Digital Transformation is on the minds of most senior management, and nearly $1.3 trillion was spent in 2018. But $900 billion was money down the drain as 70 percent of the initiatives did not bear fruition, according to a Harvard Business Review report.
Is digital transformation just a buzzword? Is it just a Utopian dream?
And yet, there are enough stories of companies like Subway and Target who have seen improvement in efficiencies and deeper insights into customer behaviour because of the implementation of emerging technologies. Clearly, Dx works.
Two factors that matter when it comes to Dx implementation are the culture of the organization and the current processes that it follows. The success of digital transformation requires embracing the emerging technologies whole-heartedly and in meaningful ways.
Six Key Factors to ensure your Digital Transformation Efforts work:
- Factor #1: A clear business goal and metrics to measure the success. This will define the technologies and solutions the business needs rather than merely listing out a list of digital products or processes. What are the specific business needs? This is the first key question that needs to be answered.
- Factor #2: Aligning all employees of the business to key objectives and educating them on the processes needed to achieve the same. Where does automation and digital transformation fit in there?
- Factor #3: Understand the customer needs and their expectations and design products and services to meet those needs. This requires listening tools and a way to ensure that messages from customers reaches the correct functional area for rectification.
- Factor #4: Upskill all your employees to address their fears of becoming redundant and to participate more enthusiastically in the transformation process. For this, the business needs to understand the skill gap and provide appropriate training.
- Factor #5: An agile culture that allows constant reviews and monitoring of processes and mid-course correction in case of any deviations.
- Factor #6: Existing legacy technologies need to be integrated with new technologies being brought in and the employees need to be trained on the benefits of emerging tech. There may also be data silos and redundancies that need to be reconciled and collaboration between different groups needed. Data centralization is critical. You need to eventually build out a cloud-based data warehouse, a single source of reliable data.
Where Quality Plays a Critical Role
The quality leader has a key role in ensuring the success of the transformation, as much as any other CXO in the organization. In fact, a cloud-based, enterprise-wide quality management system like the one from ComplianceQuest can address all six factors that hinder the transformational process. It can be the catalyst that brings about cultural and operational changes, with the quality leader driving the transformation process.
A quality leader can play a key role in:
- Setting the objectives and metrics for transformation, drawing insights from the data drawn across functions
- Detailing the SOPs needed to make sure every aspect of every function is broken down with workflows established for smooth transformation
- Empowering every employee to take responsibility for their area of function, thus making them a valuable member of the organization
- Facilitating collaborations between teams and sanitizing data
- Identifying training needs for employees
- Providing periodic reviews to ensure the transformation is on course or needs correction
- Ensuring documentation so that there is an audit trail as well as traceability
- Ensuring that the customer is heard and his feedback acted upon to improve customer satisfaction
However, the quality leader can achieve all of this only with the support of an automated, cloud-based enterprise-wide quality management system that provides a 360 degree view of the business’ operations. The ComplianceQuest EQMS built on the robust and scalable SalesForce.com platform has features aimed at empowering quality managers to implement organization-wide processes for compliance and improving efficiency and productivity. Features such as Audit Management, Change Management, CAPA, Complaint Handling, Document Management, Collaboration, Training and Dashboards are ideally suited to help the quality leader set the tone and transform the organizational culture – so essential for a successful digital transformation.
CQ’s Change Management feature alone has features to manage transformations and its features include:
- – Change initiation
- – Evaluation
- – Execution and tracking
- – Verification and closure
If you would like to speed up your Dx efforts and make it more effective, contact us at [email protected].