Digital transformation is a popular phrase not only in business but in the world today. Pushed by customer demand, rapid advances in technology, a proliferation of data availability and value, and the covid-19 pandemic, those looking to survive and thrive in today’s world are focused on becoming more digital. We all know the benefits of digital transformation. But do we know the key elements that will help this transformation be successful and sustainable? At TSI, we value all the elements of transformation (our name is Transforming Solutions after all!) but 3 elements are key to ensuring the success of your transformation efforts.

1. Don’t Forget the Processes
2. Consider the Customer Experience
3. Ensure sustainability with OCM

Don’t Forget the Processes

Digital transformation takes on many forms and brings with it the opportunity for cost reduction, service excellence, and quality improvement. Maximizing the realization of these gains requires more than just installing a new technology and expecting to start living the high life! A failure to examine processes for opportunities to leverage the new technology will likely result in a true “lift and shift” where the organization is operating the same process, just in a new and more expensive technology. The ultimate loss here, in addition to risking the success of the transformation, is a decrease in the ROI for the new technology, effectively wasting the investment.

Well designed future state processes will strengthen the digital transformation by resolving past areas of waste, bottlenecks, and inefficiencies. Handoffs will be clean, workflows will improve speed and effectiveness, and metrics will be collected to drive continuous improvement. The outcome? A future state that maximizes ROI and is truly transformative.

Consider the Customer Experience

Great, so you’ve taken a look at your processes, resolved your pain points, and have a solid picture of how your operation will work post digital transformation. But did you look at these improvements through the lens of those that will stand to benefit or lose the most? That group being customers, both internal and external. Adoption is all but guaranteed if the users help design and understand the new technology as internal and external customers. The interface must be intuitive, easy to use, and provide maximum value to customers. Otherwise, repeat use and repeat business will struggle to grow.

Successfully considering and incorporating Customer Experience ensures all of the hard work to design and implement is fruitful. This successful design will consider and incorporate a robust set of requirements for the transformation. As a result, these provide a comprehensive picture of the need.

Ensure sustainability with OCM

With digital transformation, process improvement, and technology implementation, a failure to consider organizational change management (OCM) and the impact on company culture is very difficult to overcome in the success of the implementation. We often see organizations neglect this consideration or do a ‘light’ version of OCM. Often the outcome is increased implementation cost, lower adoption rates, delays in implementation, and damage to company culture. 

However, utilizing a strong and comprehensive OCM plan instantly improves the chances of success for the digital transformation. For our engagements, this includes a change readiness assessment, clear communication plan, messaging from top down, providing the opportunity for organizational involvement and feedback, evaluation of the ongoing success, and the agility to adjust elements for continued success.

So What Does It All Mean For Digital Transformation?

Digital transformation can mean a lot of different things. Whether it is a modern system implementation (ERP, CRM, SIS), installing a customer portal, automating your operations, boosting supply chain management with technology, or optimizing your digital footprint, there are several elements to consider for success. We’ve touched on 3 key elements here: process, customer experience, and OCM. Others include the organization’s strategic plan, selection of the ideal software partner based on requirements, and implementation management. If you’d like to discuss how any of these may impact your digital transformation, reach out to Transforming Solutions.

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2020 showed us that those organizations that have not properly addressed their technology and digital infrastructure paid a significantly larger price when the pandemic hit than those that did invest and successfully shore up their infrastructure.  But we can’t stop there.  In 2021, organizations of all sizes and industries need to continue to rethink how they execute their business strategy in this age of digital transformation.  This should start with how an organization delivers products and services to how it interacts with its customers to how it keeps its customers engaged with the context of key scenarios that may be likely in the months ahead.

Organizations cannot simply claim to be digitally transformed simply by adopting new technologies or business applications. Technology is only a channel, the true value lies in leveraging it to empower ones’ workforce by streamlining processes and increasing visibility for informed decision making. Just as how social media is a channel in which there are various aspects which determine the growth of a channels subscription or views on a video in the same way but in a broader sense technology gives us the liberty to grow our organization but we must know how to aptly use it for us to make the best use of it.

IoT, Big Data, Analytics, Business Intelligence, Cloud, Social Media integration and Mobile are few of the many capabilities organizations today are pursuing in a digitized ecosystem. Simply stated, these capabilities can be achieved via implementing extensions and point solutions on top of traditional Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems or it may require a more extensive and encompassing change.

Executives today have a wide variety of enterprise applications to choose from, often putting them at risk of making wrong choices in a time-sensitive environment. New entrants, who are looking for enterprise applications for the first time can easily fall into the trap of building an application portfolio that is a conglomeration of best-of-breed applications, or picking an all-in-one ERP solution. Incumbents often get overwhelmed by choices they have to make in terms of moving to the cloud or staying on-premise, and how they can upgrade their existing technology stack to meet digital transformation initiatives.

In a near real-time decision making setup of technology landscaping projects, the default starting point tends to be magic quadrants or other research articles that provide analysis of the top players in a particular industry or functional area. Decision makers fail to pay attention to the obvious basis of these research artifacts; though the information provided is authentic to a degree, the criteria for evaluation are generic. The majority of these research artifacts evaluate software based on generic criteria such as – vendor’s customer base, geographical spread, new customer acquisition, common industry business processes to name a few.

Organizations blindly following these research articles as their Bible, fail to realize that a generic evaluation is not sufficient to substantiate a software’s fit to their organization. Technology solutions should supplement or complement ones’ business objectives. Just by choosing a prominent solution, one cannot claim to be prepared for thriving in a digitized ecosystem.

To avoid common pitfalls, organizations should establish a framework for their technology landscape that is driven by their “business strategy” as well as their technology strategy. This becomes mission critical when one thinks of the speed of technological change in any given industry. Frameworks would help executives establish a methodology to frequently evaluate their organization’s technology landscape against business objectives. Hence, allowing organizations to keep up with technologies driving transformation without losing sight of its relevance to business strategies.

TSI’s consultants bring experience from helping our clients evaluate or reevaluate and redesign their technology roadmaps. With deep understanding of client’s industry, technology trends and business goals, we can help you –

• Carefully think through and clarify your business strategy – in 2021 – what is YOUR unfair advantage?
• Think through important scenarios that may be forthcoming and consider the “impact analysis”
• Outline a relevant, scalable and business strategy driven technology landscape
• Plan a thoughtful and pragmatic implementation based on what your organization can and should take on
• Design and foster a culture that would allow you to adapt to digital transformation capabilities

Contact TSI to discuss your digital transformation strategies or if you need assistance in strategizing one.

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Transforming Solutions, Inc. (TSI) was engaged by Information Technology Services at a southern public flagship university as a strategic, transformation partner to ensure that appropriate mechanisms were in place to meet the needs of the multi-institution University community for the modernization of its student information systems. One goal of the initiative was to build a more centralized environment for university system-wide functionality. As a strategic partner, TSI’s transformational team worked to identify, align, and drive the needs of the University with the identified institutional priorities as well as analyze the academic governance structure of each institution to ensure alignment with the new system to maximize successful implementation. Using change management strategies throughout the project, TSI emphasized people and processes over software while working to ensure that the proposed student information system efficiently and effectively aligned with key university values. 

TSI’s Approach and Role:

Approach

To accomplish the identified goals, TSI engaged in the following:

Change and Cultural Management

To achieve the goals of the digital transformation project, TSI used various strategies. Change management strategies were employed throughout the entire project across the four campuses. TSI assessed change readiness with various key stakeholder groups, leadership, and other critical players using a series of organizational context definition sessions. TSI worked collaboratively to foster a culture of innovation and improvement throughout IT Services and the University campus community. The conversations with stakeholders, the development of requirements, and the early discussions with the vendor regarding functionality all facilitated the development of detailed Business Cases as well as a Roadmap for demoing the proposed software.  

IT Needs Evaluation and Assessment

TSI conducted an IT needs assessment to determine areas of need, technology currently used, integrations needed, existing gaps, functional and technical requirements, etc. TSI worked closely with an identified vendor to gather and analyze all necessary functional and technical requirements to support the customized demonstration of and design of software to meet the needs of the institution. Working collaboratively with representatives from the four campuses and Workday, TSI led the development of user stories, scenario narratives, and personas based on the gathered requirements to lead software functionality demonstrations.

Business Process Improvement and Requirements Gathering

Additionally, TSI spearheaded process improvement initiatives across the four campuses to assess the current state of readiness for change, opportunities for improvement, pain points, process complexities and connections, requirements for a new student system, and collect data about student, staff, faculty, and administrator experience. TSI created a visual representation of business processes that identified the stakeholders responsible for the process, to what standard it should be completed, and how the success of each process should be determined for critical entities with direct influence into the Student System. The team also helped drive the designing of future state processes to foster interconnectedness throughout campus, improve efficiency in university operations, and maximize use of technology. These student-focused units were assessed independently at each of the four institutions to document the similarities and differences of the current state business processes.

TSI managed the process work in order to appropriately plan for, staff, and map out processes for all functional areas across the institution that worked with the current student system. This included all functional areas that touched Recruiting and Admissions, Student Records, Student Accounts, and Financial Aid such as Athletics, Bursar, Financial Aid, Registrar, Advising, International programs, the Graduate School, Online programs, and others. Processes and session outcomes were used to align system requirements and processes across all four campuses to align requirements and needs for a new system and ensure all campuses’ needs were met. The team mapped 350 process improvements and held constituent experience sessions and supplemental requirements gathering sessions resulting in the gathering of 1119 unique requirements to support the broader system selection project.

TSI led the process of prioritization of the identified requirements to ensure appropriate infrastructure and planning was established for a smooth implementation.

Role

TSI served as a project manager, transformation leader, change agent, and facilitator throughout this project. Additionally, TSI collaborated and worked closely with the Workday software team to deliver requirements, demos, build user stories and personas, and meet the needs of the University client.

Results

Throughout the engagement both the University and TSI gathered data to support progress toward goals, effective implementation of methods, measure outcomes, and evidence a return on investment. Some of this data included:

• 350 processes were mapped for the current state and analyzed collaboratively with TSI and the University
• 46 Constituent Experience sessions were held across the four campuses
• 145 unique requirements were gathered from the Constituent Experience sessions
• 1119 unique student lifecycle requirements were gathered throughout the duration of this project across the four institutions
• Metric tracking was established to monitor total numbers of: pain points, opportunities for improvement, participating stakeholders, processes, and sessions held.
• 20 University staff received training in BPI, Lean principles, Project Management, and Organizational Change Management
• Methods for tracking business processes and desired metrics that were developed with TSI for this project continued to be used for the PMO internal work within the PMO after completion of the project

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