Welcome to the Climb
Imagine trying to climb a rock face with a whole team of climbers hanging off the end of your rope.
You might be able to drag them up… but wouldn’t it be easier if you all climbed together?
The climb to digital transformation is a team effort, too. Granted, the technological nature of transformation means that the IT department, and the CIO office in particular, should be driving the effort. But as a leader, your job is to encourage everyone to climb with you, not haul them all up yourself.
How do you ignite a collective climb and reach the digital transformation summit? Research and experience reveal that cross-functional process integration is key.
With Cherwell and Lawless Research’s “The New CIO Imperative: Work Process Integration” study in-hand, we gathered insight and advice from IT experts, CIOs, and digital transformation leaders. From planning to process evolution, scroll down to get your expedition up and moving.
What is digital transformation?
The Climb To
Transformation
Learn More
Ask the Right Questions to Drive a Smart Transformation
Daniel Newman
Avoid Obstacles Through
Clear Goals & Organization-Wide Investment
Matthew Griffin
Learn More
Obstacles to Digital Transformation
What keeps organizations from realizing their goals? Our research highlights these three obstacles as frequent culprits. As for overcoming these challenges, industry experts Daniel Newman and Matthew Griffin weigh in.
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Lack of Communication
Three top frustrations that cross-functional teams suffer:
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Manual, Outdated Processes
Information workers spend
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Complex App
Architecture
of employees say it’s difficult
to use apps that involve multiple departments or data sources.
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Base Camp
Before You Climb
Digital transformation is a long-term process that requires strategic planning to ensure success. Spend some time at the base camp to plan your climb and you’ll increase your odds.
Scroll on to learn more about each stage and get advice from experts Tim Crawford, R "Ray" Wang, Sally Eaves, and Jonathan Reichental.
Getting Started with Daniel Newman
Avoid Obstacles with Matthew Griffin
Stage
Journey
You wouldn’t try to climb Mount Everest in a single sprint. Successful climbers do it in stages, giving the party plenty of time to acclimate to new surroundings. Digital transformation is the same: You do it one step at a time, in stages, making sure the organization is ready for each new change. Here’s what each stage looks like.
Scroll on to learn more about each stage and get advice from experts Tim Crawford, R "Ray" Wang, Sally Eaves, and Jonathan Reichental.
The Climb
3
What is digital transformation?
Companies re-designed to take advantage of new technology from the ground up
Seamless, efficient & automated sharing of actions, events, data and communications across different applications
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Capacity to fail fast and pivot to greater success
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Enhanced ability to experiment
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Why does it matter?
Transformed companies have:
of companies who have successfully integrated processes ask employees how work processes can be improved.
Companies with highly integrated processes provide a central location for accessing apps and services (81%) and appoint someone responsible for shared services (81%).
72%
Gain Buy-In and Strategize to Integrate Processes
Get Buy-In with Andrew Spence
Involve Employees at the
Start to Get Buy-In
Andrew Spence
Learn More
Set Goals with Charles Araujo
Set the Right Goal for
Your Transformation
Charles Araujo
Learn More
Simplify channels - and make it easier for employees to connect with IT when necessary.
Reduce support need - by promoting self-service and automated support wherever possible.
In this stage, you are largely working with your existing processes and technology. The goal here is to simplify IT, making applications and processes easier and more efficient.
Standardize Processes
& Applications
Align Teams with Tim Crawford
Create Alignment to
Drive Value
Tim Crawford
Learn More
Automate with R "Ray" Wang
Prepare for an
Automated Future
R “Ray” Wang
Learn More
01
Stage
Reduce complexity - by making processes more transparent, easy to understand and comply with across departments.
02
Stage
Increase the relevance - of each employees’ work by automating lower-level tasks to refocus on higher-value ones.
Enable collaboration - across the organization, including (secure) sharing of data between departments. Employees should be working towards shared goals and aware of their part in the larger organization.
Facilitate growth - by redesigning processes with an eye toward scalability. This includes automating when possible and sharing knowledge to better distribute the workload across the workforce.
At this stage, you will start to branch out from existing processes, redesigning workflows to make them more scalable and flexible. Collaboration and communication is key at this step.
Enablement
Build Trust with Sally Eaves
Make Collaboration
the Culture
Sally Eaves
Learn More
03
Stage
Facilitate - self-service at scale with your service platform, enabling more productive use of IT resources and a better end-user experience.
Centralize - IT services and workflows on a service platform that can boost efficiency for the entire organization.
Optimize - the processes you built in step two. Evaluate what has been successful and what hasn’t, set new goals, and aim for continuous improvement.
The final stage will see you begin to evolve process, rather than making minor tweaks. At this stage, your investments in technology and new processes will begin to pay dividends. Keep working to break down silos, facilitate communication, and keep IT focused on driving innovation.
Evolution
Optimize with Jonathan Reichental
Redesign Processes for Scalability and Flexibility
Jonathan Reichental
Learn More
Ask the Right Questions to Drive a Smart Transformation
Daniel Newman
Principal Analyst and Founding Partner, Futurum Research + Analysis
With all the rush to disrupt, transform, and modernize, there is an exorbitant amount of pressure to invest in technology for technology's sake. However, technology must be applied to solve business problems. When starting a modernization program, it's important to ask questions that help identify where technology can enable the business.
Bottom line: Technology should enable transformation. But we transform to help our companies stay relevant, enchant customers, and motivate and inspire employees. There
is always a human purpose tied to every technology investment. Start there, and you
will be off and running.
Does it improve customer experience?
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“We transform to help our companies stay relevant, enchant customers, and motivate and inspire employees. There is always a human purpose tied to every technology investment.”
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Will it enable greater worker productivity?
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Can it eliminate redundancy or waste?
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When will we see a return on the investment?
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Will it help us attract and retain talent?
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“It is imperative that digital transformations have clear goals, adequate funding, and the support of everyone in the organisation, from the board at the top to the employees at the front line.”
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Avoid Obstacles Through Clear Goals & Organization-Wide Investment
Matthew Griffin
Founder & CEO,
311 Institute
Digital transformation is not just one single project. Rather, it’s a collection of many projects that help embed digital technologies and processes into every aspect of your organisation's go-to-market, operations,
and hierarchy.
Ultimately, digital transformation is about operational and organisational change at every level for the purpose of creating a future-fit organisation and workforce that can adapt to new market opportunities and realities. As a result, it is imperative that digital transformation programs have clear goals, adequate funding, and the support of everyone in the organisation, from the board at the top to the employees at the front line.
However, in today’s world, digital now often only gets you to the same starting line as many of your organisations’ peers. The next phase, how you innovate on top of your new digital foundations to create a market leading company with solid growth prospects, is just as important, if not more so, than the transformation you have just undertaken.
Involve Employees at the Start to Get Buy-In
Andrew Spence
HR Transformation Director,
Glass Bead Consulting
The best way to gain employee buy-in for larger change initiatives is to involve them right from the start. Often the strongest ideas for improvement come from those closest to the work and customers, so it’s smart to include employees at the earliest stage of innovation.
When it comes to implementing the change, you should then already have some positive ambassadors for the improvements you are making. Try to identify and encourage the most influential employees to contribute to the change programme. Techniques such as organisational network analysis can be used
to identify influential employees, who are not always the most senior or highly paid. As the programme develops it is important to gain feedback from employee teams and make
sure that their changes are incorporated into
the design.
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“Often the strongest ideas for improvement come from those closest to the work and the customers, so it’s smart to include employees at the earliest stage of innovation.”
Set the Right Goals for Your Transformation
Charles Araujo
Principal Analyst,
Intellyx LLC
The goal of digital transformation should not be to centralize or even optimize processes. The only goal should be to transform the business and operating model to deliver a differentiated experience to your customers. With that goal as your true north, you then must determine what changes you will require to deliver the experience you seek. That will almost certainly involve process centralization and optimization, and will span across most, if not all, of your operating and business units.
You must then involve everyone the transformation touches, and you must engage them at the beginning of the process — not just when you decide to tell them how they’re going to change something. And the center of this effort should not be those that own or control the processes, but, rather, those that own and control the customer engagement. That is the greatest difference when it comes to digital transformation: It reorients the entire organization around the customer experience and what is necessary to create, curate, and deliver it.
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“The only goal should be to transform the business and operating model to deliver a
differentiated experience to your customers.”
Create Alignment to Drive Value
Tim Crawford
CIO Strategic Advisor,
AVOA
Digital transformation strongly suggests a technical drive for a better outcome. While this potentially provides some value, there are broader issues that ultimately lead to a more positive business outcome for organizations.
The first is to understand the business objectives and context that aligns the executive team and therefore the entire organization. By creating alignment at a business level, it streamlines the focus, approval process and execution across organizations.
The second component is to focus on those technology improvements that drive the greatest business value. Technology for technology purposes often leads to limited or negative gains. By focusing on business value, organizations can align with the best technology opportunities for success.
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“Technology for technology purposes often leads to limited or negative gains. By focusing on business value, organizations can align with the best technology opportunities for success.”
Prepare for an Automated Future
R “Ray” Wang
Principal Analyst, Founder & Chairman, Constellation Research
To reduce complexity and simplify support in your organization, start by rethinking how each stakeholder views their experience. Model their process flows and then identify what processes you need to redesign, automate, and retain for human intervention. Identify where possible designs and digital feedback loops allow machines to learn our patterns, so you can prepare for a future of AI-driven smart services.
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“Design for digital feedback loops that allow machines to learn our patterns, so you can prepare for a future of AI-driven smart services.”
Make Collaboration
the Culture
Sally Eaves
CEO and Director,
Sally Eaves Consultancy
Cross departmental collaboration is critical to empower and build trust, knowledge exchange and continuous innovation. It counteracts those perennial issues of poor alignment across functions, fragmented data sharing and entrenched silo-ed thinking and analysis.
A recent example I have directly delivered is an inaugural cross-departmental hackathon linked to a social impact cause aligning with the organisation's mission and values. This brought together diverse intergenerational teams from across the different disciplines working autonomously on a shared aspirational task. Critically, this did not end when the hackathon finished - this was merely a stepping board for change.
By modernising processes to increase visibility and access to data and key metrics, supported by technology tools, you can help enable holistic informational sharing and more seamless work-flow.
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“Cross-departmental collaboration is critical to empower and build trust, knowledge exchange and continuous innovation.”
Redesign Processes for Scalability and Flexibility
Jonathan Reichental
PhD, Founder & CEO,
Human Future
Digital transformation is not just about adopting new technology to achieve optimization. It’s an opportunity to review, modify, and if necessary, completely redesign processes to achieve better results. Now is the right time for organizations to step back and take a more holistic view of the processes that enable their organizations to function. Too many organizations historically built their technology infrastructure in a piecemeal manner. Use this opportunity to redesign and architect the business to be scalable and more flexible for future needs. Centralization is not necessary if the design is based on such qualities as standards and robust authentication.
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“Too many organizations historically built their technology infrastructure in a piecemeal manner. Use this opportunity to redesign and architect the business to be scalable and more flexible for future needs.”
46%
of their work time on manual processes and the majority say that work processes are moderately to highly manual.
34%
How Far Along the Climb to Transformation Is Your Business?
Cherwell is invested in helping companies transform their processes by facilitating communication, automating workflows, and more.
We recently sponsored a survey of over 1,000 employees to find out how far along in the climb businesses are. And, more than that, how the process affects employee engagement and experience. Use the report below to gauge your progress and get inspired for the next stage of your journey.
Read the Report
Obstacles
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say inefficiencies
43%
say repetitive work
40%
say miscommunication
37%
To get started with modernization, especially across departments, it is important that companies look at digital transformation through the correct lens. With all the pressure to disrupt, transform and modernize, there is an absorbent amount of pressure to invest in technology for technology's sake. However, technology must be applied to solve business problems. When starting a modernization program, it is important to ask questions that help identify where technology can enable the business.
Starting with questions like . . .
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Insights from the Experts
Insights from the Experts
Insights from the Expert
Insights from the Expert
Increased efficiency in existing business models
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New revenue streams & business models
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Ability to go to market faster with new solutions
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Increased efficiency in existing business models
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New revenue streams & business models
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Ability to go to market faster with new solutions
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Starting with questions like . . .
Read the Report
Headline
Why Digital Transformation on it's Own Isn't Enough.
Read the Report
Why Digital Transformation on it's Own Isn't Enough.
Headline
With all the rush to disrupt, transform, and modernize, there is an exorbitant amount of pressure to invest in technology for technology's sake. However, technology must be applied to solve business problems. When starting a modernization program, it's important to ask questions that help identify where technology can enable the business.
Read the Report
Why Digital Transformation on it's Own Isn't Enough.
Headline