How to structure your approach to business transformation

The approach described below illustrates critical elements that a business should consider for a successful business transformation.

Due to the ever-changing nature of the market, in terms of changing customer demands, new products/services introduced and new technological advancements, traditional ways of doing business can soon become irrelevant.

Often businesses find themselves in a situation where they are stuck in old, legacy ways of working.

While developing a vision, a business must consider how their industry will evolve over the next few years. It is most likely that, with the evolution of technology and industry ecosystems, there are players entering the market who would previously have never been considered a competitor.

While building a strategy, a business must consider how its industry will evolve and what purpose and role this business will play or would want to play. A motor insurance player, for instance, must consider the impact of IoT and the emergence of autonomous vehicles while building its strategy.

While building this strategy, a business must determine which business models (a combination of products/services, customer segments, channels, revenue models and partners), will help maximise the business value.

There are numerous examples today where new businesses have chosen an ecosystem-based ‘as a service’ model as it enables a wider choice of products/features and provides flexibility with ‘pay per use’ commercials.

Experience is a key differentiator, so while developing a strategy, a business must consider the kind of experience it will deliver to its customers, employees and partners for the chosen business model(s).

Use of methods and tools, like design thinking, personas and journeys, can help illustrate the target experience a business wants to deliver and can also be used as tools to articulate business strategy clearly.

Once a business has determined the business model(s) and the related experience it wants to deliver, one of the most important elements for a successful business transformation is the translation of these into the capabilities that a business would require.

These business capabilities, like omni-channel, personalisation & business insights, AI/ML, partner ecosystem, APIs, IoT etc., are the building blocks of the future business and play a critical role in the realisation of business strategy. Determination of these capabilities also helps a business assess which capabilities are important and where to invest first.

Performance of enterprise capabilities depends on the underlying operating model which should be designed with consideration for business strategy, location effectiveness, process standardisation and automation, enterprise culture, ways of working and use of data for continuous improvement.

An effective operating model builds agility by default, which helps a business with proactive course correction in response to changes in market demand. An agile operating model and culture can really enable a business strategy to continuously evolve, thereby allowing a business to always be a step ahead of its competition.

Enterprise capabilities and target operating model should be assessed to determine the initiatives that need to be in place to develop the enterprise capabilities. Any fundamental capabilities, core to the business model(s) should be prioritised and evaluated for build vs. buy vs. partner decisions. An agile approach to transformation implementation can then help with quicker realisation of business benefits and allow course correction if business priorities change.

As new technologies are implemented, they can then help further strengthen the business strategy to lead to a virtuous cycle around the business transformation. A structured approach to defining and designing a business transformation programme can help prioritise initiatives that matter and lead to an early realisation of benefits.

To summarise, critical factors for a successful transformation are:

To learn more about how digital can be used effectively in various business areas, take a look at: Digital: A core capability for today’s businesses.

Experis has helped many clients through their digital transformation journey using its combination of IT consulting, professional resourcing, project services and Academy offerings. To find out more about how Experis can help, click here.