Preparing your organization for successful digital transformation and business growth

Technology has reached such a point where organizations across almost every industry are embarking upon their own digital transformations (DTs), and the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the digital plans for many organizations. Failure to adapt to the new world of work means businesses will inevitably be left behind, but any successful digital transformation must be approached with a well-defined and methodical strategy at its core. 

Many companies have undergone DT in recent years, but most don’t meet their objectives. Why? And what can companies do to remedy this?   

Introducing the Results Hub for Digital Transformation

There are numerous reasons why a DT might fail, with some of the most common contributors being: 

• • A lack of shared direction 
  • The central strategy doesn’t align to our modern digital world 
  • Failure to understand what it means to be truly ‘digital’ 
  • Lack of talent with the right skill sets 
  • Inability to scale; agility 
  • Not understanding that a DT is an ongoing evolution, rather than a one-off decision 

Central to all these problems is the organization’s lack of engaging their people. Without involving your people, buy-in will be difficult and inevitably driving success becomes a challenge. You may face great resistance to change, and overall, there can be no clear vision to progress the project successfully. 

Related: 4-Steps Digital Transformation Guide for CFOs

That’s where organizations should create a layer that governs and enables DT — a disruptive and innovative framework that forces you to change the end-to-end way you operate, manage, engage and track your results. At Proudfoot, we call this the Results Hub. 

Your Results Hub should focus on the management, operating and business models to allow true business transformation in a structured and holistic approach:  

• • Total operating model ecosystem changes: The changes that must be made to how the business is being run — both now and into the future — which includes management tools, technology and data, and organizational structure. 
  • Target management model redesign: This empowers you to reimagine how key decisions are made. It taps into how you hire, motivate, organize, connect, reward, develop, lead, and so much more. 
  • Detailed engagement plan: This plan requires all stakeholders to buy into it, so you can align and move through the DT together. Your plan needs to be robust and easy to follow, because nothing moves until people move. 
  • Transformation measurement: You can’t determine whether your transformation is on the right track unless you can measure it. From the ecosystem changes to stakeholder engagement, to your P&L data, to the customer experience — good measurement is inextricably linked to success. 

Humanize, optimize, digitize

Acknowledging that a DT is the right move for your organization is only the first step. To become a fit and healthy business, you need to define exactly what needs to change. In this sense, the Results Hub model focuses on three core pillars: humanize, optimize, and digitize. 

Humanize is the management model that relates to people and culture. It’s about leading an organization fit for people. So, how do you lead? What are the ways you manage, motivate, collaborate, define strategies, develop objectives and make decisions? 

Optimize is the operating model that is all about building a safe and productive operating ecosystem. It oversees how you work — the processes, technologies and management systems that combine to support how your organization achieves results. 

Digitize is the business model that is concerned with creating value for all stakeholders. It examines how you compete and grow, exploring the bringing together of your people, the operating model and technology to produce a competitive advantage in your industry. 

4 steps to achieving your DT objectives

So how exactly does the Results Hub work to achieve your DT objectives? By exploiting four key elements that will ensure your organization manages, leads, executes and sustains the transformation. 

Broken down, it involves: 

1. The methodology: Change must be embedded. This step focuses on process and management tool changes, as well as their interfaces, for a company that supports not just employees and customers, but suppliers and technology as well. 
2. The roadmap: Agility is the lifeblood of any successful DT. Robust governance is therefore critical, with agile solutions like sprints, as well as regular measurement of results, all playing a vital role. 
3. Program change leadership: Employee buy-in needs to occur before the transformation gets underway. This step illuminates the power of employee engagement — being able to inspire your transformation vision by changing the way you communicate, align, and train your people. 
4. Co-Venture™: Even a transformation that is initially successful may not survive if there is no investment in sustaining it. Sustainability must be the ongoing goal for every organization, and this step is all about collaborating with people to bring them along on the journey of sustainable change. 

The Results Hub helps your organization build an agile change blueprint

At its heart, the Results Hub is focused on people adoption for maximized digital return on investment. Anything less will result in an organization falling victim to the high DT failure rate. By adopting the Results Hub model, you can create an agile change blueprint that will help you predict and resolve issues before they snowball into major problems and inspire your people to embrace value-driven technology changes. 

The Results Hub keeps the pulse on your company’s aspiration to digitize your business, ensuring culture change and outcomes are achieved.

For more information on how a Results Hub can support your organization through its DT, contact Proudfoot today. You can also explore the valuable insights we’ve collected from transforming businesses across the globe.