Six things you need to address for a successful digital transformation (Part 2)
In part one of this two-part post, we discussed the important roles that planning, people, and digitization play in the success of your digital transformation. In part two, we will take this a step further and explore how information management, process optimization, and systems and technology impact the success of your digital transformation.
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4. Information management
With every digitization initiative, you need a plan for managing information during and after the transformation.The key is to keep your information organized, accessible and secure at all stages of your transition.
As you tackle this aspect of the transformation, give some thought to:
- How will you safeguard physical documents and guarantee security and privacy during handling or movement?
- Where will you store any newly created electronic documents? e.g. shared network drives, cloud storage provider
- Are you prepared to seamlessly manage paper and electronic information in the same environment if necessary?
- Do you have the right tools in place to manage retention for your electronic records?
- How will you track and manage retained paper documents?
5. Process optimization
One of the most exciting aspects of going digital is the opportunity to transform and improve business processes.
The following tools and exercises will help you find process improvement opportunities as part of your digital transformation:
- analysis of existing processes to spot inefficiencies, redundancies, and bottlenecks
- re-imagining your business processes and asking how they would change if documents were digitized, and accessible any time, anywhere
- reviewing your equipment, filing and storage solutions to see if they are fit for purpose and can handle the most common use cases. Simple changes such as a new folder type, or terminal digit filing, can go a long way towards better business processes.
- looking elsewhere in your industry to see what your colleagues and competitors are doing. (Outside consultants such as TAB can be a big help with this, because of their intimate knowledge of what other companies are doing.)
6. Process optimization
Every successful digital transformation needs the right technologies to make it happen.
As you plan your digital transformation, here are some of the things to consider from a systems and technology standpoint:
- Line-of-business (LOB) software is one of the key enablers allowing you to move towards all-digital processes. Make sure you keep abreast of new LOB software entering the market; these solutions can dramatically improve your business processes and take your transformation in exciting new directions.
- Do you have the right records and information platform to store, access and manage electronic documents and any paper documents that you need to retain?
- Are your existing technologies working together as closely as they could be, or would they benefit from closer integration?
- Be ready for disruption. Many new solutions and technologies (e.g. Artificial Intelligence, robotic process automation) have the ability to dramatically transform your operations.
