company’s needs?
• What bottlenecks are compounding those negative effects?
• What is limiting the output?
• What is limiting input?
• What obstacles are constantly in your team’s way?
• What is your team complaining about (when leadership isn’t in the room)?
• What aspects of their lives will it change? What aspects will remain?

Pro Tip: We recommend planning to start slowly and with a small test group, including at least one person from each part of the process.

2. Planning Stage

Once the company has identified the need for digital transformation and has fully assessed its current state, the next stage is creating a comprehensive digital transformation plan. Your “comprehensive plan” is usually called your digital transformation strategy. It acts as an outline for what your organization would like to achieve through this process.

It should include

• The key technologies that will drive the transformation
• An analysis of existing technology to find gaps in usage
• The timeline for implementation
• The budget required
• The roles and responsibilities of the team involved

As you might have noticed, you’ll need to do a lot of research throughout the planning stage. That could include watching demos, reading reviews, and absorbing other kinds of information on how others have performed a digital transformation.

To support the development of your digital transformation strategy, keep the following questions in mind.

• What is the technological capacity of your team?
• How many new programs are you willing to introduce?
• Are you looking to supplement your technological landscape or completely redo it?
• What is your ideal (in your dreams) timeline for completing your digital transformation?
• What is a more realistic timeline?
• What is the absolute latest you’d like this to be completed (least ideal)?
• Are there checkpoints along the way to completion?
• What are you looking to dedicate the budget to?
• Who is going to be involved in this transformation?
• How will those team members deal with issues? What is the reporting system?
• Along with what is inside the scope of this project, what is outside of the scope of your digital transformation?

 

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3. Implementation Stage

At this point, it’s time to set that plan you developed before into action. The company will begin investing in the technology and resources required for the transformation. This stage also involves training employees to adapt to new technologies and processes.

During this stage, be sure to

• Create a standard for performance
• Support team members by making extra training available
• Have guides and checklists developed to ensure ease of use (and transition)

This standard of performance mentioned above will cover the following.

• How much input your team can handle
• How much output is expected
• How issues are handled or prevented

The implementation stage of your digital transformation is all about starting on the right foot. We suggest you move slowly and carefully while giving everyone on your team as much leeway and grace as possible.

4. Optimization Stage

Once the new technological solutions have been implemented, it’s time to sharpen those efforts. In the implementation stage, you (hopefully) created a standard of performance.

At this point, the company needs to optimize the new processes and technologies.

This stage involves

• Identifying areas that need improvement
• Making necessary adjustments to enhance the efficiency of the new system
• Monitoring the new system
• Making necessary changes to ensure that it remains effective

Again, take your team member’s notes into account. What struggles are they facing? Make it very clear to them that you are open to hearing from them and that this is the best time for them to bring forward complaints. All of their input will help with optimization.

5. Culture Change Stage

While you were reading about the “optimization stage,” you might have felt the hairs on the back of your neck stand up at the thought of dealing with all those complaints. You can hear the voices of team members more resistant to change in your nightmares.

That is why we include a stage dedicated to shifting your company’s culture, mindset, and (ultimately) behavior around your active digital transformation.

Hopefully, you’ve been doing some kind of culture-related work all along. What does this look like?

• Creating a culture that fosters collaboration where goals are met because of the joined effort and cooperation
• Getting your team members used to a level of openness in discussing positive and negative topics
• Willingness to learn and adapt to new technologies and processes

Cultural changes inside companies can come from the bottom, but they are much more successful when they work down from the top. Ultimately, you’ll need to consider the benefit of implementation for your team members and continue to appeal to those benefits while considering—not ignoring—the issues.

6. Continuous Improvement Stage

Digital transformation is not a one-time process, and it’s a mistake to think so.

To maintain all the benefits of your initial investment, you’ll have to pursue continuous improvement to keep up with the latest technological advancements. Companies need to continuously evaluate their processes, identify areas that need improvement, and make necessary changes to stay ahead of the competition.

Keep your eyes peeled as you move away from your initial digital transformation. Read about how other businesses adapt. Keep an open mind as you go forward. Additionally, be aware of issues that arise from the technology you have.

Don’t let your initial investment deter you from making adjustments in the future. You’ll pay for that.

 

Make Digital Transformation Happen, The Right Way

You might have been looking into digital transformation for some time. Every organization has workflows that decay over time and are not what they should be. As technology progresses and existing concepts are expanded and improved, you’ll find that there are more and more options at your fingertips.

With decades of experience helping businesses transform their processes, workflows, and procedures with cutting-edge technology, we understand that this topic can be daunting.

So, to make this experience as comfortable as possible, we recommend that you develop a clear focus or intention from the beginning. Meaning before you implement, purchase, or agree to anything, have as clear an understanding of your goals as possible. Paired with that, we also recommend that you keep it team-focused.

Look at the experience of your staff and consider how you might make their lives easier. If you take this approach and are transparent about it, you’ll experience much less resistance. People won’t be so quick to doubt every option that passes by them.

Take their experience of your business into account and make it a priority. Organizations often look to fix their clients’ problems first, and it tends to be at the cost of their team. While this approach is understandable, it’s not very beneficial to your business’s long-term growth and well-being.

With this in mind, we also advise that you be wary of looking at digital transformation with the intention of cutting down on manpower. You’ve probably gotten this far with your organization because of the work of your team members, not in spite. If you take that angle, you’ll encounter incredible resistance as everyone will buckle down in fear of losing their position. This will cost you more than it will make you.

Let Us Help You

While digital transformation is extremely useful, it’s also very complicated. Our job is to help organizations just like yours take advantage of technology while meeting the needs of your business. We don’t add to your plate, but rather we offer solutions.

This is our expertise. It doesn’t have to be yours.

We can meet the standards of regulation, elevate and improve even the most complicated business process and workflows, and give you some peace of mind. If you’re interested in learning more about the possibilities of digital transformation, you can learn more about what we do here.

 

Frequently Asked Questions – What is Digital Transformation?

What is digital transformation?

A digital transformation is an act of introducing technology into one or multiple functions of your business for the sake of increased ease or optimization.

What does digital transformation mean?

“Digital transformation” is an extremely vague term that represents implementing technology into your processes, procedures, and workflows for the sake of efficiency or increased ease. With some kind of digital addition, you transform some aspects of your business.

What is a digital transformation framework?

When your team steps back and looks at the bigger picture, there are certain boundaries that all projects must fit into. A digital transformation framework represents that very boundary. It’s a structured approach to managing and executing your digital transformation strategy. It provides a set of guidelines, best practices, and tools for you to use as you navigate this process.

What is a digital transformation strategy?

Your digital transformation strategy outlines what exactly you want to achieve by moving through this process. This is different from a framework, which is a guide for how you’ll proceed.

What technologies enable digital transformation?

The answer to this question depends entirely on your goals. If you are looking to move away from analog data entry and filing cabinets, it could simply mean switching to data entry with spreadsheets. Then again, you could be looking to take your complicated and time-consuming processes out of your team’s hands with robotic process automation (RPA).

What are some digital transformation tools?

As we stated, the range of tools you use for digital transformation depends on your goals. You could find that an inventory program saves your team hours of counting. You could find that a client management program helps your team get projects done faster (and with fewer headaches). Additionally, your programs might be set in stone because of regulations, and you find that navigating them is difficult, which results in using robotic process automation (RPA) to do that for you.

There are also content services platforms that save your team hours of searching for documents.

How do I measure digital transformation progress?

At ISW, we have come to understand that success is quite subjective and is directly related to your goals. Some organizations dedicate digital transformation to shaving time off of certain parts of their core processes. During the planning stage, they select an amount of time they’d like to see it decrease. For that organization, seeing that reduction without a cost to the employee or customer satisfaction would mean that their efforts were successful.

In other words, how progress is measured will depend on the goals your organization sets.

Why is digital transformation important?

As technology continues to spread through society, people will get used to a level of ease and advancements. They’ll develop an internal standard that they enjoy and expect businesses they work with to keep up. Cash is a great example. Businesses all over the country used only to take cash, and those were not just rural ones. These days it’s rare to see. And in cities, you’ll notice that almost every business has tap-to-pay capabilities, which are enjoyed greatly by those who use them. Apple Pay is another great example.

Digital transformation is also important because the old ways aren’t necessarily the right ones, especially as options for improving ease and efficiency are now available.

What are some current digital transformation trends?

AI has started what some consider a technological revolution. Currently, businesses are looking into restructuring processes that are combined with AI technology.

We have also seen more RPA, ML, and Low Code/No Code technology than ever before.

 

About the Author

Collins Sarmento is a Principal, Director of IDC, RPA and Process Automation for ISW. He brings 10 years of experience in designing, building, and implementing document capture solutions and automating the business processes around those documents and the content management systems they need to be stored in. Collins has worked to automate digital capture for a number of finance, lending, accounting, tax, casino, leasing and investment banking.