Improving customer experience through agile digital transformation, part 5
Let’s look at three important things to consider as you begin your digital transformation initiative.
In this 5-part series, I discuss the importance of digital transformation, how to ensure you achieve your organizational goals, and the best ways to plan for success. You can read more about some of these topics and more in my books, The Center of Experience and Digital Delight, available in print and digital versions.
Great customer experience (CX) is more than something that is nice to have. It is now one of the chief points of competitive advantage for many brands across a growing number of industries. One of the biggest roadblocks to providing a more seamless experience to customers is the need for digital transformation within the organization. Whether the transformation helps the direct interactions customers have with your brand, the operational aspects behind the scenes, the measurement of CX, or all of the above, it sometimes takes large-scale organizational change to enable a better customer experience.
How to get started with agile digital transformation
Now that we’ve covered how agile processes can enable greater success in digital transformation, let’s now talk about how to get started. In addition to the factors we’ve already discussed, let’s look at three important things to consider as you begin your digital transformation initiative.
Create a baseline & goals
Digital transformation can’t be successful without understanding what you are evolving from and toward. Make sure these goals align to your company goals and key performance indicators (KPIs) as misalignment here can jeopardize your long-term success.
Also, make sure to keep in mind that when your digital transformation is successful, the methods used to measure some of your goals may actually be transformed. Ensure you’ve designed a way to get apples to apples comparisons.
Beyond this, you need to define goals specifically for your digital effort. What does success of the project itself look like? This often includes timing, budget, and personnel, but it can include other metrics that are helpful for you to keep on track.
Create a strategy for the short- and long-term
Your strategy will map the goals for your project to your organizational KPIs, and provide your team with the guidelines to create an implementation plan. Seems pretty straightforward, right? For some organizations this may be more or less difficult, depending on your team, culture, processes, and track record for company-wide initiatives.
Those rather large details aside, it is also important that your strategy keeps both the short term (the initial digital transformation initiative) and the long term (what happens after the initiative’s first phase is complete?) in mind.
Your strategy won’t be truly successful unless it looks beyond the initial launch and ahead to the post-launch era.
Implement agile processes
Your organization doesn’t have to subscribe to a strict agile methodology in order to implement processes of continuous improvement that will ultimately determine the long-term success of your digital transformation initiative. While your exact philosophies and methodologies may vary, it is important nonetheless to ensure that you are continually measuring, analyzing, and adjusting your systems, processes, and platforms to ensure long-term success.
I look at this as adopting an organizational culture of continuous improvement, more than making everyone get agile certified. While the latter can definitely help, it’s vital that everyone in the organization from the top down is on board with your digital transformation being the beginning of a path of continuous improvement, and not simply an arduous and disruptive project with a start and an end. If the latter is the attitude at your organization, you’re going to find yourselves staring down another digital transformation initiative (or at least the dire need for one!) in a few years’ time.
Conclusion
We’ve covered a lot here. From the definition of digital transformation, to why it’s important, how it can go wrong, and ultimately how to make it successful. Chances are, you’re reading this because you are either planning, in the middle of, or have recently completed a digital transformation of your own. I wish you success, wherever you are in your initiative, and let’s continue to iterate and optimize towards success!
I hope you’ve enjoyed this 5-part series, where we’ve discussed the importance of digital transformation, how to ensure you achieve your organizational goals, and the best ways to plan for success. The next step is to get started!
You can read more about some of these topics and more in my books, The Center of Experience and Digital Delight, available in print and digital versions.