This is a big question for organizations considering a digital transformation initiative. Finding the answer to your organization’s readiness means assessing four factors that come into play with a digital transformation initiative: digital inefficiencies, a compelling business driver, leadership commitment, and resource availability. Paramount to those factors, your organization needs to be willing to change and aware of the critical success factors.
In this Q&Adage, you’ll learn about how to test your organization’s preparedness for a digital transformation.
Four areas to test the organization’s readiness for digital transformation:
- Digital Challenges & Opportunities
- Compelling business driver
- Leadership commitment
- Resource availability
Digital Challenges & Opportunities
Driving a digital transformation requires that the organization understand what is at stake. Alignment on a pressing issue is crucial to create the urgency and understanding that is needed for driving a transformation forward. Identifying what digital challenges exist can uncover opportunities for improvement. You can start by asking what your audience expects of your digital assets?
Compelling Business Driver
Having a compelling business driver is a crucial component of a digital transformation. Transformations connected to a compelling business driver are more likely to succeed. The closer the connection to the bottom line the better. Decreases in revenue or membership are good examples of a compelling business driver.
Leadership Committment
We believe that for full-fledged digital transformations to succeed, leadership commitment and buy-in are required. While transformations often start with the rank and file, leadership is required to push through plateaus.
Resource Availability
In our experience, resourcing a digital transformation is always a top concern. While it is important to have support from leadership, oftentimes leadership is too busy to manage a transformation. Thus, making the right choice of staff resourcing is a critical component of driving a digital transformation. Having the right resources and the right amount of resources are imperative. Adage will often recommend a “structuring” phase to assist our clients in making great team choices.
In addition, assigning a team to lead the transformation expects that staff will be asked to take on more. In general, we have seen that staff are willing to take on additional responsibilities, but organizations struggle with this step. Especially organizations that are departmentally siloed or not accustomed to cross-functional teams. Does your organization allow you to ask staff to take on more responsibilities’ without HR involvement? Your answer to this question will provide an insight into how challenging this step may be. Keep in mind you will be asking staff to do more, learn new roles and responsibilities, and in many cases to stop following certain processes or behaviors.
Download our Digital Transformation Workbook
Our Digital Transformation Workbook simplifies what digital transformation means for your organization. You’ll be able to assess your organization’s preparedness for change with our readiness checklist. We have an overview of the ABCs of Digital Transformation. There’s also a set of questions to help you identify internal weaknesses and strengths as you face a Digital Transformation. Don’t wait to improve your digital presence and your audience’s online experience.
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