WHILE many established companies may have discussed and even strategised their digital transformations, the unique set of circumstances surrounding the novel coronavirus have propelled such plans into action.

Now, more than ever, companies are set on their digital-first journey to stay relevant.

According to Chris Reckord, chief executive officer (CEO) of technology solution company tTech Limited, digital transformation in any organisation is much more about their people and their mindset than technology.

“The most senior leadership of any organisation must be fully committed to and agree on a digital strategy for the business, and provide their teams with the resources and support to deliver the same,” Reckord said in an interview with The Business Observer.

“The leadership must understand that this is not a project for the IT department, or [for] any one department in the business. This digital transformation decision will require a major, company-wide change in management practices. This is necessary for the company’s culture to shift to embrace, among other things, an ongoing continuous improvement process touching all areas of the business,” Reckord said.

He added that critical parts of the transformation must include leveraging digital to enhance and improve the customer’s journey, employees’ engagements, operations optimisation, and product and service delivery.

As the pandemic sprouted innovation and opportunities to combat its impact, Reckord indicated that if done right, some of the benefits of a company’s digital transformation will include the following:

1- Major improvement with the company’s customer engagement experience

2- Increased competitiveness

3- Improved productivity

4 – Data-driven decision-making and

5 – Increased revenues and profits

Despite the many benefits, there may also be many challenges on the digital-first journey, Reckord added. This includes employees’ resistance to change, the timely process of figuring out what works best with the company’s business model, and the unpreparedness of a continuous change.”

As stated by Reckord, all businesses have many areas that can be digitally transformed.

“For some [companies] it will mean some changes to the business model for sure, while for others, not so much. A simplified approach is to go through the business and identify all the niggling challenges that currently exist and digitise those,” he said.

DIGITISE IT

“How does your staff engage with the HR department? Is that mainly still a manual process with forms to be filled out? Digitise it. What about the accounts department? Does your internal approval processes still require something to be printed and brought to a manager or two for a signature? Digitise it. Are you still issuing paper invoices? Digitise it. What about your purchase orders? Digitise it. How do your customers engage with your organisation to learn about new products or services? Digitise it. Do all the systems that generate data integrate? Are you still complaining that your office has too much paper? Can you deliver any of your products online to your customers? If yes, then you have tremendous opportunities for digitisation transformation,” Reckord advised.

The tTech CEO further warned against ‘over-customising’ off-the-shelf software to match business processes. “Organisations should instead be open and willing to adjust or change some operations to the way the software works, as it will be less costly.”