From board rooms to water coolers, Digital Transformation (DX)is a favorite topic of conversation everywhere. The impact of DX is not limited to tech companies, but amidst enterprises in other verticals where customers use the Internet to transact.

“In today’s binary connected world, businesses need to adopt Digital technologies to stay relevant in their respective domains. Adopting Digital strategies and coupling them with existing operations and business models is a must to grow business volumes,” says Sriram Manoharan.

With his experience of catapulting several global brands and startup enterprises to success strides through DX, Sriram is a man of wisdom in Digital Transformation. He explains in this article what it takes for enterprises to take the digital leap of faith and transform their businesses successfully.

Digital Leadership in Action

Digitally successful companies like Airbnb, Alibaba, Amazon all have certain common traits. The senior executives have a rock cut vision of the digital initiative and what its expected outcomes are. They also foster a culture of digital embracement where short-term fails are considered pilot projects and not as negative milestone events. In short, businesses serious about Digital Transformation must have the influence trickling down from the top for maximum effect.

People Strategy in place

The biggest challenge in the IT industry, not

just in Asia, but pan global is the availability of skilled workforce. DX is a constantly evolving IT delivery model. To keep up with the pace, a workforce that has proficiency in multiple domains including mobile, web and social is necessary. Simply converting existing positions a rank higher and expecting them to outperform their previous records is not going to serve well. Training on multiple grounds along with collaboration that brings out the best in people is required. That said, I feel that companies planning for DX require a well-planned people strategy in place from the beginning.

Displaying leadership & commitment, having a future-centric people strategy, bringing all stakeholders under same page and gradually transforming the business are the key success factors for DX

Aligning Stake holders on the Same Page

A business, irrespective of the vertical it functions in, must have all its stakeholders, or at least the ones impacted by the digital transformation on common grounds. A disconnect in the motives and efforts can defeat the entire purpose of DX. Bringing stakeholders on a mutual understanding will require an enterprise to train and make understand the stakeholders respective roles to be paved and the responsibilities to be carried out in each phase. Also, the technology going to be used must also be trained to smoothen the friction that usually arrives in times of change, especially like that of DX.

Incremental transformation

DX is not achieved overnight. Fitting a software program in place of manual processes will not result in DX. Instead, an incremental approach is the key to business enablement. Key processes that have the potential to be radically changed using DX technologies must be carefully chosen. Pilot projects must be tried, tested and evaluated before scaling out the process in full scale. That is how errors can be fixed and improvisations can be implemented internally before the business goes live in real-world.

The Road Ahead

DX achieves three main goals: process improvement, operational efficiency and superior customer service. All these touch points can be checked only if the digital transformation process is planned beforehand and prepared for. Displaying leadership and commitment, having a future-centric people strategy, bringing all stakeholders under same page and gradually transforming the business are the key success factors for DX.