In order to meet shifting customer expectations, many businesses have had to accelerate their digital transformation.
Perhaps you’ve already identified that your business is ready for digital transformation, and you’ve put together your digital transformation strategy. What’s next?
In this interview, we speak to Vijay Iyer, Director Solution Engineering at Salesforce. He has over 14 years’ experience with digital transformation, and has guided many organisations on their transformation journeys.
What are the first steps that an organisation should take on their digital transformation journey?
Vijay: “In his article on building a digital transformation strategy, Raphael talked about creating your vision, defining your objectives, and making sure you’re working with the right people. He makes some excellent points, and the first thing I’d like to do is build on some of his thoughts.
“It’s important that businesses have a strong understanding of what digital transformation means for them. It will be different for every organisation. You need to make sure you have consensus across your business on what you are aiming for — that should become your vision.
“Once you have that, your first step should be to align your vision and your objectives to measurable business metrics. For example, your vision for your digital transformation might be that you want to transform the way you engage with customers. So, what are the key metrics that you would use? It could be Net Promoter Score, it could be an engagement score. Whatever you choose, it has to be measurable, and directly related to your vision. There might be more than one metric you need to track, so keep that in mind.
“Teams have to align with your goals, not with technology. Technology itself is not the answer. The way you leverage technology to achieve your business goals is the answer. Make sure you know the answers to these questions: What is the IT team’s job? What is the business team’s job? The sales team’s job? The marketing team’s job? What is HR’s role in the process?
“Finally, you need to define your timeline. Digital transformation projects have the potential to run forever, so you need to make sure that you know the parameters of your project. Set milestones, and assign goals. I’ve seen projects go on and on without a firm timeline in place.”
What role do employees have to play in digital transformation?
Vijay: “Every employee, every sales person, every contact centre service agent, whoever it is, needs to culturally evolve. That is, move away from doing what they used to do before. That’s where bringing HR into the process becomes so valuable; they can help with the cultural transformation. They can create programmes that help employees live the culture of transformation – right from onboarding through to day-to-day activities.
“Many times, businesses train for technology because they think digital transformation means deploying some new tech. But training needs to be multifaceted. Technology is one part of the puzzle. You also need to teach people what’s changed in terms of strategy. Why are we using this technology? What do we need to do from a people and culture standpoint?
“Everyone needs to evolve and become obsessed with the customer. Every member of every team should be asking themselves, ‘how do we make things better for our customers?’
“Don’t forget that your employees, and your customers, are the ones that will decide if you succeed or not. Bring them along on this journey, and listen to them.”
What about digital transformation partners — where do they fit in?
Vijay: “Organisations sometimes fall into the trap of leading with technology. They might be tempted to choose a different partner for each aspect of their technology: AI, CRM, etc. It becomes too complex, and you will never see the results. Working with multiple partners leads to silos.
“I would recommend that you have just one go-to partner, aligned with your transformation. They should help you with defining the structure, defining how to get there, what technology is needed, what processes need to change, what people you need.
“A mistake a lot of organisations make is treating vendors as suppliers, not partners. This is another point where there needs to be a cultural shift. Don’t say ‘you are a vendor, I tell you what I need.’ You should be saying ‘hey partner, tell us what we could be doing together.’
“A good partner will tell customers when they’re going wrong. They’ll say, ‘you’re not ready for this, this is not the time.’ They will help you understand the steps you need to take, and help you see the value in the changes you’ve made. Maybe transformation for you is just moving away from paper. You should cherish that — it’s a massive shift!”
What are some other pitfalls that businesses should look out for?
Vijay: “Don’t try to replicate what you used to do in the past, but in a digital way. That is not transformation. Moving from one technology to another technology is not transformation. Transformation is people transforming the way they do their work.
“Don’t get excited about technology before you have a good foundation. It’s easy to get excited because you heard about some technology that does this or that. But you have to ask yourself, ‘is it aligned to my business metric that I defined in the first step? How impactful is it? How fast is it? What’s my ROI?’ Don’t try to run before you can walk.”
How do we know if we’re making progress?
Vijay: “It all comes back to the business metrics that you defined right at the start of the process. That’s why they’re so important. You can even go more granular to measure progress: What is the adoption rate — are teams actually using the new processes? Are people being more productive?
“If you are a sales-driven organisation, you might be using incentives for your staff to encourage them to engage with your transformation. But how many people are hitting those incentives? If your teams are hitting those targets, that means you are also growing the organisation. Your success is connected to their success.
“Digital talent retention is also important. You may have hired a lot of people. One of the key metrics of success is whether you are able to retain those people. If you hire skilled people, and they commit to your project for the long haul, that means you are doing something right. However, if you’re losing these people, it might mean they can’t see how their efforts are aligned to your vision.
“There is no magic metric called ‘digital transformation progress.’ You can’t say ‘I am at 10% of my transformation.’ Transformation is a continuous process — you have to continue to evolve and grow. If you’re continuing to evolve and grow, you’re transforming.”
For a deeper dive into how to get started on digital transformation, read our digital transformation guide.
