12 Dec The six factors for successful digital transformation
Most recently a global forensic study over 70 completed Digital Transformation Programs plus surveys with over 800 executives, found six parameters for successful digital transformation. They were around strategy, financing, the organisation’s approach, their governance and the key traits of the people driving program success.
Do you want to flip the odds of success for your program from 30% to 80%? Then these are the six factors to look at:
- A developed and integrated Strategy with clear Transformation Goals. Because your strategy describes the why, the what, and the how, you have the ties to specific, quantified business outcomes. No clear and developed and monitored strategy = failure to get value for the change.
- Getting leadership commitment from CEO down through middle management. Any organisation that has high leadership engagement and alignment, but then can overlook key middle-management owning the change and therefore accepting accountability.
- High-Calibre talent identified by management need to be freed up to drive the transformation program. Are your key people bogged down?
- An “Agile Governance Mindset” is required to drive broader adoption across the organisation. This is the mindset where leaders quickly address roadblocks and adapt to changing contexts, drive the cross-functional, mission-oriented, “fail-fast-learn” behavioural changes. Quickly dealing with individual challenges whilst not losing sight of the broader goals will help the transformation.
- Effective monitoring of progress towards defined outcomes with clear metrics and targets around processes and outcomes, with sufficient data availability and quality is a must. How do you know you are on track without monitoring and measuring?
- Finally, when the organisation puts in place a fit-for-purpose, modern technology architecture it must be driven by business needs. We cannot enable secure, scalable performance, rapid change deployment and seamless ecosystem integration without good project governance and design.
These factors drive success for all industries – not just government, councils or regional authorities. These factors were shown as key for all types of digital transformations also. At Strategic Directions we offer fiercely independent advice and have been guiding both federal, state and regional organisations since 2003 to get the best return on their IT investments. Feel free to discuss your requirements with us or look to attend one of our regional events.
