6 tips for reinvigorating your digital transformation

Tips for reinvigorating your digital transformation

If your organization is like the nearly 90% of others that are finding it difficult to sustain your digital transformation initiatives, it isn’t too late. You can reinvigorate your efforts and still achieve many, if not all, of the goals you had in mind when you began your DT journey.

But it’s going to require a long-term commitment to managing the process of digital transformation.

Cliff Madru, Vice President of Global Solutions for Iron Mountain, says, “Now more than ever, organizations need to embrace disruption as a springboard for competitive advantage and adopt new ways of working that invigorate organizational performance. But making the transition isn’t just about the technology involved; success requires the ability to effectively manage the transition itself.”

McKinsey expands on Madru’s advice, stating, “When it comes to implementing large-scale organizational change, the most successful organizations commit themselves fully to the effort from start to finish.”

How can you make that long-term commitment and keep the DT projects going? Here are six tips:

1. (Re)define your vision

From the beginning, DT proponents have encouraged business leaders to start the transformation process with a clear picture of where they want to go. That early Capgemini and MIT paper says, “A compelling transformative vision, with related engagement, governance and KPIs will allow people throughout the enterprise to identify new ‘whats’ to meet or extend the vision.”

Along the way, however, people often lose sight of the original vision. 

This is such a common problem that consultants often begin by asking clients, “What are your digital transformation goals? What is your organization transforming into? In less than two minutes? Using no buzzwords or jargon? In a way that anyone can understand and be motivated by? Would other companies say the same thing?”

If you can’t answer “yes” to all those questions, it’s probably time to revisit your vision. It’s important to articulate and share your digital business goals and strategy, getting stakeholder buy-in along the way.

That articulation is an important part of the process. Leaders also need to be able to create and implement a communication plan to sell the transformation story to the organization.

If you have already begun a DT project that later began to languish, you might be tempted to choose less ambitious goals for your project the second time around. But McKinsey warns that this is usually a mistake. “Companies with higher aspirations for digital tech tend to see better outcomes than other companies do,” it says. “Digital strategies that involve incremental changes or lack ambition don’t deliver the success that bolder digital strategies do.”

To reinvigorate your digital transformation efforts, you need an aggressive, inspirational, broad vision that you clearly communicate to the rest of the organization. 

2. Break your project into smaller pieces

While your vision should be broad, it should not be monolithic. In order to accomplish a long-term goal successfully, you’ll need to break it into manageable tasks that you can accomplish in a month or a quarter.

This is where strong project management makes an impact.

Project managers (PMs) excel at taking large goals—like your vision for digital transformation — and creating and executing a plan for seeing those goals to fruition. They know how to create Gantt charts, set up schedules, assign resources, and monitor progress towards milestones.

But the Project Management Institute (PMI) notes that to successfully manage digital transformation, PMs need more than just technical proficiency. They need the right soft skills as well, specifically the ability to imagine a new way of doing business, the ability to create cultural change, and the ability to work cross-functionally.

PMs with these skills can help make accomplishing your ambitious DT vision more manageable by keeping projects on track from day to day

3. Apply the principles of continuous improvement

For most organizations, digital transformation isn’t a one-time thing — it’s an ongoing process. Iron Mountain explains, “Digital transformation is a continuous process that evolves and improves as new technologies emerge.” Organizations need to find ways to incorporate these emerging technologies into their businesses—or risk getting left behind by the competition.

Fortunately, organizations can borrow an idea from the realm of quality engineering to help with this task. Continuous improvement is a familiar concept to many people who work in product development and manufacturing. It involves making incremental changes over time while constantly monitoring to make sure that each change results in the desired outcome.

Engineers use a host of different frameworks and methodologies to implement continuous improvement: plan-do-check-act, Kaizen, Lean, Agile, Kanban, Six Sigma, and others. Your organization almost certainly already has some processes in place to support at least one of these approaches. By applying an approach you already use to your digital transformation project, you can help ensure the success of your DT project. Your team is already familiar with the principles of your chosen approach, so you’ll be building on existing knowledge, which is always easier than starting from scratch.

Continuous improvement brings with it the idea that you don’t ever stop. It helps prevent your DT initiative from stalling over time.

In addition, approaching DT from a continuous improvement perspective helps your team get used to the idea that digital transformation is simply a part of the way you do business. In the same way that you are continuously improving your products and services, you will also be continuously improving the way your business uses technology, which is the heart of digital transformation.

4. Embed digital transformation in your organization

If you want your digital transformation project to fail, make it a side project.

Forrester refers to this mistake as making digital transformation a “side hustle.” It says, “The most common challenge mentioned by digital transformation practitioners was ‘employee availability of time devoted to digital transformation execution around their other job responsibilities.’ Employees are tasked with transformational projects on top of their day job. When unforeseen events or fire drills happen in the daily business, the transformation grinds to a halt.”

If, on the other hand, you want your DT project to succeed, you need to infuse your organization with the idea that digital transformation isn’t a nice-to-have, it’s at the core of what your organization does. 

Forrester adds, “Successful organizations understand that a digital transformation needs cross-department commitment. It is not an IT deliverable but an objective of the entire enterprise. Leaders articulate their vision and make it a companywide priority by assigning clear responsibilities across key roles and sanctioning intra-organizational finger-pointing.”

This need for cross-functional cooperation is mentioned in other research from Gartner. The firm found that “the most successful companies establish cross-functional teams for their digital business transformation initiatives.”

Capgemini adds that this approach requires strong leadership. “Successful DT does not happen bottom up. It must be driven from the top,” it says.

To reinvigorate your digital transformation initiative, your executives need to let everyone know that your company is in the digital transformation business. And they need to assign people digital transformation tasks as a core component of their jobs — not a side hustle. Digital transformation needs to be embedded at the very heart of your organization.

5. Recruit new talent

When a professional sports team begins to flounder, they often bring in new players who can infuse excitement and enthusiasm in the team. The same principle can work when you are trying to reinvigorate a digital transformation team.

In fact, some analysts say that a lack of talent is one of the key reasons why DT projects stall out. Baker McKenzie research finds, “A fundamental resource gap is slowing the progress of digital transformation as organizations struggle to access what they need to make digital transformation a reality. Lack of expertise and skills, as well as lack of equipment and software are critical barriers holding organizations back from accelerating their programs.”

And while new tech talent is definitely part of the solution to this problem, organizations also need to consider the capabilities of their management team. According to McKinsey, companies that are the most successful with digital transformation have “a focus on attracting and developing tech-savvy executives and on better overall integration of tech talent into the organization, rather than just getting new tech talent in the door.”

A combination of new leaders and new technologists who have experience with and passion for new technologies can jump-start a digital transformation initiative that has begun to lose steam.

6. Bring in a partner

Of course, full-time hires aren’t the only way to add fresh people to your team. You can also choose to partner with a consultant or vendor who has extensive experience with digital transformation projects.

While no two digital transformation efforts are exactly alike, the advantage of an experienced vendor is that they have seen issues like yours before.

They know what is likely to work and what doesn’t. They can help you avoid common pitfalls and implement best practices.

For example, Iron Mountain frequently has helped thousands of organizations implement digital transformation projects that involve workflow automation, digitizing paper documents, improving security, and managing documents and records. In just one instance, it helped a global 500 bank transform its workflows to accommodate a new hybrid work style. As a result of the engagement, the bank reduced its real estate space by 45% overall and eliminated 95% of the space that had been previously devoted to storing paper documents.

It digitized more than 375,00 pieces of paper, and helped the firm implement new all-digital workflows. It enabled the bank to take the next step on its digital transformation journey, putting it in position to take advantage of future opportunities to use technology to grow the business.

Never-ending can be good

What comes to mind when you hear the word “never-ending”? The last staff meeting you attended? The piles of laundry waiting for you at home? The bills that show up in your mailbox?

Something that is never-ending doesn’t have to be boring or tedious. Never-ending can also be the free pasta, or chips and salsa refills at your favorite restaurant. It can be the opportunities you have to improve your golf game or places you can surf. It can be your favorite video game or time you have to enjoy your family.

Digital transformation is also never-ending. As a leader in your organization, it’s up to you to determine whether that never-ending process feels more like household chores or your favorite hobby. By following the tips outlined in this paper, you can bring new life to your current digital transformation projects and help your team experience the satisfaction—and success—that comes from a well-implemented digital transformation strategy.

Iron Mountain takes a very pragmatic approach to digital transformation. It helps other companies use technology to automate their administrative processes, enhance the end-user experience, and obtain deep analytic insights. Along the way, these companies optimize their workflows, eliminate data silos, improve security, and reduce costs.

Having helped thousands of customers take the next step on their digital transformation journey, Iron Mountain has developed a five-step process that streamlines digital transformation.

For more information, listen to the podcast series on the 5 steps of digital transformation, available at ironmountain.com/business-challenges/digital-transformation.