Digital transformation is integrating digital technology into all business areas, fundamentally changing how you operate and deliver value to customers. This usually involves both brand and digital transformation. The digital transformation that involves brand and business process transformation is something that all businesses need to gravitate towards and adopt new tools that help them manage their business more effectively to remain competitive. However, it is not enough to bring in the best digital experts, deploy the latest in technology, and implement the most efficient change in processes if the company does not also undergo a cultural change that requires some change management.
It’s Now, or it’s late.
Many times, most business owners think, “Yes, I know I am depending too much on my old process and taxing my workforce. Digitising and redesigning my workflow to integrate my business systems is something I will do soon… once I have reached a certain revenue, once I have launched this new product, when I have more time, or when we hire a new CTO.” But, as they say, Time and Tide wait for no man. Every day we put aside equipping our business for the future is another day we expose ourselves to being vulnerable to a lack of transparency, unnecessary repetitive tasks, human errors, and additional workforce costs. In a world where everyone is blind, the one-eyed man shows the way. However, when more and more people start to see the benefits of implementing technology, a new standard becomes the new norm. Today most companies adopt some technology. The issue is that most of this technology is implemented in piecemeal formats, usually without an organisational mandate on how each technology impacts the other. In order to implement effective adoption of new technologies and processes, businesses need to adopt an organisation’s comprehensive Change Management exercise to navigate the journey towards industry 4.0 successfully.
Changing the way your company functions requires a Champion to lead the way
In general, there are two major kinds of organisational change; change imposed by circumstances and change planned and adopted to encourage growth or improvement. To successfully implement Digital transformation, an over-arching company mandate and an implementation plan designed to help businesses prepare for a change instead of reacting to it are critical to all organisations, whether small or large. Appointing a Change Management Champion and a team dedicated to implementing this change can help the rest of the organisation become onboarded faster. In addition, a planned Onboarding program focusing on the benefits, ease of use and reduction of manual labour can encourage team players who are resistant to change, largely due to a fear of the unknown.
Bringing on Additional Support to facilitate the Change Management in Business Processes
Simply leveraging the best in technology and changing the work process can streamline a business’s efficiency. However, suppose the people who are supposed to be implementing it are resistant to change or cannot handle both existing workloads and implementing the new processes. In that case, the additional pressure on the various teams can cause the project to fail. Therefore, it is important for management to plan for this additional pressure on the various teams and bring in the right help to work on parallel workflows: one to keep the existing work processes going to avoid business disruption and the other team to focus on the future state of new workflows.
Why having an Expert for Digital Transformation Initiatives can help with Change Management
Astreem Consulting is a business growth consultancy and has been responsible for the growth of many SMEs regionally. Inherent in delivering their processes is a deep understanding of the critical success drivers of businesses. Leverage our expertise in translating your best practices into specific key performance areas. Manual and Analog processes can be efficiently translated into automated processes that reduce human errors and repetitive actions. Process flows can be designed, such as human resources action only for high-value activities, and transparency and real-time reporting become possible.
When implementing Digital Transformation, it is important first to understand the various workflows in the company and how they interact with one another. The Digital Transformation experts on our team work with you to know how the database infrastructure needs to be structured to streamline the processes. In designing reports, the management needs to make decisions is also a factor not to be left out when implementing the new workflows. From this point on, the technology architecture becomes implemented and ready for live user testing. Training and onboarding programs will be implemented during this testing phase to ensure absolute confidence in the newly implemented system. Adjustments are made to further simplify and ease the workflow. To reduce initial fears and to ensure there is little business disruption, both systems, old and new, can be managed in parallel. Once the team is comfortable with the workflow, and use of the system and, most importantly, develops confidence in the efficiency and reliability of this new system, a GO LIVE session can then happen.
When you include change management as one of the critical drivers of successful digital business management, the chances of a successful implementation increase dramatically; leveraging professionals seasoned in change management can cut down the time needed to execute such a project, and offers a different business operations perspective, provide additional resources and also offer the trainers needed for the actual Project implementation.
