The digital technological capabilities of today have an enormous potential for improving processes and interactions between organisations and it’s stakeholders. The complexity is to unleash value for your business while preparing your organisation and staff to the new reality. Our advisory services are focussed on helping your management and team to find the right way forward for adopting and implementing technologies successfully.

A Digital Transformation Roadmap is needed to thoroughly plan the Digital Transformation initiatives before execution. It consists of an outlook of initiatives, planned in time, to deliver specific transformation components. As example, this could be an Operating Model but also an IT component implementation. We have developed a methodology to create a Digital Transformation Roadmap consisting of 9 simple steps.

DISCOVER

The 3 steps covering discover include a high level analysis of information available within the organisation, explaining AS-IS, vision, strategic directions, objectives, stakeholders, etc. Subsequently, we want to identify potential business value which is linked to specific technologies. And lastly, a new vision needs to be developed that clarifies what goals and directions you are after and when you are successful.

PLAN

Now that we have defined where we want to go to, we need to start planning to clarify HOW we want to execute the Digital Transformation. First, a clear understanding needs to be created how we can separate different Initiatives and Building Blocks. This should be done in such a way that we create logical and manageable scopes of work with dependencies that can be controlled. Each Initiative needs definition in terms of value, timing, challenges and workload. Secondly, a clear impact map needs to be created to understand and manage the changes (ie improvements) for the business. Drawing in all Initiatives & Building blocks on a timeline, opens up the possibility to think about different variations and sequences for the execution. This should be translated into pre-defined check and decision points within the Digital Transformation Roadmap to maximise agility.

COMMIT

The last 3 steps are focussed to create maximum commitment to deliver upon the Digital Transformation Roadmap. Obviously, a skilled and authorised team should be defined and made available to execute the initiatives. Clear accountabilities are key to make timely and supported decisions. In some cases you will need to organise external support by engaging partners to execute on specific parts of the Digital Transformation. Making sure plans are feasible and include a maximum of flexibility prevents early failures or budget overruns. Lastly, it is crucial that the leadership team and the initiative leaders are fully supporting the Digital Transformation Roadmap by a formal endorsement communicated to your organisation.