Leveraging digital technologies is key to tapping into the potential of big data and other digitally-powered innovations that can help business leaders make better decisions. Research shows that in 2019 alone, companies have spent more than $2 trillion on digital transformation.
This number clearly showcases the fact that businesses believe that going digital is in their best interests.
However, when it comes to digital transformation, many businesses tend to make the shift just for the sake of it, explaining why only 30% of them ever succeed at it. Failure to properly adapt can result in more harm than good. HBR’s research shows that a lack of implementation techniques to fully adopt digital transformation strategies resulted in a loss of 900 billion dollars in 2018 alone!
Instead of using traditional metrics and benchmark, the following options offer a significantly more intuitive view of your digital transformation process.
The digital transformation process explained
Your Customer Experience
The most important metric to track is the customer experience you’re providing for your customers. Customers are now increasingly turning to services that enhance their experience and deliver faster results, even if they are relatively expensive.
Is your company’s website easier to navigate? Are your customers able to find everything they’re looking for? Do you have efficient customer service?
Tracking user experience, taking customer feedback, asking them for reviews will make you aware of your digital transformation journey. After all, your transformation is meant to provide customers with better service. If they are not satisfied, your digital transformation is of no use.
Operational Sustainability
It is plausible that the new technology is much more expensive than what you were doing before. However, employing costly tech can be beneficial for your business as long as the net revenue outweighs the costs.
Keeping an eye on your operational expenses against the revenue generated from digital transformation is important for a sustainable business. You can do this by generating purchase reports before and after digital technologies, tracking the number of investments you make, and checking communication management with customers/employees alike.
Employee Productivity
The biggest reason many organizations fail to fully implement digital technologies is the lack of relevant skills required to work with these technologies. Getting enough people with the right set of skill-set is a huge challenge for companies today.
While many organizations tend to outsource talent, putting your organization’s asset into someone else’s hand is a profound mistake to make. The easiest way to quicken your business operations is to check whether your existing work-force can match the new technology you’re adopting.
Ask them if they know why a certain technology is being introduced? Are they aware of how this technological change makes it easy for a company to achieve its goals? Do they have enough information and expertise to use modern methods?
You can hold training sessions on how new changes can uphold the company’s mission and check their performance against new technology. Suppose your employees are able to do the same amount of work in a shorter period. In that case, chances are that your employees are aligned with your digital transformation mission.
Rate Of Innovation
One thing to remember for a digital transformation is that you need to constantly include technology to meet evolving customer demands and market needs. Building your processes with this agility and innovation in mind will enable your departments to focus on end objectives rather than discrete tasks.
Although developing metrics is unique for each business, your company’s rate of innovation can be reflected by how efficiently your R&D department can convert its resources into new products. You can also assess the training and HR sessions held by your Training department for employees and measure it against how well these sessions boost employee productivity.
Many companies also keep a check on their internal revenue and how well they can generate profits from these new products.
To Conclude
Digital transformation is not just about going from manual to digital. It’s about going digital while keeping in mind sustainable business growth. It has been done before, and as long as you keep an eye on your success, you can do it too.
As you proceed with automation and digital transformation, you will be more likely to identify more metrics to focus on as your organization becomes a digital empire.
