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5 steps to digitally transform

Objective

The 5 key steps of digital transformation will help your business to adapt to move from physical to digital to physical. We hear the phrase digital transformation as often as ‘the new normal’ in this COVID era. But, how do we really transform digitally?

The result is more of a fashionable use of the word ‘digital’ rather than ‘applicable’.

Here are 5 steps that will not only help the necessary integration to happen, but also, get you on the digital path up and running.

Background

Twimbit had posted a poll. (slido.com, #twimbit)

The question we had asked was – What is the biggest dilemma you are facing at work today?

An overwhelming 53% of our respondents are grappling with two key dilemmas at the workplace of today.

As a result of the poll, The first selected option, ‘not enough learning at the workplace’ is something we shared our insights on last week.

The second, ‘your company not being able to adapt to digital times’ is the inspiration for this particular insight.

Why is your company not able to adapt to digital times?

Are you missing a blueprint to transform digitally?

Imagine.

You are driving on a long stretch of a free highway.

At night.

No, this is not a horror story.

It’s a normal day in your life.

On that drive, it just happens that due to a technical glitch, the streetlights are flickering for a 5-mile stretch.

Flickering streetlamps illuminating the highway!

Welcome, digital transformation.

What?

Right.

The highway is your business. Each lamppost a business process, handshake, stakeholder and a node in your business infrastructure. Each flicker of the lamppost gives birth to light, shadows and mirages as an outcome.

As you manoeuvre all the horses under your hood through each lamppost, you can’t tell the difference between the light and shadows created from one to the other.

It’s all interconnected. Flowing into, with and for each other. That’s digital transformation for a business. Digital adaptation means moving from physical to digital and back to physical.

As a result, every aspect of your business is integrated with the use of technology. To deliver real-time and on-demand decisions. Collective insights and foresights that help you understand your business, customer (destination(s)).

But what allows this integration to happen?

There are 2 critical dimensions that allow a seamless integration to happen.

  1. Data
  2. Co-ordinated networks.

Every aspect of your business has to be Datafied through software. This means each step moves from physical to digital. Therefore, the knowledge corpus of your algorithms can continue getting smarter while automating business decisions. So that real-time adaptation of physical to digital and back to physical can happen. The ‘smartness’ of these algorithms needs to flow through your entire business whose many modules are connected in a network. This is what delivers exponential value.

A wise one asked “but what if the streetlights are not flickering at all”?

It’s still the same. As the light from one is seamlessly integrated with the other.

OK, so where do we start?

The 5 Key steps of digital transformation
  1. A Vision for the ages
    • Are you clear about your current reality and desired state?
    • How can we disrupt our legacy and create exponential impact?
    • Are you leading to enable or to manage?
  1. From People to Networks
  1. From Process to Data
    • Are you unifying your processes? Read more here.
    • How will you datafy your organisation?
    • What structure will serve you best?
  1. From Technology to Platforms
    • Are we only focusing on digitalisation?
    • An ecosystem that enables service providers, partners, customers and business
    • Is our strategy a fixed plan or is it continually improving?
  1. Measure the right KPI’s
    • What inferences are you making from the metrics?
    • Where do you store them and how do you learn from them?
    • Are you design thinking your business model, products and services?
Conclusion

Digital transformation is not just investing in new tools, technologies and building apps. It is something that assimilates every aspect of your business. It is adapting from physical to digital and back to the physical.

Digital adaptation is like a drop of ink in a glass of water.

Seamless and full of purpose!


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