10 Steps On Your Way to Digital Transformation (DX)
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According to the International Data Corporation, “Global spending on the digital transformation (DX) of business practices, products, and organizations is forecast to reach $1.8 trillion in 2022, an increase of 17.6% over 2021.”
Companies are accelerating their pursuit of a “digital-first strategy” in both internal operations and external direct engagement. The goal? Improved efficiency, resilience, and improved customer experience.
The term "digital transformation" must be on your radar by now. Curiosity about what it is and how it can create an advantage for businesses has been growing in popularity since 2015. And it only continues to gain momentum.
Process automation is another contender for the top spot.
But what is the difference if both revolve around operational excellence, explicitly making business operations more efficient?
Digital transformation is a desired future state in which technology replaces certain aspects of the business. As a result, the company expects to create benefits such as improved efficiency, better customer service, increased value, or lower overhead costs.
Process automation, however, is the means to that end. Without it, you can't get to digital transformation.
"Process automation streamlines a system by removing human inputs, which decreases errors, increases the speed of delivery, boosts quality, minimizes costs, and simplifies the business process. It incorporates software tools, people, and processes to create a completely automated workflow." (link)
If you've read the three previous articles in this series, you'll know that there are three questions you need to answer about before diving into Digital Transformation.
Is scaling the business truly what you want?
Are you, your team and your business change-ready?
Are you prepared to lay the necessary groundwork to set yourself up for success?
Once you're confident that your business is change-ready and Digital Transformation is your goal, Process Automation is your next step.
Phase One: The Groundwork
Optimized business processes based on what your clients or customers want
Clear steps based on the future state you're aiming for
Clear link to a vision inspiring enough to compel your team to get behind the project
Phase Two: The Execution.
Technical implementation of creating digital solutions defined in Phase 1
Working with people for change management happens throughout both phases.
Jamie Jenkins Consulting LLC together with Black Badger Enterprises works through ten steps to help our clients get on their way to Digital Transformation through successful Business Process Automation.
Phase 1: The Groundwork
Define a clear, compelling, and exciting vision of success with your team.
Paint a picture in your mind of how different your business would look in the future with more processes supported by automation.
This vision may come to you quickly if you're an entrepreneur who has previously worked inside an established company in your industry. Because of that experience, you've seen a model of what could be. As a result, you already have a clear visual image of what going to scale might be like inside your business. Some things you'll keep. Some things you'll change.
However, other tools are necessary if you started out as an entrepreneur from the get-go or plan to do things differently than you've experienced elsewhere. You may have to use your imagination to envision what digital transformation will look and feel like for you and your team and work backward.
To get started, write down a vision statement for this project. It should show the ideal future that you want to create. It should invoke emotional imagery that helps you feel how this transformation has impacted everyone involved in your business as if it has already happened.
Create this vision with your team and share it with any consultants who may be supporting you. This clear and compelling vision of success will guide everyone involved in the project toward creating the results you seek.
To help you think it through, remember which aspects of your business will change during the transformation and break it up by timeframe.
Three months after you get started? After the first year? How will the business be different five years from now as a result of undertaking this project currently?
Lastly, don't be afraid to admit the vision you had before this needed some fixing. Sticking with an incorrect vision to be "right" will seriously hurt your business.
Never exchange comfort for growth. Especially not when it's driven by ego.
The most successful entrepreneurs are willing to be wrong and learn from their mistakes.
Get clear on your customer journey.
More operationally-minded business owners make a common two-sided mistake. First, they stay in their comfort zone too long. Second, as the business grows, they don't venture beyond incremental improvements when it comes to processes.
It feels safe to make minor improvements to how things have always been done. While this is a valid strategy for a time, you'll need to question if there isn't a better way forward.
To stay relevant in the long run, your business needs to put the customer at the center of EVERY. SINGLE. THING. IT. DOES. Then, work backward.
Take a step back and ask yourself, "What will my future customer experience need to look and feel like years from now to serve all the people we want to serve in the way they will want us to do it?"
Incremental changes may be easy to negotiate with your team & leadership in the short term. Yet, in the long term, these modest changes don't necessarily lead to the best experience for the customer. Nor do they help you reach your highest potential.
When anticipating growth, map your ideal customer journey before you begin process mapping.
What are the ideal touchpoints with your client? What should you be showing, teaching, inspiring, informing, or making them feel each step along the way?
Suppose you haven't examined your customer's journey yet or mapped out what it should and could look like in an ideal world. In that case, you're limiting your business's ability to grow.
Instead, get clear on the ideal customer journey for each value stream you deliver. This will help your business automation efforts be more focused, provide clarity around requirements, and help your team problem-solve down the road.
Set key metrics to know if you're on track.
According to management guru Peter Drucker, what gets measured, gets managed.
Next Step. Define your metrics.
What do you want your business transformation effort to achieve for your business? Where will you see the changes you make cause real and tangible impact?
Look at your KPIs. Will automated processes increase your profit margins? Help you make more sales? Deliver a better customer experience? Have happier staff and higher retention of talent? Learn faster and innovate more.
The metrics you choose to monitor depend on the size of your business, your corporate culture, what's helpful to you, and what is most critical for your business.
The metrics should measure up to the desired future state to help you keep your eyes on the target. Tracking "Happy Customers" but not "Number of Customers" could give a false perception of "100% happy customers!" when you only have 3. By itself, it's not a very useful metric.
Some metrics may be high-level, and others cascaded down to different departments at the company or for individuals. Keep in mind that lag indicators will that show what's already happened, and lead indicators will show you what's coming up. Both are useful.
Map out critical high-level value-creating processes
What are the major types of processes, and how do they combine to create the value you deliver to your customers?
A clear overview of how your most significant pieces of work come together internally to deliver on your brand's promise to your clients is just good business.
Let's look at an example developed by Jamie Jenkins Consulting LLC. Let's say a US Immigration Law Firm is hired to help a client receive their Green Card. From a high-level perspective, this process may look like this.
It starts with the Sales process, moves to Contracts, then Onboarding the client. After this sequence, the prospect becomes a client and is ready to go. In a legal case, the first step is Document Collection according to the case type, then Requirement Submission, which allows documents to be submitted to the relevant authorities.
In this example, one may come across something called "Requests for Evidence," triggered by external authorities. Or, if successful, approval leads directly to a Consulate Interview & Response. Given a successful interview, the process moves into Case Completion, which may include billing, customer feedback & reviews, or other actions.
Each of these steps in the high-level process has dozens of operational steps within them that have to happen to create value for the client.
These operations steps or discussions aren't discussed when mapping out high-level processes. It's also unnecessary to map out every process that the company handles. The ones that matter are those most closely related to creating & delivering value to clients and customers.
Why is it important to start with high-level processes? For digital transformation, it's helpful to get a clear overview of all your whole value-creating processes first. With it, you can thoughtfully choose the most critical pieces and prioritize.
They become the focus of the next step, where we take a deeper look at your critical processes from an operational perspective. We can see how process automation fits into your team's daily work from this point of view.
Map out & improve vital operational processes
Mapping out operational processes gives you and your team a detailed glimpse of every step required to complete your work to create value for your clients or customers.
From emails to notifications, and approvals to writing a report, every piece of the work, regardless of whose hands it falls into to complete, is set up in a sequence.
While this may sound tedious or even overwhelming, this piece of business process improvement is critical. Why?
During the process mapping experience, many things - like bottlenecks, points of contention, missing resources, and other things slowing your team down - naturally come up.
When led by a thoughtful and experienced facilitator, process mapping sessions can hold space for team discussions to resolve these issues on the spot or document them to be taken up down the road.
Discovering these issues is just as crucial to operational excellence as mapping the processes.
Going through the work at this level of detail also allows you to see where unmade executive decisions are holding the team back. Or maybe they simply need clarification and communication to improve the flow.
We also find that sometimes simply changing the sequence of a few steps can save enormous amounts of time for the team, avoiding errors and improving efficiency. Time = money, so this is important.
Operational level process mapping will also show your team members how their work fits the big picture.
For example, they may see how seemingly arbitrary or repeatedly urgent requests from a coworker are just misplaced steps in a process that must be redesigned.
These discoveries are essential to making the workflow for everyone.
Process mapping creates stronger teams too. The bigger picture becomes clear when each team member sees the upstream inputs and downstream outputs for every player involved in the process.
It builds solidarity, respect, and understanding.
Often going through a mapping experience results in improved team collaboration, even when no other action is specifically taken to do so.
Process mapping also allows you to see critical gaps slowing down your work: from informational assets that need to be created, different functionalities or tech solutions that need to be integrated, to communications resources to help flow information and work.
If your company is large already with multiple interdependent processes, this may not be the most suitable method for you. However, suppose your industry is mostly sequential with short feedback loops (which applies to customer-centric and service-based work). In that case, this will be the best method.
Once your processes are mapped from an operational perspective, the next step is getting the right tech mix to execute your processes with the ease of automation.
At Jamie Jenkins Consulting LLC, we offer business consulting services for process mapping. Learn more here.
Phase 2: Technical Implementation & Continuous Improvement
Find a tech partner with expertise in a diverse set of software to help you craft a best-fit solution for you.
You've seen it before. Ads for the latest and greatest software overpromise on their functionality. Unfortunately, in practice, they all too often underdeliver on performance.
When you ask the sales team if the software can do this particular and critical thing you need, the answer is almost always a resounding "YES."
No one mentions what the solution looks like, how it works in the real world, or how that may vary within the context of your business.
YES, this specific software might do what you need it to, but when you see HOW it works, the limitations and abilities become clear.
More often than not, new software users say, "Well, that's not how I thought it was going to work…."
Finding out that the solution can't actually do what you wanted is a hard lesson to learn. It can cause even more troubles down the road, especially after already purchasing the software for a long-term commitment.
These are mistakes you want to avoid. You may already be tech-savvy, but recognizing the limits of your own experience is essential, particularly regarding software implementation.
Finding partners who understand the inner workings of different tech options and know you and your business is tremendously helpful. Many companies hire external support when identifying and deploying new software solutions.
Tech experts have the experience, time, and knowledge to assess the landscape of possible alternatives to fit your needs and help you determine the best-fit mix of solutions. They can see whether or not the software options you have (or want) are a good fit, given your goals, capacity, and/or business model
However, there's a potential dark side to external software providers that you should have on your radar.
Affiliates.
Most competent software implementation partners specialize in one specific piece of software, such as Zoho, Monday.com, or Asana.
These software affiliate partners are rarely familiar with the wide range of competing solutions that may be a better fit for your business. Their goal is to get you to use their software, generate a commission, and help you figure out how to make their tech work for you. Sometimes this may work, but it's a forced fit.
There's a different question you should be asking.
Which software is actually the absolute best fit for your business?
If the software is a good fit or not for your business goes beyond the question of, "Can the software do what I need it to"?
A good fit also means:
Considering how easy or difficult it is to generate that information or functionality you require from it;
How your team and processes are structured so you can implement them, and;
How good of a fit this solution will continue to be as your business grows.
A company likeBlack Badger Enterprises partners with dozens of software platforms to always craft best-fit solutions for their clients. Why? Because they value the relationship with the client and ensure that they get the right software that fits their needs more than their affiliate commission. That’s a great thing to look for in a tech-partner.
Gather detailed requirements for the tech solution
Gathering requirements is absolutely essential to a successful digital transformation for a business. Yet, it's frequently overlooked as a "waste of time" or "waste of money".
It's dangerous to transfer all your work into a software solution without knowing if your business processes will operate well within them..
Ideally, you will want a software partner to assist with this. They might not know your business, but they should know their software. They should learn to ask the right questions you might not have ever thought of as they look at your business processes from the viewpoint of software limitations.
Any time spent gathering your business process requirements is never wasted time.
So many companies pivot in implementing their software solutions after many thousands (or tens of thousands) of dollars are spent. It ultimately doesn't work for them.
This mistake results in wasted money on unnecessary licenses and external services that now have to redo their work and wasted time for employees involved in the implementation.
Lastly, it can wreak havoc on your employees when they constantly change the software.
They will minimally get confused and mess things up in the new software. Worse case, there is no user buy-in, and they just refuse or heavily resist using the latest software when a good solution finally is developed.
Requirements gathering is an art.
It's all about dissecting the envisioned Desired Future State to its most fundamental parts so you can build out precisely what is needed in the software to reflect it.
A great example is when folks say they want their software to automatically send an email whenever something is sold. At face value, this may sound simple. However, when you get inside the mind of someone with expertise in software implementation, you realize how many different questions may need to be asked to implement that action
Here are ten possible different questions that may need to be answered to fully understand how to implement the client requirement:
Who is this email coming from? A specific person in the company or a generic email? If a person, how do we know which person it's coming from?
How soon after something is purchased will the email go out?
Is this email managed by someone, or should it say "do-not-reply"?
What is the content of the email?
Does the content change based on the product sold?
How many products are being sold?
Is there a different template between every product or different quantities of products?
If so, then what do you do if multiple different products are sold at the same time? Various emails or a single email with its own template?
What is the definition of "sold" in this case? Was an invoice sent? A contract signed? Was the payment made? A combination of the above?
If based off of an invoice or contract, what is your accounting software or contract software so we can see if it will even integrate?
Many more questions might need to be answered to understand this "simple" process. Some businesses already know what this is, and they want it simple. Others wish to all this logic and know that the software they use can perform these functions.
Imagine being told YES to your requirement, "automatically send an email every time something is sold," and these details are not clarified in advance.
You might pay thousands of dollars for yearly licensing fees only to find out the software can't perform these functions. You find a solution using Zapier or another software (additional unforeseen costs) to patch together a way to make it work. You would probably feel like you wasted all of that time and money on licenses - which they will most likely NOT refund.
Understanding the processes from the get-go is better and helps you avoid this situation altogether.
Implementation of the tech solution, testing & iteration.
The best way to implement new software is on a gradient approach.
While the correctly selected software might be able to "run the whole company," you better not let it start running the whole company.
Turning over highly complex software to new users is the fastest way to confuse everyone and ensure implementation is a failure.
A gradient approach allows users to hop in, give feedback, say what they like and don't like, and otherwise start taking some interest in the success of the software. They are now engaged and beginning to take responsibility for the software themselves.
They are learning about it with a much more hands-on approach.
Black Badger handled the implementation of Monday.com into a team of 300 using this method.
At first, management thought this was "taking too long" and "they will figure it out." But experience always proves that they will not figure it out.
What was the result? After nine months of continuous iterations, almost every single user was actually working on Monday.com and liked using it! Just to be clear, in that 9 months, we implemented over 150 business processes simultaneously across 20 departments.
The users learned how to become mostly self-sufficient, and they only called on our team for the occasional advanced help. That’s definitely the mark of successful implementation.
Another aspect of implementation is quite vital, especially in teams of 20+.
This is about building out software with an end goal in mind and focusing on it above satisfying the needs of everyone involved.
Most technology solutions have many different features that can be used, some of which produce the same results with a different look/feel.
We’ve frequently run into situations where everyone wants something different, resulting in a conflict between what should be built and what is desired. When it comes to software implementation, it’s not a democracy and the driving force of public opinion doesn’t hold much sway.
The driving force is, however, whatever gets out the product out fast, efficiently, and viably. All other opinions must fall by the wayside until that goal is accomplished. There are as many opinions as there are people, and it's impossible to implement every view and still have a smooth running process.
So realistically, this needs to be accomplished in two different ways.
The first is from a management standpoint, and the second is from the workers' perspective.
The workers will be operating in the software and need to be able to produce on the job efficiently. For the most part, management does not work in the software day-to-day and just wants to see dashboards/analytics/KPIs, track overall performance, and see the birds-eye view.
When asking employees for the requirements, we keep them on a tight leash and ask process-related questions to ensure they can do their job correctly.
When asking management, we only ask what the end goal is.
Management is disconnected from the minutiae of each position - and they should be! It usually creates a rift when management demands how the employees get the job done. Who cares if the status column is blue or green?! If the employee likes those colors, leave them alone and let them get on with it. Management only needs to know IF the job is done correctly, successfully, and on time.
A Quick Peek into the Differences between Managed Software vs. Automated ("Off-the-Shelf") Software
Your software solution needs to support you to plan, track, release and report what's going on when you need it to save time & increase the power of your processes.
You'll need to choose if Managed Software or Automated Software is the right solution.
One alternative is Managed Software.
These are platforms such as Salesforce or NetSuite, which, by design, require someone to constantly work within the system to keep them going.
Another alternative is Automated Software.
Other platforms like Monday.com, Asana, Smartsheet, and dozens if not hundreds of others are designed to be automated.
If the software setup is done with automation in mind, once you build out your processes, you can essentially "set it and forget it." If significant ongoing tech support is required to keep your automated software operating optimally, something was done incorrectly with the setup.
Here's the first possible issue.
A setup managed by inexperienced hands may not know how to enable all the automated functionalities that would serve your business even if the software has them available.
When implementing an automated software solution, clients don't need ongoing support to keep the software operating optimally. That is unless a new project or the client is on a dedicated support plan (more on support plans later).
Some automated software service providers request ongoing retainers after completing a project. We find if the software setup uses all of the automation functions efficiently. With the client's sustainability in mind, this solution should never require significant ongoing technical support.
Here's the second possible issue. You skipped any one of the steps 1 to 5 aforementioned, such as:
You didn't get clear about Ideal Future State your automation project means to create
Documenting the business processes was not done.
Skipping either of these steps, in particular, results in constant strategic and operational changes that affect the software automation's build-out process.
As a result, processes must be remade within the software, and a lot of double and sometimes triple work is required. (More work = more time + more cost, a primary reason more than 70% of digital transformation projects get off track.)
These are two critical reasons why having expert support to prepare your organization for digital transformation and business process automation can be incredibly helpful.
Another thing to consider is that almost all of the general Project/Task Management platforms and CRMs are cloud-based and do not require "maintenance."
Updates are made on their servers which automatically reflect on every account immediately. When new features are added, these don't affect your current processes.
And yet, there is still a final piece of the puzzle to mention.
Software platforms are constantly evolving and releasing new features. Some of these are small, and some are massive and could significantly improve your business processes!
Features like these might be updated once a month or once a quarter.
Nevertheless, it's still good to have someone you can rely on who knows the latest software updates, understands your business and can determine how these new functionalities can help you and your business.
Learning & Development for Digital Transformation
Some research now points out that shortages in skills demanded by digital transformation are appearing across all industries.
Employers are faced with a choice: to re-skill and up-skill employees to fit these new demands or open vacancies to recruit the necessary talent.
However, the second option can be complicated.
According to a Payscale Research Report, "approximately 33% of companies had open positions for six months or more due to a lack of skilled or qualified candidates."
The report continues, "Companies must increasingly anticipate the future benchmarks and plan proactively to meet them. Suppose employers want to fill skills gaps with appropriately skilled workers. In that case, they need to provide employees with the development opportunities to meet the demands of their current and future roles."
For the average company, however, the relevance of Learning & Development is a heavily discussed and debated topic perceived as an expense rather than an investment.
When it comes to Digital Transformation, training and support are essential aspects of any successful software implementation for business process automation or otherwise.
They should never be brushed off to save a little bit of money.
In fact, getting people ready through communication (training!) is the single most crucial aspect of successful change management.
Think about what kind of support would be right for your company. We find that there are three different types of client categories for Training/Support:
Support Only: You don't need the skill in-house and prefer dedicated external technical support.
Hybrid: You want basic in-house skills on your team to run the software daily and external technical support for unique or complex requirements.
Training only: You want to be fully equipped in-house to manage the entire scope of your software solutions.
All options are doable given the capacity, culture, and leadership to make them happen (read: time, money, people). However, the Hybrid approach is usually the best option.
Why?
Untrained users cause chaos.
That doesn't mean they need to become developers, but they should understand the basics of the platform.
Clients that want so much training that they can become "pros" rarely succeed. They almost always come back to the experts for help.
They have their own jobs and can't really take on the role of "Software Expert." Staying up-to-date on the latest features and taking the time to implement these changes in the system is a job in and of itself.
How might your team learn to use the new software solution?
Regarding user training, ANY training is better than no training.
This could be one-on-one, team training, self-paced online training, or training videos (YouTube). All of these are excellent forms of training and a must!
Remember, your employees need to set aside time for training, so factor that into your implementation schedule.
What might ongoing support look like?
This type of support does all the work you request with little to no lift on the client's side. This can be successful if you do not fire your Support provider without getting a new one or training done with your employees. That would be like cutting your vehicle's brakes while driving down a steep hill with a cliff at the bottom.
At Black Badger Enterprises, we offer a unique type of All-Inclusive Support plan. Whether you want support with a single piece of software or multiple, simple email support or all-encompassing strategic consulting and implementation, there is a plan to fit all needs.
Regardless of the plan, they all come with unlimited monthly support hours. These subscription-based plans are billed based on the number of employees being supported every month, just like a regular MSP (Managed Service Provider) would charge.
The only difference is we handle all of the other software platforms; they won't! You can learn more about that here on our website: https://blackbadger.biz/
IN CLOSE
Whether you're a solopreneur, thriving small business owner, current CEO, or future CEO of a growing business, the information covered in this series of articles on going from StartUp to ScaleUp can help you thrive in your next phase of growth.
Through years of experience (both good and bad) and tens of thousands of hours of project consulting, documentation, implementation, training, and support, these ten steps to Digital Transformation are a bedrock of stability in this ever-evolving technical business environment.
If ever in doubt, don't hesitate to reach out to the authors of this article. We would be happy to help you and your business.
Here's to success for us all!
Are you Taking Your Business to the Next Level? You may enjoy these resources from the authors.
This article is the fourth and final article in a series of four articles on How to Scale Up Your Business Operations through Digital Transformation for the #Scalability Newsletter on LinkedIn. Sign up here.
The article is part of an original content series jointly authored by Jamie Jenkins ♾️, Business Growth & Operations Strategist at Jamie Jenkins Consulting LLC, and David Verneuille, CEO of BlackBadger Enterprises and is not authorized for reproduction or reuse online or elsewhere without explicit consent by the authors.
