Identifying the right technology for Digital Transformation initiatives

Right technology for Digital transformation

78% of the Digital Transformation initiatives do not provide any value and do not achieve their business objectives. This is primarily because the executives often take a Technology first approach.
There is a common belief that Technology will create a foundation for Digital transformation which can lead to creating business value. The business value is never created because Technology implementation consumes all the efforts, time and money.
In other situations, companies succeed in implementing Digital technologies but it delivers very little value. This is because the deep changes that Digital Transformation requires of the business end up disrupting the transformation.

In Digital transformation, Technology investments should drive Business Value

A Digital Transformation generally requires two initiatives.

• Building a Digital platform
• Transform the existing Operating model to use the platform and then accelerate the time to value

A Digital Transformation often fails because the initiatives required and changes needed to be done is far more than what the company anticipated.
When companies decide to invest in a digital technology then it should take the following steps:

• Decide on the final business value and then work backwards to identify the right technology that would deliver the desired value
• Launch effective change management initiatives so that the organisation adopts the technology readily.

How to increase adoption in Digital transformation?

When building a Digital platform, stakeholder experience is crucial to drive adoption.
The stakeholders groups involved are:

1. End Users – Customers or Employees
2. Platform participants that will work on the platform to service the end user
3. Administrators of the Platform
4. Ecosystem partners – Businesses that provide services to enhance the platform experience
5. Ecosystem partners – Businesses that generate revenues from the platform

All the above stakeholders are important.If any of the stakeholders resists using the platform, then this will impact the adoption which inturn will prevent the platform from delivering full benefits to other stakeholders.
Companies need to engineer the platform in a manner that improves the stakeholders experience.All the stakeholders should want to use the platform.If they have a good experience while using the platform, then they can advocate adopting the platform.

How to improve Stakeholders experience in Digital transformation

• The most important stakeholders are the end customers or employees. Hence when identifying the technology for investment, one needs to focus on the factors that can enrich the customer or employee experience.
• The platform must anticipate what the customer or employee needs when they use the platform. The platform should not put the burden of running the task or activity on the customer.Rather the platform should run the activity to its completion to deliver a satisfactory customer experience.
• The entire activity needs to be completed within a time frame that is consistent with the customer or employee expectations.This should not be confused with the response time.Rather it is the time provided by the company for the stakeholders to complete the journey.

The right technology in Digital transformation

• When choosing the right technology, it is important that the technology focuses on the individual and not on the persona.Hence it is vital that a customer database with all necessary information is available.
• For instance, Amazon prime provides details of credit card information when the customer checks out.This is because the user has used credit card before for payments in prior transactions.This is the right use case of how Amazon anticipates the customer next action and responds accordingly. The customer need not fill the credit card information all over again which improves customer experience.
• It is essential that the platform has access to the central data repository in order to respond to users effectively.
• Once the firm identifies the necessary attributes to improve user experience, then it needs to do a due diligence on its existing technology estate to identify what technologies are missing.

The following actions needs to be done:

1. Are the necessary components and technology already in place?
2. Can we adapt the existing components by building APIs and microservices?
3. Do we need to replace any components?
4. Do we need to invest in new technologies?

Conclusion

Once the end user experience, completeness and timely performance is decided, then firms should invest in the right technology and make all the organization changes, talent model changes and all policy/procedural changes in order to achieve the digital transformation.