Innovating for Success: 3 Key Steps for Overcoming Digital Transformation Barriers
Innovating for success can be challenging for established companies, as legacy systems, thinking, and processes can impede the ability to turn ideas into tangible products, services and business models that have a real impact. Many businesses are accelerating digital transformation programs to stay competitive and meet the demands of fast-paced, disrupted marketplaces.
However, many companies struggle to realize actual value from their digital transformation efforts due to their approach to deploying technology. To overcome this, organizations need to change their approach and follow these three steps to innovation success:
1. Take a top-down approach
Many organizations currently deploy a technology and then look for a problem that perfectly fits: a bottom-up approach for deploying new technologies. To realize value across the entire organization, companies need to flip around to identify a problem (or opportunity) first and then create a solution solution that focuses on business value rather than technology. Once you apply a problem-driven approach, the next step is not to ask what the ingredients or tasks in this process are and which can be automated, but rather to think top-down. Which actions or control points in this process must be done by a human? What data is required to make those decisions? Where does that data reside? What technology is best for collecting or creating that data, and how can it be represented to the decision-maker at the control point? And all of this is important because once you start with a challenge or an operational business problem, you can align the solutions with the business objectives and ensure that they deliver real value.
2. Think end-to-end
To realize greater incremental value, businesses must move from tackling issues and tasks individually to looking holistically at long-running and cross-functional core processes and operational journeys. By understanding how problems and solutions link to each other, organizations can enjoy greater returns by fixing more problems or embracing more opportunities in tandem. This means thinking about how different systems, automations, humans and processes interconnect and how to digitally manage and integrate these workflows to provide real-time insights and deliver end-to-end value. When delivering value to customers, it’s essential to take an end-to-end approach. After all, it’s the complete journey across your functions and departments that ultimately determines the value of being a customer of your organization. The good news is that most organizations have fewer than ten core operational journeys, making it a tangible and manageable project to tackle.
3. Go low and no code
One of the most significant barriers to innovation is the lack of collaboration between business and IT. Traditional technology deployment requires substantial technical knowledge and can create a disconnect between business and IT teams. With low and no code tools, organizations can develop cross-functional teams to help deploy solutions that fit the organization’s tech stack while also meeting business objectives. These fusion teams allow different skill sets to come together and share experiences to generate new ideas and perspectives. It also helps maintain momentum in technical skill shortages and high demand for IT talent.
By following these steps, organizations can realize more excellent value by being innovative. They can take a top-down approach to identify problems and opportunities, think end-to-end about how different systems, automations, humans, and processes interconnect and use low and no-code tools to break down barriers between business and IT teams. With these steps’ help, businesses can unlock their ability to innovate and achieve digital transformation success.
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