4 Steps to Getting Started With Digital Transformation

Smart business owners always look for ways to improve the way their organization functions. Digital transformation is one of these ways, as it allows for organizations to use technology to minimize waste and enhance workflow. To help you with digital transformation, we’ll walk you through what it is and how it works.

Digital Transformation in the Wild
One example of how digital transformation works can be seen in McDonald’s. In an attempt to streamline order processing, McDonald's is using kiosks at some locations to reduce the time it takes to order and deliver food. These kiosks allow hungry customers to pay with a variety of methods, including Apple pay. Other food chains have already implemented features like online ordering to provide additional convenience to customers. Both of these examples are ways in which digital transformation has allowed modern businesses to improve the way they function in a substantial way.

Digital transformation allows businesses to create a unified technology platform that changes or completely revamps the way operations are carried out. It’s basically a way to improve your company’s operations by using data, analytics, and other digital tools. Digital transformation lets businesses adapt to new trends and capture new opportunities.

All of this might seem simple on paper, but the implementation process has more than a few roadblocks to watch out for. If your business wants to implement digital transformation, here are a few steps to get started.

Consider the Scope
There’s a lot of work involved in the implementation of digital transformation. Therefore, it’s crucial that you don’t underestimate the scope of this process, as you could potentially end up in a situation where you’re out of time and resources. End-to-end implementation requires a careful analysis of just about every possibility. To meet this goal, you’ll need to rely on your department managers and C-suite staff to better understand how technology affects specific parts of your organization. Once these processes have been defined and outlined, you can move toward creating a unified platform to best match them.

Start From the Beginning
While you might want to digitize your current infrastructure as soon as possible, it’s important that you consider, first and foremost, your current technology needs. The reasoning for this is simple--it’s possible (even likely) that your operational infrastructure is outdated in at least some capacity. Therefore, you should invest in new solutions that recreate your current business processes, as well as reimagines them in better, more efficient ways. In this case, you’re taking advantage of improving operations to an entirely different level.

Build Transformation Alongside Production
It’s likely that the solutions and processes you implement could disrupt your current operations, so you want to first make sure that digital transformation is possible without completely hampering your current infrastructure. To this end, you need proactive migration, along with a thorough testing procedure to ensure that implementation doesn’t hinder production. Virtualization and cloud computing are great ways to make this process less difficult, as you can use isolated containers for testing.

Plan for the Future
During the implementation process of digital transformation, you need to keep future flexibility and functionality in mind. Your goal should always be to improve processes while also keeping unforeseen changes in mind. Since your assets following digital transformation will be digitized, you need to take this into account when planning any future additions to your infrastructure.

Horne & Benik can assist your business with the implementation process of digital transformation. To learn more about how we can help your organization with a digital transformation from start to finish, reach out to us at (603) 499-4400.