Getting started with digital transformation
Every audit we run turns up some version of this. A short on-ramp to digital transformation for teams who have not touched it before.
Strategy work is mostly deciding what not to do, and writing it down so it stays decided. The version that survives contact with a real deadline is the simple one.
Why it matters
The technology is rarely the hard part. Where this goes wrong is almost never a lack of knowledge. The practical test is whether someone new to the project could tell, in a minute, that it had been handled.
Your first week
- Find out what is already in place
- Process and people determine whether it sticks
- Change one thing and measure it
Start with one workflow that visibly hurts. The reasoning matters more than the rule, because the rule has exceptions. The failure mode is not doing it wrong, it is doing it once and assuming it stays done.
In practice
The projects that go badly are rarely the ones with the hardest technical problems. Three things worth confirming about digital transformation before you move on:
- Someone can say what the current setup is without going to look
- Start with one workflow that visibly hurts — and you know whether that is true here
- There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped
If you are not sure where your systems currently stand on this, it takes us about an hour to find out.