How can digital transformation build more resilient businesses?
In recent years, businesses have taken giant strides towards digital transformation to ensure increased sufficiency and cost-effectiveness. However, digital or business transformation has significantly accelerated in the wake of COVID-19, becoming imperative for businesses to stay afloat.
Following the outbreak of COVID-19, and the subsequent shutdowns, information technology groups have sprung into action, launching technology-driven initiatives to enable remote work and distance learning.
Integration
Digital transformation integrates digital technology into all business areas, fundamentally changing how people operate and deliver value to customers. Further, it’s also a cultural change that requires organizations to continually challenge the status quo, experiment, and get comfortable with failure. COVID-19 has proven that maintaining the status quo and perpetuating mediocre ways of doing business must change to avert stagnation. Perhaps this might be the most critical lesson for business leaders in the post COVID-era
Maturity
An executive survey by Deloitte suggests more “digitally mature companies” – companies where digital strategy and infrastructure is embedded in all parts of their business – are more resilient and agile in a crisis. They also perform better financially.
Components
Digital transformation involves many processes, interactions, transactions, technological evolutions, changes, internal and external factors, and industries and stakeholders. Overall, there are seven critical components of an effective digital transformation strategy:
- Strategy and Leadership.
- Culture Change and Communication.
- Optimizing Processes.
- Data.
- Technologies.
- Team Structure.
- Results.
Resilience
Digital transformation can help virtualize and better manage infrastructure and processes, empower sales to get closer to customers, integrate remote and in-person networks and enhance competitive advantage.
The pandemic has laid bare some inefficiencies and vulnerabilities in many supply chains, so organizations need to address these issues to prepare for future disruptions. According to Deloitte Global Network, effectively executing a digital transformation requires strong leadership, talent, and partnerships, as well as the cultivation of an agile and adaptive mindset. To achieve resilience, businesses have to teach individuals new abilities. Governments and companies must equally upskill and reskill the workforce to keep up with the tempo of digital transformation.
