Eight steps to making your business transformation stick

There isn’t a day that goes by when you don’t read about the need to change, transform or re-invent your business, your life or your world.

“The only thing that is constant is change” – Heraclitus

Organisations are under increasing pressure from outside influences, such as international competition, disruptive technologies and new legislation – to name a few. For many organisations, transformation is no longer optional, it is imperative.

Change is challenging and often quite daunting. How do we ensure that we are not one of the 70% of transformation projects that fail? (Ref McKinsey)

TURN TRANSFORMATION INTO AN ADVANTAGE

At this point, I should put my cards on the table and in a group therapy session style confirm:

“I am Chris and I work for a software company”.

I wanted to share how we believe you can really make transforming your business stick, and deliver ROI at each step.

Step One – Organisational Review

Workshop what makes your business unique and identify what makes you better than your competition – understand how these differences translate to operational strategy.

Step Two – Process Review

How do you do what you do? Understand the processes that deliver your business outcomes. Everything you do is a process, so what makes your processes unique? Who, what and how do you deliver them.

Step Three – The Company DNA

Document what you have learned in previous steps to create a “Company DNA”. Use this as a starting point to deliver meaningful, and more importantly, measurable change within your business.

Step Four – Collaborate

Make the “Company DNA” available to your whole organisation and allow your people to review, collaborate and improve on your business processes. Task departments to take responsibility for process improvement and make it part of what you do too.

Step Five – Change Strategy

Identify areas or processes that are candidates for change and/or automation. Do this based on an agreed set of ROI measures, this makes decisions measurable, more impactful and increases the buy-in from people. Ensure your strategy is communicated across the enterprise and highlight successes as they happen.

Step Six – Prototype Automation

In areas where automation is required, choose the fastest to implement with the highest return on investment. Prototype platforms in a RAPID way based on the process outcomes in the steps 4 and 5.

Step Seven – Go Live

Rollout platforms and processes into your organisation that have delivered the expected results and ROI during the prototype phase. Deliver user training using the outcomes in previous steps, and set KPIs for each process to continually monitor and review.

Step Eight – Accelerate Change

Use this method to adapt to changes in market, competition, legislation or any other disruptive influences that happen in the future. Evaluate regularly.

CHANGE IS INEVITABLE AND CHANGE IS CONSTANT

In a world where change is the only constant, organisations with the fastest learning curve thrive.

Businesses today must learn to embrace change. Successful businesses will use change to their advantage. Intelligent businesses will enjoy the journey.

I will leave you with a very telling statistic to ponder:

Gartner predicts that by 2017, 20% of all market leaders will lose their number one position to a company founded after the year 2000 because of lack of digital advantage.

SOURCE: FlowCentric