Digital Transformation Roadmap: Preparing for Success in a Modern Business Landscape
Learn more about our process and what goes into implementing new technologies in a business with this 6-step digital transformation roadmap.
Blog Post
7 minute read
Dec 09, 2024
Implementing new technologies can often seem overly complex and full of buzzwords and acronyms. A digital transformation roadmap, though, is designed to break this process down to be more manageable. In its most basic form, digital transformation is the process of updating the processes and modernizing the technologies your business relies on to prepare for the future.
Businesses often view DX with a mixture of enthusiasm and caution. You’re excited because of the immense possibilities that can be achieved with a successful transformation, yet anxious about change and the opportunity for failure.
With how fast technology advances and how difficult it can be to shift a company culture, a full-on digital transformation can be hard to plan, and even harder to pull off. At the heart of every successful DX, though, is a comprehensive strategy. One way to visualize this process and plan it out is to use this 6-step roadmap.
See what it takes to quickly and effectively implement a digital transformation project. Download the eBook, Fast-Tracking Your Digital Transformation, to learn more.
What Is a Business Roadmap?
A business roadmap visualizes long-term strategic planning and are often used by businesses to help decision makers and contributors at every level understand the intent and goal for each phase. In other words, a business roadmap helps those involved see the vision behind the strategy.
For digital transformation, a roadmap breaks down a complex transformation process into the key goals your organization is trying to accomplish through the transformation.
Why Do You Need a Digital Transformation Plan?
Businesses need a plan for digital transformation so they have a strategic set of steps to follow that increase the chances of a successful transformation.
Modern employees expect intuitive and easy-to-use technology. So, if you pursue a digital transformation without a plan in place, you risk overloading them by introducing too much too quickly and setting the entire transformation back by trying to do too much all at once.
Additionally, security needs to remain a top priority for organizations in the midst of a digital transformation, as they work to onboard new technologies and educate employees on new processes.
High-level Goals of a Digital Transformation Roadmap
There are typically four goals addressed by a digital transformation roadmap:
Improving Operational Efficiency: Use automation and other DX tools to streamline processes, removing any snags or roadblocks, and allowing operations to run smoother with less necessary human intervention.
Enhancing Customer Engagement: Create smoother, easier experiences for customers using custom applications and more optimized transaction processes.
Implementing New Business Models: Set the technology foundation that will allow you to easily implement exciting new ideas going forward.
Modernizing Core Systems: Stay at the forefront of technology by updating the core systems of your business, allowing you to keep up with competitors and continuously offer the best possible experiences for your customers and employees.
Digital Transformation Roadmap
At Impact, we have a 6-step roadmap that has helped many businesses achieve a successful transformation, improving many aspects of their organization. With a basis in security and a focus on improving the key areas of business, this roadmap will help you understand how a digital transformation works and how you can go about building your own DX roadmap.
1. Secure Your Network
The first step is to secure the network. With the severity and frequency of cyberattacks increasing year over year, ensuring your network is stable is essential before moving forward with a digital transformation. If you’re constantly reacting to cyber threats, it is very difficult to implement a DX strategy.
On top of securing your network with updated cybersecurity protocols that features a layered defense, you also need to make sure that your current operations are suited for a digital transformation and that you have a plan for replacing any major components of the current IT infrastructure.
This could mean temporarily transferring data to the cloud or any number of other temporary solutions that put your company in a position to successfully transition to the incoming technology.
2. Manage Connected Devices
Next, we need to take note of and create a plan to manage your network devices. This comes in many forms from using analytics and tracking tools to reduce costly print usage to monitoring usage and security of phones and computers on your network.
It’s important to manage tech assets like collaboration tools, laptops, and phones. This can be achieved by implementing mobile device management software to control and support end-user devices.
This step helps unify the workplace and devices into a more connected system—a vital component of digital transformation that benefits collaboration and communication within a business.
3. Optimize Processes
Optimizing the processes of an organization’s workplace is important to ensure the long-term efficiency of the business. This will typically involve implementing the following technologies:
BPA:Business process automation helps to reduce the manual work of inputting data into line-of-business (LOB) applications using tools like RPA
RPA:Robotic process automation can include converting paper-based processes, extracting data from various sources, or taking data from one source and transferring it to another source without the need for human intervention
ECM: Enterprise content management includes integrating all business-critical documents into one database to support operations
ERP:Enterprise resource planning unifies all business processes and databases into one system for easy access for all departments. Modernizing the ERP system of an organization can have huge payoffs
Optimizing processes is a fundamental step for digital transformation. It improves efficiencies in the workplace and allows employees to focus their energies away from menial and repetitive tasks and work on projects which benefit from human application.
4. Business Intelligence & Analytics
Having data is good but having actionable data is ideal. Business intelligence uses AI and other tools to help structure your analytics to create more visibility with your business data. This gives you the chance to pull true, actionable insights from your data to assess the performance of your company.
This leads to discovering more pain points in workflows; having a better understanding of operations; and being able to analyze big data sets. In turn, this leads to quicker and more informed decision-making, providing opportunities for businesses to pinpoint and improve their processes.
5. Increase Productivity
The next goal is increasing productivity in the workplace. This can be done in a number of ways, including:
Building out a learning management system (LMS) for organizations to streamline training
These are important for a digital transformation roadmap as they provide the groundwork for employees to focus on making meaningful contributions to the organization rather than menial, repetitive tasks.
6. Improve Customer Experiences
The final step is to look at improving the customer experience. This is a bit of a misnomer as one of the results of the digital transformation should be an improved customer experience. However, if this function has been left untouched by the digital transformation, it’s important to conduct a customer experience audit and look for improvement opportunities.
The customer experience can be improved through DX in several ways such as:
Personalization
Accessibility
Optimized touchpoints
Analytics
Better communication
After a successful digital transformation, organizations will be better positioned to understand customer behavior, which can be used to improve the customer experience as a whole.
Maintaining Your Transformation Roadmap
The implementation process is just the beginning of a digital transformation. A good strategy coupled with a detailed roadmap covers long-term goals. Think five years, not one.
Monitoring and maintaining newly installed systems as part of your DX plan should be a top priority as you look to make the most of your business’ transformation and achieve one (or all) of the goals outlined by your digital transformation strategy.
Plan Your Roadmap for Digital Transformation Today
A solid digital transformation roadmap helps companies achieve and maintain a competitive advantage in their industry. With increased staff productivity and decreased costs—companies can enjoy higher operating capacity while delivering a superior customer experience.
By having a digital transformation roadmap and strategy in place, you can elevate your brand at every level.
