Digital transformation. Maybe you’ve heard of it, maybe you haven’t. Let’s talk about it and demystify it.
What is digital transformation?
The simplest definition is that digital transformation is the integration of digital technology into all areas of your business. You might have heard it talked about as “moving to the cloud” or “making wearables part of our strategy.”
One goal of digital transformation is to deliver better value to your customers. If you’re a business, these are people who buy your products or consume your services. If you’re a university, they’re your students and alumni. If you’re a nonprofit this is engagement, fundraising and mission delivery.
In layperson’s terms, one part of digital transformation that focuses on your external customers means that whatever new digital technology people are using, like devices or apps, you make them part of your strategy in order to meet your customers or constituents where they are.
Have you ever heard the phrase “Fish where the fish are”? Drilling down, this can mean that if your people are consuming your content on their phones – and in 2019, we can assure you that they are – that you’re making sure your web pages and forms are mobile-ready.
It can also mean that if your constituents are active on a social network like Instagram, that your organization or business engages people via Instagram, instead of trying to convince them to move to Twitter.
Digital transformation can also focus on your internal customers and your operations in order to use modern technology with greater efficiency. For example, if you have an on-premise database that your staff are responsible for supporting, upgrading and maintaining, you might be considering moving to a database that is hosted in the cloud.
Benefits of being “in the cloud” can include more storage, greater flexibility, and maybe most importantly, no more 2am wakeup calls for your Vice President of IT because the power in the server room went out.
The transformation part of digital transformation refers to more than just swapping out the technology, though. It’s also critically important to plan for how your people and processes will change as a result. You need your staff to be bought in if you want this transformation to succeed.
Sure, you can just order everyone to get on board – but we promise you that it will be a million times easier if you have the enthusiastic participation of your staff in thinking through how all of this will work, designing solutions, and helping each other. It will also be a more pleasant work environment for everyone.
Change is hard sometimes – but it doesn’t have to be. Answering these questions in advance will help your digital transformation succeed:
- How will we select the best-fit technology for what we need?
- How will we involve stakeholders who will be affected by the organizational decision?
- How will we train our employees on the new system?
- How will we support the new system?
- Who will write the operations manual?
- How will we encourage and enable our staff to adopt the new system?
Raise HECK can help you answer these questions. We’ve been through digital transformations that were done poorly and failed, and ones that succeeded. Throughout our combined 40 years of experience, we have been both part of the problem, and part of the solution.
Most importantly, our deep knowledge and experience in the field of Customer Success has prepared us to bring our expertise to help you do this right the first time. Then you can devote more time to raising heck for your cause!