If you had to choose between technological, organizational or people excellence, which one would you prioritize? Before you answer, this article can help you clarify the stakes and, maybe, could you then make another choice. By the way, on which of these 3 domains do you feel better qualified?
We can identify 3 operational pillars linked to digital transformations and all are essential to succeed: technology, organization and culture.
This can be explained because companies are more mature on these domains and related practices are, in general, often more numerous and present. These domains being better known, they often take the lead.
The cultural axis is less concrete, sometimes beyond the main competencies of the IT department and so, in fact, almost always less, or not as much at least, addressed.
Technology is there to support the evolutions within a company, to facilitate them and even to enable them… Often, technology comes first. It is what creates the need, for example following novelties or a supplier’s recommendation.
One difficulty about the technological axis is the speed of the evolutions and, potentially, of the obsolescence as well. Decisions are often a bet on the future: the investments are to be sustainable and we need to avoid using tools, concepts or services that are outdated within a few years.
If we want to be ahead of competition, we must take the risk to implement new technologies, potentially less stable ones. Today we are looking for disruption, to be the first to create the business model that will propel us years ahead; and this makes the move even riskier. In France, 80% of the startup companies fail [créerentreprise.fr ]. If your digital transformation relies on the technology invented by one of these startups, then your business is at risk, isn’t it?
Apart from this difficulty linked to the economical reliability of your partners, the IT departments have the needed technological expertise, or they can usually access software publishers or integrators that have the required knowledge. So, IT departments are able to choose solutions that meet the needs of a company. With clearly defined specifications and a master plan that is up to date, the technological axis can be managed with success.
The organizational pillar refers to the very act of implementing the transformation and also the target organization, the company in its new setup and its operations through time.
It deals with topics such as change management, target organization definition, added value clarification, specifying new roles and new processes.
If managing the technical implementation is embedded in the technological domain, managing the change project is on the organizational axis. This is in the spectrum of expertise of large consulting firms and they can provide all the services needed to describe and drive this step.
As transformations become recurring, many companies also train their staff, to grow internally part of the skills required by the organizational pillar. This guarantees that they have enough employees who can become change agents and lead the transformation from an organizational perspective.
Concerning digital transformations, 3 directions are interesting to investigate when it comes to the cultural pillar :
To address properly these topics, we believe that 3 departments are directly concerned in the company:
Then, there is another population that is concerned, or rather involved, which is the target of the transformation: they are called the users. Whether they are internal or external, a big part of the cultural axis is actually dedicated to them, to help them fit into the desired transformation and to make them own the success.
A real difficulty about the cultural axis is due to its relative youth and a chronic lack of mastery of the topic. The offering in this area is quite diffuse and often not mature. The direct effect of this situation is that this cultural pillar is potentially ignored at the start of many digital transformations.
If this is the case, it will always come back at you once the transformation process has begun, with a first effect of slowing it down. In extreme cases – not so uncommon though – the human factor becomes a potential source of failure, because it will not have been managed, or at least too late.
It therefore seems appropriate to focus on the human factor in the digital transformation from the beginning of the initiative, if only to evaluate the relevance of each strategic option in this light. This helps prevent, and therefore reduce, transformational barriers. You can then even create forces, out of the human factor, that will make your transformation a real success.
Coauthor: Gilles Baudens