The Human Problem (and Potential) of Digital Transformation

In business today, some may be exhausted thinking about Transformation.  Transforming.   Always changing.  Why can’t we just stand still for a moment?

Some see transformation as a buzzword that has enjoyed an unnatural long life.  For some, the name denotes a technology specific effort relevant to Information Technology only, but actually it is in service of Executive Leadership.  And more specifically, executives who want to think big – and the work for the next wave of digital transformation is only half finished.

It’s not uncommon for organizations to have completed years of work such as completing a new website launch that provides deeper cloud utility to a legacy customer set, or a financial company launching an app with new features to keep up with the continuous growth of competitors.  And then just stall because some progress has been made and now what?

Why is that common?   Because the Next Wave of Digital Transformation, is all about the human problem, or rather, human potential. When complexity remains in an organization and becomes part of the status quo, it creates opportunities for younger companies to take market share.

For example, perhaps you are a technology provider who has now migrated into selling technology as a service, mitigating waste across a plethora of teams who are now far more collaborative and can view how the customer is using the technology.   But there remains substantial complexity within the business process that connects legacy products to the newer organization and processes./

This complexity becomes the maze that your customer gets trapped in.  One customer recording I heard literally said “Can someone please call me back and take my money?  I’m trying to buy from you”.

We shared that recording with the organization to show that the path to value was not clear.   Consider a well-manicured, majestic garden with a single brick pathway coursing through a field of flowers and exotic plants.   If you’re like the majority of large organizations, that is likely not what your purchase path looks like.

Customers wants to be able to very easily walk through the path to value, enjoy your offerings, and that is where the goals of the next wave of digital transformation resides.   Creating the path to value that protects the customer from your own organizational complexity.

For the executive who owns company revenue growth and their team, it’s best to consider capabilities.

What are the key capabilities for growth, delivering a clear path to value and sustainable reduction of friction across the organization?  This is the next wave of digital transformation to consider:

1. Land with a low friction offer and then expand with product led growth:

Remove barriers to entry (Customer Growth metric) and then unlock revenue with product-led improvements (Recurring Revenue and Lifetime Value metrics)

2. Transform your siloed data into actionable Insights

Understand how the customer is using your products, leverage analytics to synthesize that utilization into insights that drive customers down the path to more value

3. Enable a fully digital customer experience

Across the entire experience of land, expand and renew, the customer is never far from the next rung of the ladder.  Easily able to navigate digitally and without disrupted communication and complex silos.

4. Establish a clear link between capabilities and business outcomes

Clearly show the business-specific outcome of your offering. Empower your data driven Salesforce to harness the analytics into insights that make the case to hold firm on your pricing and upsell to new offerings.

And now more than ever, it’s very easy for any organization to get lost on the path to customer value.  Digital transformation has been a hard road, but it’s the right path.

You may ask yourself, How can I finally optimize my people, process and technology?

And make the impact you know is within your reach?

It’s time to complete your digital transformation.  Its time to find your own path to value.

Conclusion

Today, many are in the Next Wave of Digital Transformation, the next challenge is a human problem. Leading your people down the path toward customer value is imperative.

The only way around the obstacles facing your organization is to not go around them at all—imagine you are creating that beautiful garden path to value and not building a maze for your customers to lose their way, and their faith in your business.