A short guide to digital transformation

The advice here is unglamorous, which is probably why it gets skipped. Everything we would tell a client about digital transformation in the time it takes to drink a coffee.

Strategy work is mostly deciding what not to do, and writing it down so it stays decided. It is the sort of thing that looks like polish right up until it costs you an enquiry.

Why this earns attention

The technology is rarely the hard part. None of that requires a large budget, only a decision and someone to own it. Anything you cannot measure here, you are deciding by taste, which is fine as long as everyone knows it.

What good looks like

Process and people determine whether it sticks. Getting it slightly wrong is survivable. Ignoring it entirely is not. It rarely shows up as a line item, which is exactly why it slips.

The mistakes we see most

Start with one workflow that visibly hurts. None of that requires a large budget, only a decision and someone to own it. It is the sort of thing that looks like polish right up until it costs you an enquiry.

In practice

Clear scope protects the client at least as much as it protects the agency. Three things worth confirming about digital transformation before you move on:

• Someone can say what the current setup is without going to look
• Process and people determine whether it sticks — and you know whether that is true here
• There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped

If any of that sounds like a description of your current setup, it is fixable.