Digital transformation allows an organization to respond to constant changes in the market situation. It's not enough to implement software. To do this successfully, it is necessary to comply with the stages of digital transformation.
Such a complex fundamental change requires a complete overhaul of the culture, operations, technologies, and principles of creating new business products and services.
Once you begin the digital transformation of your company, products and services, distribution and marketing channels, as well as all business processes will be affected.
Learn in this post about the stages of digital transformation that you must go through for this process to be successful in your company.
The 5 Stages in the Digital Transformation Process
Every company uses different technologies in its work and depends on different employee skills. That is why every process of digital transformation is unique and valid for the needs of each organization.
However, all companies must go through these 5 stages of digital transformation to obtain all the advantages of your process.
1. Awareness-raising stage.
First, it's important to understand if your company needs digital transformation, and if now is the time to do it. Don't do it just because it's in fashion.
That is why the speed and quality of the introduction of new technologies will depend on a well-constructed and aware business culture in all members of the organization.
You don't achieve a digital transformation to reduce the amount of paper used in the company. Digital transformation is not about configuring mobile devices such as tablets in the production chain. It's not about impressing customers or alienating suppliers.
At this stage, we must make the entire organization aware, so that they assume that digital transformation serves to provide tools that help to execute the company's strategy more effectively and efficiently.
2. Planning stage.
The practical implementation of digital transformation begins with strategic planning.
At this stage, you should be clear about what tasks need to be solved, what resources will be required and how the introduction of digital tools and innovations will affect corporate culture as a whole.
Once current problems have been identified and resources have been evaluated, the strategy can be developed directly.
To do this, the various digital tools must be evaluated and their areas of application selected.
The main directions of digital transformation in your planning can be both the external sphere: products and customer experience, and the work of internal services: IT and cloud services.
3. Training stage.
Any change achieves the desired result only if people are ready for them.
That's why it's important to train and educate all the people who work in your organization. At this stage of the digital transformation, you must educate employees about the new principles of work.
This can take a significant amount of time, but there are no other options: until all employees are trained to work on a new business model, transformation will not occur.
Training isn't just about working with new software, but also about the very principles of work and the culture of innovation.
4. Implementation stage.
At this stage, you begin to implement the new solutions and digital tools. It is essential to first test how the solution works and only then carry out its mass implementation.
A key point at this stage, as far as possible, is to carry out tests in any process, without making drastic changes to the work of the entire company.
Keep in mind that no company will be able to implement the transformation once and for all, because its essence is the constant introduction of changes and adaptation to changing market conditions.
5. Periodic stage of digital optimization.
Of course, the transformation process doesn't stop at deploying solutions. It is important to measure and compare with previously set objectives for digital optimization.
By going through these stages, the company begins a fundamental approach, whether organizational and/or strategic, which has a great Impact. This approach includes employees, tools and working methods.
The digital transformation process is, above all, that of a continuous openness to innovation, to collaborative work, to the control of your business processes and your data in search of the best digital tools for optimization.
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Conclusion
Digital transformation is a multi-stage phenomenon and, in terms of management, understanding this process is crucial to creating a digital transformation framework and successfully implementing change.
Above all, the senior management team must be aware of the changing environment, an open mind to identify gaps in existing processes, the ability to accelerate the execution and testing of new processes, and the ability to do all of this harmonized in the existing organization.
And remember, once you start the stages of digital transformation, for your digital journey, you'll never stop.
