Step your Feet off the Transformation Treadmill: Why Digital Transformation isn’t the be all and end all

Digital transformation isn’t the panacea some claim it to be. If you’ve not clued yourself up yet by reading our white paper: deconstructing digital transformation, we recommend you do so.

In the meantime we’ve summarised digital transformation in a nutshell bellow:

Digital transformation is the realigning of business through technology to drive new value to customers, employees and the organisation. It’s critical to competing in an economic landscape that is constantly changing as technology evolves.

Notice the keyword in that: technology. Don’t get us wrong, we still think digital transformation is crucial, however, it’s clear that businesses are totally caught up in the hype. They forget the reason they started their digital journey in the first place and implement expensive piece-meal technology or monolithic all-in-one solutions that don’t solve their business problems.

There’s something bigger than digital

We’re not telling you to ditch digital transformation because that would be a very bad idea, we’re asking you to see the bigger picture. Rebel, push back and question whether proposed digital solutions are really meeting your business needs.

Time to step off the transformation treadmill and refocus on Workplace Modernisation. It’s something bigger than digital, a business movement that we live by. Workplace Modernisation is all about engineering the right culture, business change process and customer experiences that are underpinned; not made by technology. Helping you to stop implementing technology solutions for the sake of digital transformation.

With Workplace Modernisation, we’re able to engineer in what your business does need and engineer out anything it doesn’t. Creating the perfect ecosystem for your business.

Business first, technology second

The problem with digital transformation is, it’s all too easy to get caught up with technology because this is the key premise. Workplace Modernisation looks beyond the tech and brings everything back to business.

We’ve said it before and we will say it again, it’s vital for business decision makers and technology heads to work together. A close collaboration of the two very different departments means that you’ll implement solutions that are:

A. Meeting your business goals and;
B. Solving key business problems/pain points

Technology is where you finish – not start. Business goals and pain points are where you need to start. Modern IT leadership is becoming business led, technology follows. Once you escape the digital transformation bubble, you’ll start to implement solutions that return real, tangible results for your business.

Digital transformation has its gaps too

Technology will never be the answer for everything. There’s yet to be an app created for engineering an open business culture. This is something that needs to be (and will always be) crafted by people. There are however applications that might help contribute towards an open culture. Internal business equivalents to Facebook, like Yammer for example help your businesses craft an open culture by ensuring that everyone can easily share information with the entire organisation. No matter if you’re in or out of the office.

There’s also the issue that digital transformation completely excludes voice and the power of human-to-human communication. Imagine a workplace where everyone only ever Instant Messaged or emailed. We wouldn’t like to work there, would you? Neither would we like to be the customer of a company that never picked up the phone. You’re 40x more likely to get the outcome you want by speaking to someone face-to-face and 20x more likely to get it by giving them a call. Voice first is the future, not the past. Emotional importance, generational differences and value, not technology will always dictate how people wish to communicate.

Workplace Modernisation ties in with the view that the blended workforce is the way to go. The idea that the workforce should be a blend of people and technology, working in harmony together. For instance, business processes can be sped up with the help of AI and Robotic Process Automation (RPA), empowering your employees to focus on higher value tasks. This harmonisation with digital business processes redistributes headcounts, is time effective, improves the customer experience and saves costs.

It’s all about connecting your world

Everything moves so fast. That’s why Workplace Modernisation idealises solutions that evolve with your business. With the flexibility and adaptability of monolithic, all-in-one systems remaining a mystery Britannic are offering something different.

Our b-connected platform is a suite of microservices and solutions that can be personalised to meet your business needs. Each is a plug-in and go solution that can easily overlay your existing environment.