Programme Assurance Resources
Digital Transformation Programmes
The information in this guide is intended for general purposes only. For more specific guidance around your organisation’s projects, please get in touch with our team.
In this section, you will find:
- Creating a better experience for your end user
- Enabling better continuity and security
- Building efficiencies felt on the bottom line
- Scoping a digital transformation
- Prioritising the projects and deliverables that are most important
- Assembling teams to carry out transformation
- Choosing the right technologies and partners to deliver
- Preparing the organisation to refine the way they work
- Measures of digital transformation success
- Identifying where technology will help the most
- Where to next?
- Latest Programme Assurance Articles
Ten things your Digital Transformation Programme needs to get right
For that reason, it’s best to view ‘digital transformation’ as more of a philosophy and broad evolution of a business, as opposed to any set of firm deliverables. Every business is at a different maturity level when it comes to digital and how it is applied.
IQANZ works with organisations on their digital transformation programmes to ensure that the projects within this initiative deliver. But we also work with those organisations to prepare the business to accept such large-scale changes. In this guide we go into the topic of digital transformation in detail, providing some of the benefits, things to watch out for and how to know if things are going well.
Creating a better experience for your end user
Digital’s innate scalability and continual refinement makes it a powerful instrument to improve user experience. Clunky, old, manual systems slow the business and its people down. The transformation should seek to make the user experience (UX) of your organisation much better. The outcomes of the programme should speak directly to what the transformation enables within the business, whether that’s:
- Faster customer care
- More efficient records management
- Easier organisation-wide comms
- Stronger business continuity and remote working
- A better product offering
The problem that sometimes exists in digital transformation programmes is that the outcomes become more about going through the process of transformation than the benefits the programme will deliver to people.
And if your organisation serves an external customer, the offloading of certain interactions like account management or paying bills onto a digital platform like a customer portal is a huge deal. Customers are becoming progressively more resistant to spending valuable time sitting on hold, and expect that they can run all elements of their lives digitally if needed. In this era, an organisation that doesn’t offer a digital experience will stand out negatively.
Enabling better continuity and security
Digital transformation helps remove the reliance on physical premises to continue operating. In the current era where staff need to be ready to log in from home to work, a cloud-based business and set of platforms is imperative.
With more of this migration onto the cloud, there’s a growing need for good cyber security talent. Digital transformations aren’t simply about establishing systems, but the right people surrounding these, too. This has meant security and other related expertise is in hot demand, offering excellent career choices for those with the right skills and training.
Decentralising systems is also a good way to prevent outages through power cuts or civil emergencies. No longer should operations fail at the hands of a single switch or server room.
Building efficiencies felt on the bottom line
The value of an easy to use, streamlined stack of digital platforms cannot be overstated. Digitisation frees people up to do other more valuable pieces of work, which can translate to millions of dollars saved each year. When the organisation runs modern systems and applications that make sense to staff, the attrition rate can also be reduced. In today’s world, antiquated systems drastically affect an employee’s job enjoyment and engagement. Microsoft Office 2007 anyone?
Scoping a digital transformation
Like any programme, the scoping phase needs ample time and space to accurately determine the parameters of a digital transformation. Whilst this term may be used to broadly refer to the programme, the actual outcomes of these activities need to be defined to fine detail. When scoping a digital programme, the following questions should be considered:
- What elements of the business will be updated or replaced by digital solutions?
- What end user functionality or outcomes need to be delivered?
- What elements of digital will not be included as part of the scope?
- What are the underlying projects that are combined to make up this programme?
- What existing, active projects are not considered part of digital transformation
- How will changes to the scope be triaged and decided upon (roles and responsibilities etc)?
- What outcomes are the most important to us?
While a project scope may take some time to complete, a large, multiyear programme needs even longer. Scoping the digital transformation as clearly as possible at the start before delivery gets underway will save big headaches and potentially money later down the track.
Prioritising the projects and deliverables that are most important
With this in mind, it’s important that leadership and programme owners prioritise the projects that will drive the organisation in the right direction. Whilst there is no shortage of ‘nice to haves’ in the area of digital maturity, the programme’s scope should have been explicit around the non-negotiable outcomes to be delivered. For example, the programme may require the organisation to offer a way to manage details and pay invoices online. This may consist of a front end portal development project, back end database management project and a campaign around the marketing and communications of this change. There may be peripheral projects around customer care or other functions of the business – it’s up to leadership (drawing on any external support such as that from a strategic delivery or assurance partner) to determine the right mix of projects that closely align to the delivery of strategic outcomes.
What will enable the scoped digital transformation? What is not necessary? Honest answers to these questions will serve the success of the programme well.
Assembling teams to carry out transformation
Digital transformations require people/teams. Given the duration of these programmes, businesses need to focus on the structure and roles of project teams and overarching programme owners in a way that’s sustainable and survives natural staff turnover. We also suggest breaking projects up into shorter periods of time, in order to preserve the clarity of outcome and keep project staff engaged the entire way through. If a programme has tight, tidy projects delivering on elements of the transformation, there’s less risk of one particular project eating up budget through a complicated or overwhelming scope.
A programme’s execution isn’t only about delivering technology, it’s also about bringing in people who can understand the business’ strategic objectives in order to influence and direct activity within the programme. People at the programme level of the business need to be able to distil the businesses’ strategic context into clear and concise communications for project teams and the wider BAU business.
Choosing the right technologies and partners to deliver
Along with the chosen technology, organisations need to think about the 3rd party partners that can help bring the changes to life. Sometimes these partners will be the same company as the technology itself, although in New Zealand it is more common for large IT companies to be experts in a number of technologies and certified providers of embedding these into organisations.
This process should not be rushed. It will need input from experts such as procurement, technical/ systems analysts, enterprise architects, business analysts, and the programme office. There are many senior IT professionals who have evolved into consultants who can provide valuable advice to organisations looking to engage partners and technologies. These roles can identify risks or opportunities in each potential partner, with a good understanding of the organisation’s needs and the limitations of each option.
Preparing the organisation to refine the way they work
How ready is the business to actually transform? If your business units have been working a certain way for decades, the adjustment to new systems and processes can be jarring. Too many businesses jump into the ‘delivering’ phase before adequately communicating the why, how, when and where.
When there’s a lack of preparation, the turbulence of change can have far reaching implications for your people. The most obvious example being the loss of long term team members who feel like their job or business unit is becoming irrelevant. Uncertainty left unchecked often leads to people to make hasty decisions or leap to misinformed conclusions.
Instead, digital transformations need to set up change management as its own project or initiative with clear outcomes and measures. This may include various communication channels, consultation with the team, and demonstrating potential benefits of transformation.
Measures of digital transformation success
How do you know if a programme is going in the right direction? The challenge long term, large scale programmes have is that their outcomes will be felt the most in a matter of years, not months or weeks. However, this is not a reason to neglect proper governance around the work. Reporting on the transformation programme on a regular basis will usually connect up a number of individual projects’ measures (budget, timeline, milestones, road blocks), the combination of which will aggregate into the status of the programme. Once enough delivery has been realised through projects, the strategic objectives will start to be affected, allowing for reporting of the programme’s impact at a higher level (whether that’s revenue, customers, satisfaction of users). Programme outcomes are easier to measure the further through the process you get.
Identifying where technology will help the most
With a clear picture of how technology would improve the business and its customers, the scope, governance and underlying projects can all point in the right direction. The sign of a well-defined transformation is when everyone from the junior developer to chief technology officer knows why that transformation is taking place.
Where to next?
Read our other programme resources:
Digital transformation programmes
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Procurement for programmes
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What is Change Management?
Influencing and ultimately coordinating change is not straight forward. In this guide...
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Long term budget planning for programmes
How do you effectively budget for long term programmes, with deliverables...
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Public sector and programme management
How does a large programme of work differ in the public sector vs. private enterprise?
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IQANZ Limited
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PO Box 11-757 Wellington,
New Zealand
04 473 4340
info@iqanz.com