Direct Your Tech Investment to What Matters Most
Modernizing your tech stack and digital experience can provide a huge boost in customer satisfaction and employee efficiency, but deciding exactly where to focus your digital transformation strategy is a complex undertaking. Before undergoing any tech modernization efforts, you need to determine your biggest opportunity for impact. But how? Understanding opportunity requires investigating the state of your organization, the market, and the needs and wants of the people who will be affected.
3 Activities to Inform Your Digital Transformation Strategy
Deciding where your technology dollars go is not the time to rely on assumptions. To ensure impact, base decisions on data and research, and stay open to unexpected findings. By assessing your current state with the following activities, you can gain foundational information for determining a strategy and focus that guides your technology investments.
1. Needs Analysis
Aligning technology investments with stakeholder needs (internal teams, external partners, and clients, customers, or users) is essential. Two types of needs demand close attention:
- Business needs: Stakeholder interviews can deepen your understanding and awareness of department and team objectives, internal observations, and other opportunities to improve your organization.
- Customer/user needs: Interviews along with quantitative and qualitative research can reveal unanticipated and unmet customer or user needs.
Once you understand the preferences, pain points, and behaviors of these groups, you can determine where their needs align best with your business goals and priorities.
2. Technical & Data Audit
By assessing your existing technical and data assets, you can identify strengths, weaknesses, and areas for improvement. Likely, some systems or workflows are overly complex and could be simplified and improved. Other technology systems may be ready for sunsetting.
As you complete your audit, closely examine the connections and flow of data between systems. Keep an eye out for new integrations that may be needed in a future state. Note contract renewal dates as well, as they will be important as you address timing.
3. Market Evaluation
Study the market trends, emerging technologies, and competitive landscape for your business and industry. Through this market research, you can identify best practices and better understand your competition. Testing other organizations’ software and digital experiences can reveal valuable insights and opportunities for you to fill a market gap.
The Final Step: Deliver on Your Digital Strategy
The insights gained from this discovery and research will point to where new or updated technology could most impact your business. You’ll also have found potential risks–including existing system constraints, data complexities, and even resistance to change. (A Change Readiness Assessment is another tool we recommend for mitigating issues that could impact your digital transformation strategy.)
Once you’ve honed in on where your efforts will reap the highest reward, you can move forward to defining your portfolio vision and goals, detailing your future technology solutions and architecture, and conducting a gap analysis. Then, in your final planning stages, you’ll create a tactical delivery plan, including a business case, implementation roadmap, and measurement and learning framework. To learn more about completing these stages, download our white paper on Planning and Prioritizing Your Tech Investments today.
Refine Your Digital Transformation Strategy with Robots & Pencils
Robots & Pencils develops journey-focused digital products and experiences that deliver exponential impact for our clients. We design and build solutions that unlock data and insights, infuse intelligent automation, and accelerate organizational innovation. Fusing technology + creativity, we help brands transform their businesses, deliver delightful customer and employee experiences, and maintain a competitive edge amidst a constantly changing technology landscape.
To learn how we help you with everything from creating a clear vision for your digital ecosystem to planning and implementing new, integrated technology, contact us at hello@robotsandpencils.com or visit robotsandpencils.com.
