November 12, 2021

5 Reasons Why Your Digital Transformation Strategy is Underperforming

Robots & Pencils

Future-minded businesses are rapidly devising new digital experiences, but too often their digital transformation strategy is underperforming. Are you one of them?

It’s not enough to decide you want to digitally transform and start picking new technologies. You need a strategy and the support of your team members to gain the digital transformation results that you read about.

When functioning properly, digital transformation can bring about higher levels of employee satisfaction, customer engagement, business innovation, sales, workflow efficiency, and more!

Be mindful of not rushing your digital transformation process. It’s a big undertaking and involves a lot of time. So being prepared and realistic is the biggest piece of advice we can give you. However, even with time and a documented strategy — your digital transformation strategies may be underperforming. In fact, you should constantly be auditing your strategy to see how well it’s working. As you assess your results, consider the following 5 reasons why your strategy might not be as effective as possible and revamp it accordingly.

Common Causes of Underperforming Digital Transformation Results

1. Lack Of Internal Participation

Many professionals think digital transformation means adopting new technologies, but that’s only part of it. Digital transformation also requires a formulated strategy and employee adoption of both the technology and strategy.

In fact, resistance from employees to digital transformation is the number one reason that these efforts fail. 70% of companies report that employee resistance accounts for the underperforming of their digital transformation strategies.

2. Not Utilizing the Right Technology Stack

No matter what your goal is with digital transformation, strategically using technology can help any business of any size to grow and transform. Regardless of your industry, you’ll quickly find that you can’t make headway digitally unless you use technologies like:

Cloud computing
Mobile apps
Automation tools
Data analytics

Another thing to note about digital transformation and technology is that you shouldn’t add a new tool just because it’s new and flashy. Be sure that it fits in with your overall strategy and that the money you invest in it will lead to revenue growth.

3. Choosing the Wrong Partners

Deciding on digital transformation is not enough. Afterall, 78% of brands who initiate digital transformation fail. That’s why you may want to consider an agency partner to build, guide and implement your strategy.

When choosing a digital transformation partner, check out their past work, ask for references, and take them up on a free consultation. Basically do your research so that you don’t become one of the 78% of brands who attempt digital transformation but fail.

4. Neglecting to Map Out Your Strategy

It’s easy to get ahead of yourself and dive into a new digital transformation strategy before you’ve really thought everything through. However, this type of work requires a strong foundation in order not to crumble later. So before you start purchasing technologies and training your employees, map out your entire strategy. This should include things like:

Do a business and user needs assessment
Research industry trends
Analyze what your competitors are doing
Define goals
Assess budget
Make a plan for getting employees onboard and trained

Digital transformation isn’t just about the future, it’s also rooted in the past. To succeed, it’s essential that you use data from your past initiatives to inform your future strategy.

5. Misunderstanding the Business Need or Opportunity

If you thought your digital transformation strategy would increase productivity but the needle hasn’t moved, maybe you’ve been focused on the wrong thing.

With the right digital transformation strategy, you should see an increase in productivity when it comes to customer communications, sales and internal communication.

If that’s not what you’re seeing, it might be time to revisit the thinking and plan behind your strategy. Doing more in-depth business and user research can help you to better understand the opportunity at hand or the real cause of the problem you want to solve. Before you roll out a digital transformation strategy across the company, it’s also imperative that you get feedback and test your ideas with the people who will be impacted.

Could your digital transformation strategy be stronger? Do you need help building out your digital roadmap or conducting user research? Learn about our expertise to see how we can help, and contact us at hello@robotsandpencils.com for a free consultation!

July 2, 2021

How ASU Achieved a Harmonious Student Experience With Slack Integrations

Robots & Pencils

Arizona State University (ASU) is always looking for a way to better engage students.

“It’s our mission to help Sun Devils feel more connected to each other and the diversity of opportunities around them,” says CIO, Lev Gonick. “Slack has been a connective tissue across ASU, enabling deeper discussions and greater productivity in both formal and informal spaces.”

They have gone all in with Slack as their digital campus solution and this blog post is here to tell you all about it so that you have key takeaways to apply to your own institution.

A Brief Background on ASU

ASU has multiple campuses, along with thousands of online students who are located all over the country and the world. ASU has been recognized by US News & World Report as the country’s most innovative school and prides itself on graduating more than 27,000 thinkers and innovators each year.

Since so many of their students are enrolled digitally, ASU is constantly looking for better ways to engage their students online. Engagement is especially important during enrollment and the onboarding of new students.

Knowing that innovation is the backbone of success, ASU knew they needed a technical solution to step in and improve how they communicate with students.

ASU’s Previous Student/Success Coach Process

ASU aimed to streamline their process for admitting and enrolling students as well as keeping them engaged and successful throughout their school year.

They have a student network where they set new students up for success and also provide a way for students to network with each other. ASU really wanted to build a sense of community at their universities.

A lot of work went into keeping students engaged especially because ASU’s students are all over the country, not just in Arizona. Networking and engagement relies more on digital workflows than a lot of other schools.

The previous platform relied on Facebook authentication, but Facebook is dwindling in usage for the college demographic so this became problematic.

Why ASU Decided to Work With Robots & Pencils

ASU and Robots & Pencils started the initiative in 2019 after getting fed up with the complicated way of communicating with their students.

To avoid relying on Facebook or other social networks, ASU wanted to find a way to use their own single sign on technology to communicate with students.

In February of 2020, after some beta testing, ASU’s new program launched, utilizing Slack as the communication hub and cutting down on all of the digital clutter from their old workflows.

Robots & Pencils not only was willing to create a tailored solution for ASU but they also helped re-imagine their workflows. Companies find that they need a healthy balance of technical and creative so Robots & Pencils often creates solutions but doesn’t stop there — we also help with the visual and planning aspects of implementing something new.

Slack wasn’t designed to be a social network or a student portal, so ASU needed a partner like Robots & Pencils to customize Slack and tailor it to their needs in order to create a space that was useful and accessible to their students.

The Digital Solution

Robots & Pencils implemented a streamlined way for ASU to connect students with other students and stay engaged throughout their college career.

Broken down by channels in Slack, Robots & Pencils helped ASU create spaces for students characterized by student type, campus and college groups.

In June of 2020, Robots & Pencils implemented a Slack bot that helped with the onboarding process and cut down the amount of manual labor that was going on to get students signed up and engaged in the portal. It also automatically puts students into the right channels and simplifies moderation within the community.

The Slack bot keeps onboarding organized and automated so it has resulted in a lot of time savings for ASU staff and eliminated frustrations for the students. The bot also allows ASU employees to message students based on student type, major, and other traits so the communication process has gotten a lot easier. Student Success Coaches can even quickly look up information about each student so that they provide learners with better, more personalized support.

How Slack Integrations Transformed ASU’s Student Success

Once ASU transitioned to Slack in 2019, they were able to streamline their student engagement and instead of using 4 tools, they consolidated everything into Slack.

Once the new Slack processes were created, ASU saw the amount of active students in their portal jump from 8,000 a year to 15,000 a year, showing that students have been responding well to these new workflows.

What Does This Example of Digital Transformation Mean for My Brand?

As this example shows, there is always a better way to do things when you have the right technology partner. If you think parts of your process are too time consuming or you rely on too much manual labor, there is definitely a solution out there for you.

Slack doesn’t have to be just for internal communications; when structured properly, it can be a communication hub if you’re willing to think outside the box.

What areas of your external and internal workflows could be improved? We’d love to have a great chat with you about it in the comments below!