When it comes to digitalisation, whats important - Hays Viewpoint Viewpoint careers advice blog

When it comes to digitalisation, what’s important - Hays Viewpoint Digital transformation is essential for business success. But does a desire to get it right first time mean you’re being left behind? The pressure to digitalise the customer journey is well and truly on. Whether it’s using predictive analytics to anticipate behaviours or deploying AI-driven chatbots to provide a service that’s both efficient and on-par with competitors â€" as a business leader, you need to implement a change. But this isn’t a simple fix; it’s a major reworking of your business processes that requires you to invest your focus, time, money and people resources into providing a user experience that can compete in a digital age. Those who are inclined to shy away from re-engineering the flows that drive your business must ask why. Are you afraid that you’re not equipped to implement this change seamlessly and get it perfect first-time round? Are you looking at ever more pressing time constraints, a lack of skilled employees, or both? I understand your reservations â€" to an extent. On the one hand, if you’re going to invest precious resources into making a digital change to the business, you want to make sure you get this right. Otherwise, how else can you justify the cost and keep your industry reputation intact? But, on the other hand, if you wait too long to get up to speed, will you lag behind your more innovative competitors, to the point where you lose your industry standing altogether? Digitalisation done now or digitalisation done perfectly? The world is changing faster than you might think. Something that you thought could be left for next year is, in fact, needed urgently. And you’re also dealing with new technologies and ways of working that require you to consider both how your business operates and the approaches you use to deliver projects. You’ll also need to take advantage of new technologies as they appear by rethinking things as better solutions arrive. Remember: it’s not the businesses that take time to get things right that thrive, it’s the businesses that are willing to take a chance on failure â€" even when time and budget are tight. Changing your culture to change your business Microsoft CEO, Sataya Nadella, describes the best work cultures as having “a growth mindset”, something he sees as essential to Microsoft’s own digital transformation. It’s an approach that’s changed the way the company works, leaving employees as collaborators rather than competitors. This mindset breeds new ideas. It’s about a willingness to risk failure and realising it’s a way to learn new things. Perhaps, most importantly, it’s being preparing to listen and learn from everyone in the team and across the entire organisation. Digital transformation needs that mindset. You’re on a journey reminiscent of the 1990s business process re-engineering era, rebuilding businesses from the ground up while still delivering to your customers. Such a shift in company culture and operations will inevitably result in mistakes. As such, you’re going to need to redefine failure and encourage your staff to be less risk-averse. Getting workplace culture right is essential. You must prepare your staff for handling change â€" and that means ensuring they realise it goes beyond understanding that it won’t be smooth sailing. If employees feel part of the digital transformation process, they will understand that things won’t be perfect from the start. Instead they’re driving an iterative cycle that will refine both tools and processes throughout the programme, even if the journey is a little rough at times. Digitalisation is about everyone To deliver change successfully, teams must be kept informed. You need to show them what you’re going to do, how you’ll go about it, and why you’re doing it. Good communication is at the heart of delivering a user-focused set of changes, where users become part of the change process. Not only will you get new, and often unexpected, insights, you’ll also help manage expectations more effectively. Communication isn’t just top-down either; it is a two-way street, and you’ll need to be open to ideas (and questions) from everyone involved in the process. By involving users in your change process, you’re also opening it up to a set of more diverse opinions, which are a powerful source for innovation. Building inclusion into your digital transformation highlights new opportunities and helps us to understand the needs of a diverse population. Building in accessibility features can also support a wider user base, making it easier for them to work with you and your services. This flexible approach has had significant industry uptake. “Maintaining a truly diverse environment has proven to be a leading indicator of the quality of a risk culture, in addition to being an effective way of connecting to an equally diverse client base,” says Mike Corbat, CEO of Citigroup. Living with a growth mindset Digitising a business is complex. If it’s to be successful, you need to shift focus from your large-scale overall goals to smaller-scale projects with hypothesis-driven development models, such as those used by Expedia. Don’t be afraid to alter processes that aren’t working. But, if the change doesn’t lead to an improvement, you’ll need to be ready to rethink your approach. Using a philosophy that embeds the concept of ‘hold tightly, let go easily’, you’ll be ready to argue your corner and try out your ideas. But if it fails, be ready to learn from your mistakes and move on using what you’ve learnt. Trial and error are crucial to delivering effective digital transformation. By adopting modern development processes and bringing in agile skills to your organisation, you can quickly respond to, and learn from, problems. As you build prototypes and evaluate hypotheses, you’re learning about your businesses processes, gaining a better understanding of what your business does, how it does it, and the ways it fits in with a modern customer-centric way of working. Building the right skills to deliver a digital transformation The skills you need to build a modern digital business are unlikely to be inside your organisation. The technologies involved are often new and come with steep learning curves. Filling the skills gap means hiring new staff and building a roster of skills that can be developed internally and shared with existing staff. Even with appropriately skilled new staff and a mix of internal and external training programmes, building a body of digital transformation specialists will take something you don’t have: time. An alternative option would be to hire specialist contractors to get you started while you build your team. As Steve Weston, our CIO, points out, “Contractors can help you fill this gap, not just with the skills they bring to the table, but with the experience they will have working across multiple digital transformation projects for different companies and, potentially, in different industries. Not only is this of huge benefit to your projects, but also to your existing IT teams.” Lessons learned in other industries can help with your digital transformation process, adding to the diversity of ideas and thought necessary for successful delivery. Focusing on process is essential to the success of business alterations on this scale. Digital transformation is a huge opportunity for businesses that want to update and expand their business processes, but it’s not the time to digitise everything. Instead, analyse processes as you start to work with them. As Aaron Levie, CEO at Box, says, “Adding software to a broken process doesnt make you digital. The biggest challenge is reimagining the process, not writing software.” Digital transformation requires agility and the ability to recover when you stumble and fall (which you will do). Olympic gymnasts don’t get it right first time, and businesses don’t either. By practising the new skills you’ve acquired, your business can move on from its mistakes to deliver the digital services your users and your customers are demanding. Found this blog useful? Read some of our other  technology  blogs: Change agents: key to successful digital transformation Podcast 4: how to make the right HR tech decisions for your business 4 vital skills CIOs need to survive digital transformation The real challenge for digital transformation is not your technology