Leading Change
Digital transformation has long been at the forefront of businesses agendas and is increasingly key to their success in terms of revenue, brand perception and customer loyalty. Following Carter Murray’s recent workshop with PwC surrounding “Humanising Technology Transformation”, we explore how senior leaders can effectively drive and implement change in businesses’ Digital Transformation strategy while keeping it humanised and relevant to the people they engage.
A study conducted by the PwC Experience Centre found that ‘80% of Digital Transformation Programmes still fail’, and now with the effects of the COVID-19 situation having fast-tracked the need for digital transformation and for senior leaders to adapt their strategy to the unprecedented challenges and needs the situation has presented, it has never been more crucial that the reasons behind this are identified and resolved. However, it is not solely down to senior leaders to find the solutions for this. It is often employees of all levels from recent graduates to the C-Suite whose job function and purpose within an organisation is to improve and develop digital transformation, but what Senior Leaders do need to take responsibility for, is ensuring all these peoples visions are aligned, and in turn aligned with the wider business strategy and the needs of their customer base.
Ultimately it is people that need to be put at the forefront of decisions around digital transformation projects for them to succeed.
Understanding and catering to the ‘needs’, ‘motivations’, ‘feelings’ and ‘journey’ of employees and customers is key for a digital transformation programme to be successful and sustainable long term. Without effective Business & Consumer Insights and User Research to uncover these, digital transformation projects are being set up to fail because the end user’s experience and journey is not being taken into account and there is likely to be a disconnect between the platform and the user’s needs.
By remembering that real people are at the focal point of all digital transformation, Senior Leaders driving this change will have a much higher chance of successfully implementing digital transformation projects and businesses will be able to much sooner respond to the needs of our rapidly changing world.