I don’t have years for a digital transformation.

For medium-sized companies, digital transformation typically takes five years. For government organizations and large multinational corporations, this can take up to 10 or 20 years. Business owners who haven’t started their digital transformation can’t afford to wait this long before seeing results.

It’s true – you can’t transform your organization in six months

 

but you can make a big enough change to start seeing the value

and harvesting the benefits of digitalization, automation, analytics, and data-driven governance.

It’s crucial to understand that digital transformation is a complex process. Suggesting significant progress within six months is meant to provide a structured, incremental approach to initiate change and achieve early wins, not to oversimplify the process. This approach is agile and allows more control over the change and solution, leaving space for your organization to adjust to new technology and processes while easing cultural changes.

1. Hire a Consultant: To understand your business, assess your options, and give you a plan for the next six months. While consultants may seem like a significant investment, they can save time and reduce risks in the long run.
2. Start with Low-Code/No-Code Solutions and Freelance Developers: To test and confirm if the ideas really work (Proof of Concept). This approach can be adjusted based on your budget and resources.
3. Involve a Few Employees as Subject Matter Experts (SMEs): Who could participate and potentially drive the transformation long-term. Engaging employees early can help mitigate resistance to change.
4. Build a Few Apps, Reports, and Automate Processes: To start the value harvesting and help your organization get a feel of how digital transformation will benefit them.
5. Scale It: This involves dialogue with your consultant about People, Processes, and Technology (PPT).

1st Month

1. Hire a Consultant – 1 week.
2. First Plan and Specification on where to start and what to build – 2 weeks.
3. Hire Developers (handled by the consultant) – 1 week.

2nd Month

1. Deliver the First Apps – 2 weeks.
2. Test and Evaluate with your employees to see if this is delivering value and how – 1 week.
3. Consolidate the Learnings and plan how to continue the development – 1 week.

3rd – 5th Month

1. Continue to Develop, Test, and Plan Forward in 2-week iterations (cycles).

6th Month

• 1. Assess: 1) How far we’ve gotten, 2) How much we’ve delivered out of the initially estimated value, and 3) What direction the business should take with the transformation.

You keep doing what you have started but take a more strategic approach to cover the three areas of digital transformation: People, Processes, and Technology (PPT).

Building a team and getting started on the work usually takes six months. Begin top-down by hiring managers first, then developers and specialists if you have a bigger organization. Alternatively, hiring freelance developers can get the work started in one month. While freelancers are more expensive, they are work-ready and stay on top of market trends, being highly effective for their hourly or daily rates. Employees, on the other hand, plan longer-term and develop more company-specific expertise.

The Microsoft Power Platform (Power BI, Power Apps, Power Automate) or other low-code/no-code platforms can only take you so far. They are ideal for business-side development or fast development by IT professionals, but at some point, customization and maintainability issues arise, necessitating consideration of more robust platforms like an ERP system or bespoke (custom-developed) software solutions. For more on this, refer to my other blog post: When Solo Consultants Are Better Than Companies.

New solutions influence processes, changing or replacing them. This change drives a need for different organizational capabilities – what profile of people you need with what skill set. For example, replacing a manual, paper-based process that was run by 20 people on your shop floor with an automated data collection system may reduce headcount but require three more people with software or data engineering skills. Your new processes will impact how you work with clients, vendors, and other stakeholders inside and outside your company.

Agile methods are beneficial here, where we build a Proof of Concept (PoC) or Minimum Viable Product (MVP) and then iteratively continue building and scaling it. If you don’t have a system already, start with Low-Code No-Code solutions like Power Apps, Power Automate, and Power BI. These solutions can take you far. Scaling can involve using Microsoft Dynamics 365, known for its scalability, support, and subscription model fitting all company stages in size and maturity.

Addressing Technological Readiness

Before starting, it’s essential to conduct a thorough assessment of your current technological infrastructure and readiness. This initial evaluation, handled by your consultant, ensures you are well-prepared for the transformation journey.

Focus on short-term results when starting with digital transformation. The transformation involves significant change and experimentation, so it’s crucial to see what works for your organization and continue building upon these successes. The sooner you gain this learning experience, the smoother and more effective your transformation will be.