DRIVING Customer -LED DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION WITH ONE UNIFYING AGILE ARCHITECTURE

If an organization wants to achieve a complete digital transformation, it needs to change how it operates at a fundamental level. This means innovating its business strategy, change its operating model, improving its operations and identifying unprecedented new opportunities for both efficiency and productivity. To that end, Agile Architecture Framework is an excellent framework on which to facilitate digital transformation.

However, the best thing about Agile is that its framework allows for easy fine-tuning when either positive or negative feedback is provided from customers or product users. The key feature that makes Agile so useful here is that it helps businesses quickly react to what’s working and what isn’t (change).

A Change in Business Culture

When a company adopts an Agile methodology, there is often a real cultural shift that focuses on accountability, transparency, empowerment and product-centric focus. Traditionally speaking, the approach of organizations necessitate a fundamental change in how teams interact and collaborate, which is, in essence, the reason for adopting it in the first place.

Digital Transformation in any business calls for significant strategic and operational changes; however, when implemented over a single unifying agile architecture, this transition is made that much smoother. Whether talking about an organization’s leaders or individual team members, every person within the business needs to fully comprehend how working practices are changing and the reasons behind the change.

Structuring Your Digital Transformation

The typical structure of an effective digital transformation strategy should include the following elements:

● Leveraging Digital Strategy – finding more efficient ways of operating using digital capabilities.
● Technology strategy – ensuring that a company’s IT and business are aligned with the digital strategy
● Architecting the transformation – facilitating the change from the current state to the future state
● Optimizing the Operating Model – Addressing stakeholders concerns and fine-tuning the operating model in real-time.

These fundamental elements can be further broken down to include but are not limited to, the following:

● Minimal Viable Architecture – Allowing you to have a product in the hands of users quickly, at the lowest possible cost, using agile methods to develop an intelligent enterprise architecture
● Design Pattern – Providing solutions to common and uncommon problems, respectively.
● Cloud v Cloud-Native – Ensuring the best possible computing setup is achieved
● Customer-Centric Focus – Understanding the need to keep the focus on satisfying customer needs.
● Business leaders prioritize innovation – Allowing employees the freedom to innovate
● Minimal Viable Products – Letting business introduced new products to the market quickly, in receipt of good feedback from the products or services, utilizing agile methods to develop products or services.

There is a lot involved in Digital Transformation; however, the ultimate goal is a cycle of constant improvement and innovation in both efficiency and productivity for an exponential Business impact.

An Inevitable Shift: Digital Strategy

The modern business world is one that is awash with buzzwords and new ways of operating and digital transformation is a concept that’s very much on-trend. That’s because it’s am tactic that allows organizations to remain competitive by reacting quickly and adapting to changes in any given industry.

In an increasingly dynamic business environment, it has become so crucial for companies to leverage the benefits offered by digital strategies to improve the customer experience and become truly agile. The landscape of many industries is continuously evolving, and those who can make full use of digital technologies are the ones best placed for success.

The Core of Digital Transformation

At the very core of digital transformation is business agility and that’s because digital technologies represent the most viable way to speed up processes and ultimately, growth. The majority of companies have already achieved some digital transformation, although not many have gone far enough.

When attempting to implement a digital strategy, six key focus areas need to be addressed to realize true agility; these include but not limited to;

1 Business Strategy:
This could mean altering your entire existing business strategy or merely specializing on a particular area of your business such as the Supply and Value Chain, committing to going ‘all in’ with a compelling vision, clarity and leadership, leaders and managers should be able to provide strategic direction.

2. Customer-Experience Operations (CX)

The customer experience and interactions you have with your customers online necessarily represent your company’s shop window and with so many new digital touchpoints for people to use through social media, ensuring yours is up to scratch should be a primary focus. Social media has, in recent years, become the new ‘norm’, and if you’re not adequately represented, your business will suffer.

These communication channels are the ideal way to understand not only what your customers are liking and not liking about your products and services, but also the underlying trends in your industry. You neglect them at your peril.

3. Product or Service

Customer-centric focused products. However, also the underlying trends in your industry enabled digitalization to give your customers a seamless customer experience and build a long-term relationship.

4. Business Operating Model and Ecosystem

Perhaps the most challenging aspect of business agility to achieve is the ability to reinvent traditional processes, as they can be hard to leave behind. Embracing the available digital technologies to their fullest is the best way to go forwards, and only those who can truly move with the market are giving themselves the best chance of being competitive.
This could mean altering your entire business strategy or merely specializing in a particular area of your business. Although it’s difficult to do sometimes, committing to going ‘all in’ is just as important as the decision itself.

5. IT and Digital

Your core internal processes are central to everything your organization does, so having a comprehensive understanding of how things will work along with IT once digital transformation is enabled, is vital. The ability to tailor processes as quickly as the market demands are one of the main elements that make modern businesses profitable. Agile methodologies backed by digital technologies are the best way to achieve this state of being.

6. Organizational Culture
The behaviour and attitudes of employees, achieving shared values and beliefs. Focus on transparency on how decisions should be made and how work activities should be done in an organization to improve the products and services in the artefacts.

It’s Not Just About Technology

The fact is that digital transformation is not a one-time procedure. It’s an evolving process that requires businesses to continually re-evaluate the position of the market and their position within it. Rather than being about implementing the most high-tech software, it’s more about choosing the right technology to allow your business to react quickly to change.

Summary:

The reality of modern business is that organizations need to adapt to survive, and those who have already enabled digital transformation are currently enjoying the competitive advantages that it brings. So, if your company has not yet made the shift, employing it over a single, unifying Agile framework is an excellent way to make sure the transition occurs without too many hitches.
Thanks for reading. I’ll be back soon with more from the business strategy world.
If you’d like to know more about Agile or digital transformation, take a look around our website www.cxportal.com or give us a call on +442034416513 , where our team is keen and waiting to assist.