Are you taking the first steps to digitally transform your business?

Jeff Ryan, CFA

“A marked change in form, nature, or appearance.”

Oxford Languages

Digital Transformation seems to be a phrase in every strategy meeting or sales pitch. But what does it mean? The reality is that it is different for every organisation AND most importantly takes place at a different pace.

I am lucky enough to have two beautiful boys under the age of 4 and the WFH (work from home) environment has allowed me to observe the growth / transformation within them. For those on the outside i.e. grandparents, friends and other family members, these changes are even more dramatic.

This is the same for organisations – constant growth and improvement within an organisation can have even more dramatic results for customers and competitors.

“Much like a baby, before an organisation can run, it needs to walk”

Likewise, walking is preceded by crawling and sitting. This is where my passion lies — in understanding this and being able to guide businesses to take the first step.

It involves both a rational understanding of the business’ limits and an empathy to the inability to be where they want to be.

Taking the first steps…

So how to understand where you are? Be honest. This sounds easy but very hard in implementation.

Over the years, I have sat in many requirement gathering meetings with customers and heard the following: “No we don’t need help with that”, “We are unique”, “There is nothing better”, “But I heard from X, that it did not work for them”, “Next financial year we will have more time and resources”…

These are all warning signs that without executive leadership and drive, any project is unlikely to grow the business.

Back to the baby analogy: some organisations are lying on their back, feeling very happy that they can see their favourite toys dangling within easy reach. They are oblivious of the older brother (competitor) running at full pace and about to annihilate their peace… True story! 🙂

COVID has been that “big brother” for many businesses. Many have not survived the impact of working from home, decreased sales, changing business models, online sales etc. In South Africa, this has been made worse in the last few weeks with unrest and looting destroying many businesses.

Where is your business?

So, is your business lying down? If so, what is your plan to learn to crawl, walk and run? Having hosted a number of webinars recently on Digital Transformation (link here) it seems there is a willingness from most businesses, but many do not have the necessary information to take that first step.

Take cloud hosting as an example. There is an assumption that cloud hosting is expensive but looking at the below table, it is actually the hosting internally that is expensive (5 times more!) and that does not include the headache of management, audits and late-night fears of system failures.

The other question to ask is: “How long do we have to be up and running?” With technology, there is an opportunity for organisations to leap frog competitors by being brave and investing heavily in technology innovation. Accenture research has shown that leaders in technology adoption / transformation have had 5x revenue growth than Laggards over the past three years.

These are the companies that are investing 70% of their IT budget on innovation NOT on operations.

These are the companies that even if the organisation is lying down, they are being lifted into the sky to have a helicopter view of the big brother and ensure they stay ahead. And in most cases, those lifted high… learn to fly.