Why digital transformation can’t be seen as a one-off project

For the C‑suite, dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion is a crit­i­cal but dif­fi­cult pri­or­i­ty, lack­ing a clear­ly defined des­ti­na­tion. But for those who embrace the long-term nature of the chal­lenge, the rewards can be great.  

In effect, dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion nev­er ends. The process con­tin­u­al­ly rein­vents, forc­ing board­rooms to make unex­pect­ed pit stops along an infi­nite busi­ness roadmap. 

Busi­ness lead­ers must reg­u­lar­ly adapt and realign their pri­or­i­ties to keep pace with updat­ed and increas­ing­ly strin­gent reg­u­la­to­ry con­trols across the globe. They must respond to emerg­ing tech­nolo­gies, greater efforts by gov­ern­ments to safe­guard dig­i­tal pri­va­cy and a con­tin­u­al need to encour­age employ­ees to update their dig­i­tal skills, which can rapid­ly go out of date.

How­ev­er, if done right, dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion is a pow­er­ful, prof­itable and pro­duc­tive approach to solv­ing future chal­lenges. So how should it be tack­led in the long term, despite those many mov­ing parts?

For Pete Han­lon, group CTO at glob­al out­sourced answer­ing ser­vice Mon­eypen­ny, dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion isn’t fin­ished when a busi­ness hits one goal. Hav­ing pre­vi­ous­ly led a suc­cess­ful dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion for media brand Auto Trad­er, he says com­pa­nies must accept the process as an ongo­ing cost on the bal­ance sheet.

“One of the big mis­takes com­pa­nies make is think­ing there is a one-off project cost for dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion rather than think­ing of it as a cost of doing busi­ness,” he explains. 

Be big and bold 

To ensure the process con­tin­ues, it’s impor­tant that com­pa­nies con­tin­ue to allo­cate funds to dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion ini­tia­tives every year, Han­lon says. “Hav­ing a con­tin­u­ous bud­get allows com­pa­nies to pri­ori­tise and fund the best ini­tia­tives and con­tin­ue to fund exist­ing ini­tia­tives, allow­ing a cul­ture of trans­for­ma­tion to thrive.”

Han­lon is now focused on a con­tin­u­al imple­men­ta­tion of the lat­est advances in arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence to meet the ever-chang­ing demands and needs of Moneypenny’s cus­tomers. This stems from the need to “lis­ten to your cus­tomers”, some­thing he learned dur­ing Auto Trader’s dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion.  

“We didn’t stop once we had migrat­ed to the web,” Han­lon explains. “Our cus­tomers start­ed to expect more. They want­ed ana­lyt­ics, new ways to col­lab­o­rate and com­mu­ni­cate, new ways to pay, more data and more func­tion­al­i­ty, and we had to react.”

The com­pa­ny nev­er had a sin­gle project to trans­form, he notes. “It was a con­tin­u­ous process of lis­ten­ing to our cus­tomers and adapt­ing. If we had stopped lis­ten­ing to our cus­tomers after mov­ing to the web, the site would have become irrel­e­vant.”

Kel­ly Hunger­ford is direc­tor of dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion strat­e­gy and ser­vices at inter­na­tion­al oral health­care com­pa­ny Sun­star. To keep dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion rel­e­vant, she says busi­ness­es must cre­ate a hub-and-spoke approach between their cen­tralised oper­a­tions and the mar­kets they serve. 

“By con­tin­u­ous­ly opti­mis­ing the trans­for­ma­tion strate­gies togeth­er, the busi­ness keeps the cen­tral tech­nol­o­gy teams in line with mar­ket needs and cen­tral teams edu­cat­ed on the best approach­es, trends and per­spec­tives that dri­ve in-mar­ket inno­va­tion,” she explains.

The days of fore­cast­ing and plan­ning 10 years ahead are over, Hunger­ford says. She now looks 24 months into the future, with “a lot of give and take” built in. To main­tain momen­tum, she ensures dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion projects are “big enough and bold enough” to be inter­est­ing but not so big that they feel unachiev­able.

“I work in 90-day sprints; if it takes longer than that, the work pack­age los­es momen­tum,” she says. “Always show val­ue and return with­in a rea­son­able time. If you know your finance team likes to see returns in 12 months, work your project to their terms, at least until you have three to four suc­cess­ful projects under your belt.”

Overcoming obstacles 

Accord­ing to Ashish Gup­ta, COO at BT Enter­prise, the two biggest obsta­cles to main­tain­ing momen­tum on the dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion jour­ney are a “resis­tance to change and insuf­fi­cient dig­i­tal skills”. The size of the organ­i­sa­tion influ­ences whether one issue is more press­ing than the oth­er, he says. 

“We find the larg­er the organ­i­sa­tion, the greater the resis­tance to change, often because they have more com­plex tech­nol­o­gy chal­lenges and the pres­sure to deliv­er ROI is inten­si­fied,” Gup­ta explains. “On the oth­er hand, small­er busi­ness­es are more affect­ed by the skills short­age, lack­ing the tech­ni­cal skills to imple­ment emerg­ing tech­nolo­gies that will enable their dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion.”

Gup­ta thinks the solu­tion to both is to “fos­ter a cul­ture of inno­va­tion and tech pro­fi­cien­cy”. By tack­ling such organ­i­sa­tion­al issues at the core and invest­ing in peo­ple and their skills, the dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion jour­ney can work at pace. “Upskilling the work­force and edu­cat­ing them on the ben­e­fits of emerg­ing tech­nolo­gies will fos­ter more pos­i­tive trans­for­ma­tion­al change in the long-term,” he says.

BT’s own dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion jour­ney has been about “deliv­er­ing the prod­ucts and ser­vices our cus­tomers need to sup­port their own goals fast and at scale”, Gup­ta says. 

That’s why, ear­li­er this year, the com­pa­ny estab­lished BT Dig­i­tal. This will “embed a dig­i­tal-led approach” into every ele­ment of its oper­a­tions, with the goal of con­tin­u­ing to invest in “inno­v­a­tive tech­nol­o­gy inter­nal­ly” to cre­ate bet­ter dig­i­tal and next-gen­er­a­tion solu­tions for cus­tomers.

Smaller companies

Gup­ta fears small­er com­pa­nies may be falling behind in their own dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion efforts, with BT’s The Future in 2021 report show­ing that only about a fifth (22%) are pur­su­ing such a strat­e­gy. He admits that the pan­dem­ic has forced many to pri­ori­tise sur­vival over long-term think­ing about tech adop­tion.

What can be done? Gup­ta thinks a strong part­ner and ven­dor ecosys­tem is need­ed. This would help small and medi­um-sized busi­ness­es (SMBs) meet the long-term chal­lenges and con­tin­u­ous cycles embed­ded in dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion, as the ecosys­tem will build the right solu­tions and ser­vices that make the process eas­i­er to adopt. 

These will in turn sup­port the SMBs’ dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion ambi­tions. Emerg­ing tech­nolo­gies are such a dri­ver for change that they mustn’t be over­looked by these firms, he warns. 

 “We know SMBs often find tech infor­ma­tion too con­fus­ing and more needs to be done to edu­cate them on the trans­for­ma­tion poten­tial of tech­nol­o­gy.”