Primitive stone tools helped cavemen to survive and prosper. Darwin called this evolution. Today, digital tools are used help your business survive and prosper. This evolution is called digital transformation.

Unfortunately, the term ‘digital transformation’ has become the ‘catch phase’ of every IT website and sales consultant.

It’s over used, often applied in the wrong context and millions of pages have been written about it, filled with technology jargon. It is little that most business owners feel daunted and confused about digital transformation.

Digital transformation doesn’t have to be complex.

As a concept, digital transformation simply means “continually evolving the way your company operates – considered equally from three perspectives: business, technology and people”.

Accordingly, we believe the first step towards a successful digital transformation is to establish an environment and foundation that is conducive to success:

1. Understanding: Ensuring everyone in your company understands: what digital transformation is, and is not; the importance of embracing digital transformation to evolve and capitalise on new opportunities; and the risks of doing nothing.
2. Vision: Creating a shared-vision which describes what the company will be like as it reaches key milestones in its ongoing evolution.
3. Culture: Establishing a deeply-held, business-wide culture that embraces the company’s new digital transformation vision and its resulting changes.
4. Status: Accessing the current status of the company’s readiness for digital transformation, based on the maturity of its business model and processes, existing digital systems and human assets
5. Leadership: Helping CEOs, executives and other managers to get started with digital transformation and manage its ongoing program of works.

We refer to this stage as ‘Digital Leadership’ because digital transformation involves the evolution of an entire company, and therefore must be led by the executive team, and ideally, the CIO or CEO.

Metaphorically, this stage helps your team get their toes wet with digital transformation.

It is designed create a digital transformation mindset within your team – by helping them to ‘think’ and ‘experience’ digital transformation and see first-hand the benefits it can deliver, while helping to remove ‘technology fear’.

Combined, this new mindset is the ideal springboard to creating a more comprehensive digital transformation strategy in the next stage.