Digital Transformation is about people, not technology

Digital Transformation has been called the Industrial Revolution of our age. It is about moving from paper based manual tasks into digital platforms. While this seems like a technology problem, it’s really not. This is where most organizations stumble. They key question here is not what technology should I be using? But how do I make peoples life and jobs easier?

Like any new idea or advancement, there is always a group of people firmly against it and likes everything the way it is. You may find it hard to believe but even something as amazing as indoor plumbing was met with resistance. There were many people firmly opposed to s**ting inside their own house. Today that opposition seems nonsensical, but without the value properly explained and understanding how this makes your life easier, you can kinda understand where the opposition was coming from. I mean I wouldn’t want to s***t just anywhere in my house either 🙂 The moral of the story is no matter how much better your new idea it will be met with resistance.

The key to a successful digital transformation is to identify what you are trying to improve, not necessarily how you are going to do it. This first part is really a technology agnostic question. You really need to understand how your organization works today. What their pain points are and how you can modernize repetitive manual tasks.

You really need to understand how your organization works today. What their pain points are and how you can modernize repetitive manual tasks.

Once you have this feedback you start looking at it through the lens of the four key pillars of the Digital Workplace:

• Any Place, Any Time, Any Device
  • The Modern, Digital, Workplace is everywhere
• Enhanced Collaboration
  • Work with your colleagues, in real time, right within your work tools (Word, Excel, etc.)
• Agility and Flexibility
  • Embrace continuous improvement, the pace of change is quick in the cloud
• Social Tools
  • Leverage the collective knowledge of your organization. Have Larger Conversations

At this point you are ready to start evaluating technologies and create your Digital Transformation Roadmap. This Roadmap can now be a combination of Technology and Business Value. Creating this combined Roadmap will give you the best chance to truly transform your organization.