Is Digital Transformation Worth the Effort?

Ok, well done: you have made the decision to go ahead with your digital transformation project.

Whether you go feet first into it or take baby steps towards it, there needs to be a compelling business case, project plan, project team and delivery methodology behind it.

Spoiler alert : Its not going to be an easy ride

A digital transformation project takes time, effort, patience and money.  Lots of money if not planned wisely.  

There are many factors to be considered and too many to list in this one article. Here are just a few that one should consider when deciding whether it's worth the hassle….

Build a team that you can rely on…

• What know-how do you already possess within your organization?
• This project will rely on:
• - Internal staff, who you know have the skills and you can depend on.
• - Internal staff, who will embrace change and grow into valuable positions and roles.
• - External staff, who will need to guide you through rough waters.
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• This project will force you to evaluate internal staff, who are maybe not the right fit for an intensive digital transformation process but whose skill sets are perhaps best suited in other roles within your organisation.
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• You will also be faced with a plethora of external consultants to a varying degree of ability.  Assessing their worth becomes a crucial element of project management and financial controlling.

What's your end goal? Clearly know what you want to do and achieve!

• - What do you actually want to achieve with this? If it is just a shiny new front end, as your sales agents find the current one unresponsive, then this isn’t a transformation project. 
• - This journey needs to have a clear mission statement, goals and have realistic targets defined.  Use all of these as guidance when flying through turbulence.
• - Track your progress, requirements and constantly re-evaluate.

Make sure you know your current state of play!

• - Know your lists of requirements, dependencies, start and finish dates and completion rates.
• - Ensure there is someone ultimately responsible for deliverables.
• It sounds simple, yet stupid: Are you aware of who is doing what?
  
• - Refer back to your mission statement in times of doubt.
• - What do you want to achieve in the short, medium and long term?

Plan, plan and plan. And if plans go wrong, own it

• - Your aim and vision is your guiding principle, but how do you reach these end goals?  Plan milestones, ensure you can realistically meet them and always plan for a rainy day when the untoward happens (e.g. a global pandemic, or your head of IT leaves you after a lottery win).
• - If plans do you wrong, own up rather than cover up.

Your business doesn’t stop today just because tomorrow will be vastly different

• - What impact does this have on your existing business?
• - Your existing IT solution still needs maintaining, but do you still want to invest heavily into it?
• - What happens to existing projects which are in progress? 
• Are these mutually compatible with each other, do they need to be stopped?
• - What current enhancements, being carried out on your existing system, need to be reflected in your new processes? 
• A gap analysis will highlight the status quo on a particular day, however the status quo needs updating on a regular basis and this needs to be fed back into project planning and requirements. 

Know your bottom line. What does this whole thing cost?

• - To build up a halfway valuable business case, you need to know what your current expenditure is.  These are not always the obvious ones, like license costs, IT fees but other costs which you encounter due to inefficiencies in your current processes.
• - Ensure that these pain points are always fed back up to your digitalization and transformation approach. 
• They may not be 100% clear at the start of the journey, but need to be constantly reviewed and considered.
• - Make sure you know who is doing what and evaluate if they are providing value for money. 
• - Don't be afraid to make big decisions if somebody isn't performing. 
• - What will it cost you in the future?

Be realistic… Don’t fall for the romantic notion but deal with hard facts and figures

• You will have made projection costs for the new dawn for your digital transformation. 
• - Are these costs realistic? 
• - Have they been verified by numerous independent sources? 
• Don’t be afraid to be skeptical and challenge these figures. Projects rarely are delivered on time, within budget and only often the projected future costs are overshot. 

Think of not just the bottom line but evaluate what it also means for your workforce and customers. What are the overall benefits?

• Costs
• This is the obvious one, which gets your CFO salivating like a dog.  
• Be prepared to take the walk of shame if the mission, goals, planning and budget are not well managed.
• Social benefits
• Often overseen and are difficult to quantify:
• Imagine the world afterwards when, for example, your agents can actually work on less monotonous tasks than they are currently doing and the marketing team works in harmony with your IT and financial departments. 
• The world might be a happier place and importantly, teams will have won, lost and grown together during the journey. 
• A further benefit could be the reconnection with your customer base via better interaction, increased satisfaction.

Can your organization handle this?

• - IT digitalization impacts any transformation outcomes and more importantly transformation goals must be reflected in IT decision making
  
• - Ensure both projects can co-exist together and have a compatible general vision.
• - Guarantee that digitalization visions (e.g. customer self-service) are also reflected in organizational transformation goals (i.e. retrain service agents in other areas, like first level support). 
• Operational readiness is key.

Are you really prepared to place your destiny in the hands of somebody else..?

• If you decide to buy, what happens next? 
• - What do you do with those highly experienced members of staff, that may be replaced by a SaaS provider who is barely out of school?
• - How do you ensure engagement with these valued team members, when they have this cloud of uncertainty hanging over them, knowing that their role may be reduced once the transformation is complete?
• - Is your business model able to cope with a badly managed and implemented SaaS solution?
• Would you be prepared to take back the responsibility?

Flip the coin, are you ready for the legal, moral and financial responsibility?

• If you decide to go for it and build something yourself, what happens next? 
• - Are you able to upscale resources, are you able to consult, develop, bug fix and still have a strategic viable plan going forward?
• - Has your existing team ever taken SLAs seriously, are you willing to be held to account going forward?

A bit of tough love here: many projects will not be the success they were intended to be. Can you go back?

• - What's your point of no return? 
• Is the infrastructure in place to go back to the start?
• - Are any parallel projects in your organization able to pick up the slack?
• - Are any terminated projects able to restart and salvage something from the transformation project?

These projects impact all areas of your business; financial, customer satisfaction and churn, employee behavior. 

The impact on the culture of your organization should also not be underestimated. 

The foundations though must be built upon a few solid project deliverables and attitudes:

• - Integrated planning throughout your organization
• - Knowing your costs
• - Define and track targets and keep them realistic
• - Team building
• - Identifying, owning and solving challenges
• - Get back up when unexpected issues knock you down

Paddington Utilities Consulting offers a full-blown portfolio of services for the utility sector:

• - Strategic consulting 
• - Functional assistance in utility processes
• - IT development of enterprise software for utilities 
• - Project management 

Feel free to contact us for a free consultation to see how our experts can assist you!