How to steer your digital transformation to success

The Covid-19 pan­dem­ic has shift­ed the way we do busi­ness and sped up the pace of dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion. More than half of prod­ucts and ser­vices are now digi­tised, accord­ing to indus­try analy­sis.

Busi­ness­es big and small are reck­on­ing with the new nor­mal – and the sud­den arrival of the future now. But rather than leap­ing in, it’s impor­tant to plan an IT trans­for­ma­tion care­ful­ly. “If you’re going to invest in exter­nal exper­tise, it’s essen­tial to get them in as ear­ly as pos­si­ble,” says Peter McMen­e­my, man­ag­ing part­ner and head of trans­for­ma­tion at Analysys Mason, glob­al lead­ers in tele­coms, media and tech­nol­o­gy (TMT) man­age­ment con­sult­ing.

Dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion pro­grammes can eas­i­ly go awry because of deci­sions made in the first six months of the pro­gramme. McMen­e­my com­pares it to steer­ing a huge ship on a transat­lantic voy­age with­out a map. “You get into sit­u­a­tions because you haven’t tak­en the time upfront to answer some of the real­ly big ques­tions,” he says. “Too often, organ­i­sa­tions sim­ply try to repli­cate what they already have in a new sys­tem, rather than defin­ing what they want to be in the future and work­ing towards that.”

And it’s vital to do so. “As soon as you’ve fin­ished the ini­tial roadmap and design, any change in direc­tion you want to make after that is twice or three times as expen­sive as if you’d made it ear­li­er on in the pro­gramme plan­ning phas­es,” he says. “The old adage: ‘design hard, build easy’ is a real­ly appro­pri­ate one. Most peo­ple don’t do that.”

Analysys Mason’s Trans­for­ma­tion prac­tice is cur­rent­ly sup­port­ing one of the biggest tele­coms firms in west­ern Europe through their busi­ness sup­port sys­tems (BSS) trans­for­ma­tion – a five-year, bil­lion-euro upgrade pro­gramme. Yet they’re equal­ly adept at work­ing with star­tups that have spun off from large tel­cos, and also work across finan­cial ser­vices and util­i­ty com­pa­nies. The process is sim­i­lar, what­ev­er the sec­tor: you need to be clear on your goals before you set off – and take big deci­sions ear­ly to set up the pro­gramme with flex­i­bil­i­ty to cope with chal­lenges and prob­lems that can arise.

“Busi­ness­es often focus only on the ‘what’ and ‘when’ in terms of sys­tems and tech­nol­o­gy and don’t put enough thought ear­ly on into the ‘how’,” says McMen­e­my.

McMen­e­my rec­om­mends try­ing to keep respon­si­bil­i­ty for trans­for­ma­tion in-house as much as pos­si­ble, rather than buy­ing in exper­tise. “You want to have as many of your own per­ma­nent employ­ees work­ing on any trans­for­ma­tion as pos­si­ble,” he says. “Ulti­mate­ly, these are the peo­ple you want to be trained up and under­stand­ing how the sys­tem works. This way you can also man­age the impact of the trans­for­ma­tion on your peo­ple and their process­es.”

Out­side ven­dors should be thought of as part­ners who can fill in gaps: McMen­e­my rec­om­mends set­ting up an out­comes-based con­tract with ven­dors where both par­ties are incen­tivised to work togeth­er fruit­ful­ly. “You’re going to be spend­ing years with these ven­dors putting in the lifeblood of your IT and soft­ware sys­tems,” he says. “Why on earth would you not want to treat them as a part­ner and also incen­tivise them to do a great job with poten­tial finan­cial upsides? You’re going to be work­ing with these com­pa­nies for many years into the future.”

By set­ting clear goals, and build­ing strong rela­tion­ships with­in and out­side your com­pa­ny, it’s pos­si­ble to tack­le even the trick­i­est chal­lenges on your jour­ney towards IT, dig­i­tal or busi­ness trans­for­ma­tions – and to avoid wreck­ing on the rocks along the way.

For more infor­ma­tion please vis­it analysysmason.com

Spon­sored by

Analysys Mason