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For organizations worldwide, boosting business resiliency and supporting operational continuity during unprecedented economic volatility continues to be a top priority. While concerns over the impact of our public health crisis is top of mind, disruptive forces such as climate change, cyclical business downturns, regulatory changes, plus the potential of localized or global incidents remain persistent threats to business continuity. In response, the current reality has accelerated the impetus to implement an effective digital transformation effort for everyone, and every organization. But despite the need, and the obvious upside, the endeavor is not without risk. Research indicates that 70% of digital transformation efforts fail to achieve their stated goals. The reasons are too many to list, but improving the odds of success is not as complicated as some people think.
Increase digital transformation success – focus on “how to” not “what to”
The acceleration of this transformation often finds organizations focusing on several central elements:
- Remote everything – operational assets and process need to be connected and visible, so action can be taken at any time, from anywhere
- Operational resiliency – organizations need strategies in place to ensure operations can quickly adapt when conditions change
- Business continuity – mitigating and managing unforeseen risks in real-time is vital to quickly recovering from unexpected incidents
- Cyber security – with the acceleration of digital connectivity being cyber secure cannot be overstated
- Trusted partnerships – smart leadership knows they can’t do everything themselves and that it pays to partner with experts
Though each of these elements are important, the first four can be seen as the results of digital transformation, whereas the fifth, trusted partnerships, is transformation’s enabler – the “how to.” It is the key ingredient that can more easily make the first four outcomes a reality. Whether digital transformation is tackled cautiously or aggressively, leveraging a service provider with a singularly focused digital mindset ensures organizations’ won’t enter uncharted territory alone. Studies confirm that with the right blend of third-party expertise, capability and insight at their disposal, enterprises can unlock a wealth of new efficiency and productivity opportunities.
The power of focused expertise where it can best produce results
While staffing and building internal skill sets to implement digital transformation can make sense in some cases, initiating new and unfamiliar internal processes often introduces considerable risk, both to a company’s operations and its decision making. Much of that uncertainty can be managed by ensuring that the most experienced team performs the heavy lifting for each development phase and project element, whether it’s in-house or third-party. Building a high performance, goal-focused, internal work team from scratch isn’t unheard of, you may wonder why any organization would expend the effort, and assume the risk, when service providers with the complementary skills and experience, plus a record of success avoiding obstacles and implementing novel solutions are already out there?
Do what you do best – let an expert service provider do the rest
Organizations who successfully manage disruptive changes often credit their achievements to creating an organizational strategy and vision that fosters internal buy in. Just because technology provides the capability to do something new, or allows staff to use data in ways that potentially enhance a business, doesn’t automatically mean people will embrace the change and ensure it happens. It’s by helping organizations avoid overreach, so they can focus what business resiliency looks like for their core financial, administrative and operational functions, that an expert service provider brings to the table:
- Corporate leaders can focus, without distraction, on what their company needs to achieve to hit their goals – building buy in, developing/improving internal skills, engaging stakeholders, aligning talent/fostering innovation and formulating new business strategies, while partners tackle implementation and other tasks.
- Expert service providers are accustomed to collaborating to provide value that benefits their customers tangibly, with quantifiable performance standards that are part of agreed outcome, rather than delivering activities and tasks that aren’t always results-based.
- Since high performance service providers know what works, and have produced result for a diverse client base, they frequently bring a depth of experience implementing innovative, hybrid solutions across a broad range of industries and organizations that are outside the scope of siloed internal teams.
- Digital transformation necessitates risk, particularly in areas like cyber security and technology adoption, but an expert service provider can help organizations lower their risk profile while exploring and experimenting with leading-edge, tailored security solutions that protect and promote their customer’s successful transformation.
Digital transformation is about more than technology
Every organization brings a unique set of requirements and challenges to the digital landscape – there’s certainly no “one size fits all.” Emerging technologies often provide the possibility to enhance efficiency and improve customer intimacy, but there’s no guarantee. Organizations that partner with trusted service providers that can bring the best combination of tools for each unique customer, plus the mindset to ensure their efforts compliment the client’s broader business strategy, have excellent potential to see their digital transformation succeed.
BASF, the largest chemical company in the world has now a consolidated view of data from everywhere, anytime, and the expert support needed to respond to critical-asset upkeep.
Learn more about their story and others’ on our website.
