Best Ways to Lead Digital Transformation with Business and IT Alignment

Digital transformation has been a hot topic as many organizations increasingly race to adopt new technologies. MuleSoft IT and business alignment barometer report notes that the pace of digitization has rapidly accelerated over the last 12-18 months.

Specifically, IT and business alignment have improved in the last 12 months, driving faster innovation, as reported by almost 9 in 10 respondents in the survey.

Early adopters are already reaping the rewards of having embedded digital technologies in their business and IT operations.

Your business is likely embarking on a digital transformation journey of its own. But for your organization to succeed with digital transformation, you'll need to align your Business and IT wings.

The question then becomes; how can you consistently leverage digital innovations cost-effectively while ensuring teamwork and keeping pace with the growing demand, challenges, and technological shifts.

To help you handle the complexities of digital transformation, we've outlined the best ways to lead digital transformation fueled by business and IT alignment, no matter where you are in your journey. And they work! 

Have a Digital Roadmap

Digital transformation isn't as simple as choosing new technologies and replacing older ones. No, there's a lot involved.

So why do many successful organizations make it look like child's play? These organizations have one secret; they all have a digital strategy. They launch and thrive without any significant hitches.

Contrary, many other companies dive into digital transformation without a proper plan in a bid not to be left behind. While some have broken through this risky approach, many organizations have fallen victim to it.

Before you embark on a new journey, it's essential to design a digital roadmap. It describes where your business is now and where it's going.

A digital roadmap audits your entire business structure to ensure your digital transformation journey works. This gives you valuable benchmark information in your digital transformation process. Among the issues your digital roadmap should review are:

• Your vision for digital transformation.

• Are there specific objectives?

• Assessing your IT and business teams and entire organization's readiness to shift digitally 

• Your digital strengths and weaknesses for both IT and business teams

• What are similar organizations or your key competitors doing?

• Is there a clear plan shared with all departments?

• Does your organization require IT and business expert training to support your digital transformation strategy?

Such information is rarely available online. You learn and adapt as you progress. 

That said, no matter how committed to digital transformation your IT and business teams are, it's not unusual to see your efforts unsuccessful if there lacks a clear plan shared with and understood by these teams.

Ensure Business Processes and Team Collaboration 

Once planning is completed and specific objectives set, it's helpful to understand that new tools and technology aren't the center stages of your digital strategy. 

People are.

To overcome your transformation challenges and drive agility in your organization, IT and business teams need to collaborate to co-create value and keep up with the speed of digitalization collaboratively.

When there's a silo-mentality approach where teams only prioritize their work departments, things are bound to get chaotic — data silos, security concerns, bad governance are the order of the day. 

Such endanger your transformation journey hindering innovation, scalability, agility, and automation.

With your IT and business teams aligned and with healthy team collaboration, conditions are ripe to drive better operational efficiency, increased productivity, faster innovation, and connected customer experiences than what a siloed-mentality organization can achieve.

Deploy Comprehensive Automation 

According to MuleSoft, automation is a crucial focus for organizations looking to realize their strategic goals. Most organizations have implemented or are already implementing automation initiatives to improve productivity (96%), operational efficiency (93%), and create better-connected customer experiences (93%).

Why? 

Automation is critical to accelerating digital transformation, creating business value, and enhancing business outcomes. It's also a proven cost-effective and efficient method to power your digital journey.  

However, most organizations transitioning from legacy to automated processes often find it challenging to decide which functions to automate first. Moreover, while IT teams lead automation initiatives and rightfully so, they often fail to adequately empower business teams and other non-technical users, which can bring along a lack of trust, conflict, and silo mentality.

The digital transformation campaign may be disrupted when teams aren't on the same page on automation approaches and priorities. The track record is better when all teams share a common goal and understanding of your automation initiatives, each knowing their place and roles in the digital shift. 

Because of this, you can be confident you're treading on the right path in executing your transformation strategies.

Observing Security and Leadership Best Practices

Security is critical to your digital transformation strategy in a world where breaches and vulnerabilities continue to wreak havoc on businesses of all sizes and capabilities. Right beside security stands good leadership. Just as the Pronix IT Solutions team about security. This is what they specialize in when helping enterprise business customers throughout the United States.

Organizations can achieve agility, rapidity, and efficiency in their digital transformation efforts, but it requires having both security and leadership security in check.

For security, organizations should isolate and secure their business-critical infrastructure with features such as authentication prompts, identity and access management systems, etc. 

Ideally, 'the principle of least privilege’ should be enforced to restrict threat. This means that users/teams, irrespective of their profile, only access and understand relevant information. 

On the other hand, leaders themselves need to understand digital transformation. They shouldn't scale up digital transformation as they would or previously have approached other change initiatives via top-down approaches or directives. 

It's better if team leaders join in solving problems and removing limitations rather than delegating all tasks to subordinates. It motivates other employees.

Invest and Deploy in Data Integration ASAP

Most companies struggle to create a unified data system that integrates information from different business sources to a single source that's secure and accessible to relevant users. 

The reality is they are often assembling data from varied sources and not governing the data together. For effective implementation of digital technology, eliminating unstructured data platforms is the best way forward. 

However, re-architecting your existing infrastructures to develop a data storage, management, and exchange ecosystem that connects IT, business, and all members of your organization with reliable, timely, and meaningful information can be a daunting task.

For this, you may consider a gradual approach where you maintain your business-critical systems and implement new technologies around them. This helps your organization progressively replace the old system with digital technologies.

This requires patience, commitment, and communication – but the fruits are digital transformation success, which eventually eases your struggles. Your organization also benefits from single-pane infrastructure with enhanced visibility into devices, applications, systems users, etc.

Additionally, everyone gets quick access to the information with access control, infrastructure usage, and security policies. This moves you closer to achieving set business objectives.

Act Today and Experience Our Unique Digital Transformation Approach

In today's competitive business landscape, companies, new and old, are furiously battling each other to digitize and implement the latest technologies and tools. All this to deliver better, unique, and more competitive products and services fast-moving, adaptive organization 

But as appealing as such a digital transformation is, turning it into a reality can be challenging. 

Pronix can deliver the right mix of expertise, services tools, and technologies to spearhead your digital transformation journey into a success. 

Whether you’re stuck or already feel left behind, we can co-create a digital strategy, execute it, unlock business value, and make you a modern and profitable enterprise.

Connect with our technical IT outsourcing experts at Pronix and discover how Pronix can help you realize vision digital transformation and position you ahead of the curve.

Digital Transformation Case Study

RPA / Business Automation Case Study

Project Name: RPA

Client: Major Property and Casualty Insurance

Project Commencement Date: Oct 2019

Project Completion Date: Present

Read More About This RPA Case Study