What are we missing? Questions to ask to accelerate a digital evolution

What are we missing? Questions to ask to accelerate a digital evolution

Nicole Hargreaves, Senior Business Consultant at Amdaris

You’re stuck with legacy systems that are out of date and no longer serve the desired purpose. So, it’s time to innovate those systems and start your company’s digital evolution.

Similar to a digital transformation — but without the start/end date — a digital evolution is the constant state of change that organisations should be going through to update and differentiate their systems.

But once you know what your organisation wants and needs, where do you start? Here are four questions to get you started.

1. What are your motivations?

Before you begin anything, you need to ask yourself what the drivers are for this change. Where do you want to get to? Why do you want to implement this change? A key part of this is to create a mentality and culture that ensures change is not done just because you’re wanting to change, but for getting value.

Innovation is what drives change and lies behind the digital evolution process. It will look different depending on the size of the company and sector, but it rests on achieving business goals and gaining an edge in the market. You might innovate to achieve greater efficiency with workflows, save on unnecessary system costs, or develop a new offering for your clients and customers. It’s always different, but in all these cases, there is a goal and an outcome.

There is also value in understanding when things don’t need to change just yet. Innovating for the sake of innovating can be counterintuitive. You need to ask yourself why you are doing it — what are you missing — and then outline what you are going to do and how. This gives you direction, clarity and a focus to aim towards.

2. Is your goal balanced?

When setting your goal, make sure your budget allocations and desired outcomes are compatible.

An individual digital transformation could be costly, but if each one is positioned as part of a digital evolution, this means they can be seen as step-by-step changes that build on your offering. This is a valuable mindset. As digital evolution is such a broad undertaking, outlining each step in bite-sized chunks makes it more manageable and allows you to see what costs are affordable within this.

While one project may have short-term impact, you also need to balance this outcome with a longer term focus as well. Is it necessary and cost-effective? But equally, by investing in digital transformations and renewals now, it could make the process cheaper in the future when bigger changes are needed.

Change doesn’t always happen instantly, and you need to consider the fact you are bringing in new technologies and ways of working that will take time to instil, take effect and grow. Balancing your goal(s) at the outset will help accelerate the process after.

3. How do you move in this direction?

Determine where to start. It sounds simple enough but can be the hardest step to do. What is the first action to take that adds value?

As a digital evolution focuses on innovating and looking ahead, companies can often fixate on what new technologies, ideas or processes they can integrate into the business. As outlined, this is crucial to moving in your direction. But before you start ripping everything up, using the legacy systems you have can help you make this first step.

If you can collect all of your data from these different systems, you can get an overview of your application suite and business processes. This can tell you which applications are inefficient or costly, what works well, and allow you to resolve any issues in business-critical software and implement new software if it’s needed.

With this insight, you can plan much more effectively and make the move towards an adaptable and modern infrastructure.

4. Is AI truly going to fix the problem?

Don’t jump to AI without asking whether it’s going to be the element that is most time or cost-effective. Its constant presence in the news can make it seem like a shiny object you must have for business success moving forward. But a company shouldn’t just place it into their operations because it wants to have it. Ask yourself what benefit(s) will it bring to the company? And what are you going to use it for? As something to help your employees with their work? Or for a new product or service?

On the other hand, it can also be the case that people will be wary of using AI given its negative news coverage. AI has many different capabilities and it is crucial to outline what type of AI you are using and why. This is why it is so important to make sure all key stakeholders are involved in the decision-making process. If they are not included, they will be more resistant to change. But if they are involved in discussions, they can contribute to the process while you can manage expectations, outline your vision and explain why you are doing or not doing it.

Accelerating the process

A digital evolution is an ongoing process that, implemented correctly, adds continual value. Once it is up and running, it then becomes a case of adding to and adapting systems, rather than having to make major upgrades and overhauls. Taking the time to ask these questions from the outset will accelerate the process after and make it far more robust and efficient in the longer term.