How to embrace digital initiatives and opportunities on a budget

You will often hear clichés such as picking the so called ‘low hanging fruit’ to get fast results. In fact, the starting point (no matter where you are on your digital maturity journey) is to firstly determine what digital transformation means to your company. It is difficult to decipher what the ‘low hanging fruit’ is, especially when you have multiple projects in the pipeline. However, it is vital to understand what your business needs to help deliver effective transformation on a budget whilst also maximising the impact of your digital initiatives.

Easier said than done! –I can already hear the words being said as you read this, not to mention the additional challenges like getting budget sign off, internal blockers, prioritisation, and complexity – sounds familiar? 

We may not be able to solve all your problems with one blog, but we can certainly share some practical tips on how to plan transformation projects that are both achievable and realistic. The situation requires coordination of a long-term strategy scoped to ensure continuous optimisation, managed budget, and return on investment.
 

Tip 1: Teamwork and Partnership

You need to bring the right people together to discuss business objectives and to align digital initiatives that will support your KPI’s. Digital transformation needs investment and often involves initiatives to run across multiple departments requiring input/expertise/management from various stakeholders.

Whether this is done with an internal team or with the support of a technology partner, it is critical to collaborate and discuss to build a holistic view of your organisation’s digital maturity level, building a clear picture of processes, legacy systems, and gaining stakeholder buy-in to drive transformation forward.
 

Tip 2: Discover and Assess

Once you have the right people involved obviously everyone will have an opinion on priorities. It is vital to have a structure in place that will enable you to discover which areas of your business are costing you money and time, holding you back from really moving your business forward.

Without carrying out an appropriate assessment of your business (such as the completely free and no obligation Konica Minolta DX360⁰ Assessment), you cannot determine where you are on your digital journey, what funding is required or what digital initiative will have the greatest impact on your business objectives. It is essential to discover if you have the tools and procedures in place to enhance your digital transformation strategy.

These assessments are a great way to easily review all areas of your business, to understand what transformation is required and where the potential synergies are across your departments. This enables you to scale solutions and to understand which areas are costing you unnecessarily.

Tip 3: Alignment and Prioritisation

Undertaking the discovery process with a structured assessment tool enables your business to really analyse the challenges and, more importantly, identify new opportunities to reap the benefits of digital transformation. This will support your business case as you will be able to uncover tangible spending and operational figures to forecast the cost of transformation versus ROI. This will also help you to measure success (e.g., cost decrease, employee efficiency, customer experience ratings and so much more).

Getting through this first phase will certainly give you a sturdy foundation to really start thinking about technology requirements and which projects need to be done first, with the rest in the pipeline to support ongoing continuous optimisation. Assessing your businesses’ digital maturity will help you build a realistic plan based on the budget you have whilst also making sure you are able to scale solutions to maximise the benefits across your business.

Successful digital change does not have to begin with the introduction of robotics or a commitment to AI which are substantial investments. Reviews can identify areas where automated workflows, hybrid remote working, data analytics solutions and harnessing the cloud can be more financially viable options that can boost business performance in weeks (rather than years) and provide the foundations for more long-term change.