The need for speed is at the heart of dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion. To shift from being a project- or prod­uct-cen­tric orga­ni­za­tion to a cus­tomer cen­tric orga­ni­za­tion, change is required in every depart­ment of the com­pa­ny. But the ben­e­fits of finan­cial gain and increased mar­ket share are real and mea­sur­able – the trans­for­ma­tion is worth the invest­ment. You’ll be able to deliv­er the most inno­v­a­tive, dif­fer­en­ti­at­ed prod­ucts, ser­vices, and expe­ri­ences to mar­ket faster than the competition.

1. BE THE MASTER OF YOUR REALM: Mea­sure Dig­i­tal Trans­for­ma­tion Per­for­mance and Value

Every­one likes to talk about their dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion ini­tia­tives, but it can be dif­fi­cult to mea­sure progress and the ben­e­fits deliv­ered. You’ve got to have the right infor­ma­tion and real-time ana­lyt­ics at your fin­ger­tips from across your orga­ni­za­tion. Accu­rate data and insights must tie into a big­ger pic­ture you can see and manage.

WHAT YOU NEED: A strate­gic dash­board giv­ing you domin­ion over your dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion, show­ing real-time vis­i­bil­i­ty into finan­cials, per­for­mance, and invest­ments from across your enterprise.

2. TIE YOUR STRATEGY TO DELIVERY: Con­nect Your Dig­i­tal Strat­e­gy to an Exe­cutable Roadmap

Are your strate­gic plans being ful­ly imple­ment­ed and achiev­ing the desired out­comes? Less than 30% of trans­for­ma­tions suc­ceed, accord­ing to research by McK­in­sey & Com­pa­ny. Two con­tribut­ing fac­tors are: 1. Orga­ni­za­tions can­not link exe­cu­tion to strat­e­gy 2. They lack clear­ly defined objec­tives and mile­stones to mea­sure progress.

Suc­cess­ful dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion requires trans­lat­ing strat­e­gy on an orga­ni­za­tion-wide, cross-func­tion­al scale with finan­cials and roadmaps. Strate­gic plan­ning should dri­ve both top-down and bot­tom-up finan­cial plan­ning, enabling you to pri­or­i­tize ini­tia­tives, eval­u­ate fund­ing alter­na­tives, ensure avail­abil­i­ty of key resources, and com­pare trade-offs between pro­posed decisions.

WHAT YOU NEED: The abil­i­ty to con­nect strat­e­gy to deliv­ery for every­one in your orga­ni­za­tion. This requires a cen­tral place to set direc­tion and deliv­er on the strat­e­gy. It’s crit­i­cal to have inte­grat­ed, dynam­ic roadmaps that your orga­ni­za­tion can use to man­age, track, and exe­cute dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion enter­prise wide.

3. LINK PRODUCTS AND TECHNOLOGY: Mas­ter the Con­ver­gence of Prod­ucts and Tech­nol­o­gy in a Con­nect­ed World

Com­pa­nies are going to bed as man­u­fac­tur­ers and evolv­ing seem­ing­ly overnight, wak­ing up as tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­nies. In this IoT world, even the sim­plest of prod­ucts are going dig­i­tal, with the need to incor­po­rate tech­nol­o­gy, appli­ca­tions, secu­ri­ty, data stor­age, report­ing, and voice-of-cus­tomer insights.
But how does a com­pa­ny go about doing this in a dig­i­tal fash­ion? If you’re not push­ing for­ward and bring­ing tech­nol­o­gy and prod­ucts clos­er togeth­er in your orga­ni­za­tion, you’ll be replaced by your more agile com­peti­tor. To launch these con­nect­ed, dif­fer­en­ti­at­ed prod­ucts quick­ly, break down the inter­nal silos between your prod­uct devel­op­ment and IT orga­ni­za­tions. These two groups need to be in sync from day one.

WHAT YOU NEED: Lever­age your busi­ness oper­at­ing mod­el to quick­ly under­stand and eas­i­ly visu­al­ize the links between prod­ucts and their under­ly­ing tech­nol­o­gy. Antic­i­pate risks, iden­ti­fy poten­tial launch/revenue delays, stream­line process bot­tle­necks, and uncov­er the hid­den poten­tial of new oppor­tu­ni­ties with­in exist­ing capabilities.

4. CAPITALIZE ON GOOD IDEAS: Dri­ve Inno­va­tion by Cre­at­ing New Prod­ucts and Services

Inno­va­tion is the lifeblood of an orga­ni­za­tion, and the heart that dri­ves it is dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion. Deliv­er­ing growth requires under­stand­ing cus­tomer needs and cre­at­ing new val­ue for them – not just focus­ing on prod­uct-line exten­sions. Com­pa­nies that are excelling are good at absorb­ing exter­nal infor­ma­tion, such as mar­ket trends, com­pet­i­tive data, and cus­tomer feedback.
Yet syn­the­siz­ing all this data to choose the right ideas can be a chal­lenge. In addi­tion, it can be hard to man­age inno­va­tions as they move through the pipeline. Com­pa­nies are often ham­pered by extreme­ly man­u­al and slow processes.

WHAT YOU NEED: Auto­mate your inter­nal inno­va­tion process­es to deliv­er new, con­nect­ed prod­ucts and sup­port­ing services.

5. MAKE INFORMED INVESTMENT DECISIONS: Speed Strate­gic Fund­ing and Resource Allocation

To max­i­mize rev­enue earn­ings poten­tial and expand mar­ket share, you need the right data to make faster deci­sions across your dif­fer­ent port­fo­lios. Orga­ni­za­tions waste too much time and mon­ey on man­u­al port­fo­lio analysis.
With tech­nolo­gies chang­ing so rapid­ly and new com­peti­tors enter­ing the scene on a dai­ly basis, com­pa­nies that can­not piv­ot their port­fo­lios quick­ly are at a dis­ad­van­tage. Many lack the infor­ma­tion to intel­li­gent­ly ana­lyze new ideas in con­text of the cur­rent port­fo­lio, instead eval­u­at­ing each in a vacuum.

WHAT YOU NEED: The abil­i­ty to plan, ana­lyze, and pri­or­i­tize invest­ments in the con­text of your entire prod­uct port­fo­lio. Cre­ate what-if sce­nar­ios by strat­e­gy, capa­bil­i­ty, and mar­ket to deter­mine the right port­fo­lio mix of projects, prod­ucts, and services.

6. GET PRODUCTS AND SERVICES TO MARKET QUICKER: Improve Time-to-Mar­ket and Reduce Cycle Time

You can choose the right tech­nolo­gies, prod­ucts, and ser­vices to invest in, pri­or­i­tize them, cre­ate plans, and start exe­cu­tion. Yet suc­cess hinges on how quick­ly you can turn these into rev­enue-pro­duc­ing items. When the cost of delay for a sin­gle day could be mil­lions of dol­lars, it’s essen­tial to equip your team with the abil­i­ty to deliv­er to mar­ket on time.
If you get your dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion process­es and tools right, you can increase your chances of gain­ing first to mar­ket advan­tage with high­er price points. Prod­ucts deliv­ered on time means rev­enue deliv­ered on time – and sat­is­fied share­hold­ers. Few­er set­backs equal high­er profits.

WHAT YOU NEED: Lever­age for­ward-think­ing tal­ent and auto­mat­ed tools to cre­ate con­sis­tent, repeat­able deliv­ery of prod­ucts and speed time-to-market.

7. EXECUTE FASTER AND SMARTER ON THE GROUND: Ele­vate Orga­ni­za­tion­al Agili­ty to Oper­ate at Speed

Exe­cut­ing at dig­i­tal speed isn’t accom­plished by demand­ing a sin­gle approach, tool, or method­ol­o­gy. To increase pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, you can’t sim­ply ask your peo­ple to work longer and hard­er. You need solu­tions that fit how your peo­ple work today and want to work in the future. At the same time, teams are more vir­tu­al than ever, work­ing across dis­ci­plines, time zones, cul­tures, depart­ments, and orga­ni­za­tion­al boundaries.
Employ­ees and teams also require ways to visu­al­ize their work, eas­i­ly pro­vide sta­tus updates, and com­mu­ni­cate effectively.

WHAT YOU NEED: The flex­i­bil­i­ty to allow teams to choose tools that adapt their work method­olo­gies, with enough over­sight to ensure that every­one is con­tribut­ing to the broad­er strategy.