5 Important Digital Transformation Questions You Should Ask

With increasing numbers of businesses looking to undertake their digital transformation, it is quickly becoming a trend to incorporate at least one of your departments into an optimal example of a digital workplace.

Whether you are looking to turn your IT or HR department into a shining example of how digital transformation can provide benefits for the entirety of your company, or whether your SME is looking to undergo a complete digital transformation, it must be understood that the process can be a complicated one. Despite what many people think, creating a truly digital workplace is not as simple as buying and installing document management and collaboration software – instead, a holistic strategy is needed.

Our experts at Claromentis are well versed in helping clients achieve their digital transformation, whether it is for a single department, or a whole company, and through their experience have created a series of important questions that you must ask yourself before you commit to undergoing this process.

1. How will a digital workplace help my employees?

By initially understanding exactly how a digital transformation will be able to help your employees, you will be in a better place to find software which is geared to their specific needs. Equally, by knowing what factors you expect to improve through this software implementation, you can specifically focus on these areas to collect data on the scale of the improvement it has brought to your business.

As such, instead of just thinking that a successful digital transformation will help to improve productivity and efficiency, it is worth understanding these in more specific terms, establishing exactly what areas will become more efficient and productive.

2. Which workers should be targeted?

Many businesses will have a variety of employees, all of whom undertake different roles within the business. Therefore, it would be unrealistic to expect that all workers will be affected in the same way by any new software that you introduce. It is well worth considering the types of software that will help your business and gearing this to the specific employees within your firm.

For example, if you have a large number of account managers, then the software you need for improving their performance will be different if you’re targeting the digital transformation of your research department. As such, you should match your employee needs to the type of digital transformation and software use you are trying to bring about.

3. Do we have an overall strategy?

While many businesses will gain some benefit from incorporating aspects of digital transformation into their firm, they are unlikely to continue to receive benefits from multiple software types and programmes without first having an overall strategy which allows them to understand how all of these individual pieces can work to create a synergistic whole.

By planning your digital transformation first, you are likely to create a far better result, and understand the process a lot more than if you were to randomly introduce new digital aspects to random departments. It is worth choosing set quantifiable factors to compare your performance against too, in order to establish just how much the introduction of new software, policies, and programmes have benefited your business.

4. Are my employees onboard?

While the software and programmes introduced through your digital transformation can have huge beneficial impacts upon your business, it must be understood that these will only be achieved if your employees are using the new technology correctly.

This means that all employees should undergo comprehensive training of the new software, in order to be able to use it to its full potential. It is also worth offering retraining and refresher courses at regular intervals, for example every six months, and also ensuring that retraining is done if the software is significantly updated.

Equally, you must make sure that all of your staff are on board with the new changes throughout the company; digital transformation requires an acceptance of change from your employees in order for it to become fully integrated into your business.

5. Does my software come with good customer support?

Regardless of how good your technology and new systems appear to be, and despite the claims that companies make about their reliability and efficiency, there is still the chance that things will go wrong. As such, it is vital that you have a support team on hand who will be able to solve things should any problems arise.

Many intranet software providers will offer out of hours on-call support, and choosing to use a company that offers this will not only give you peace of mind, but they will also be able to limit any downtime you experience, ensuring that your business keeps running as efficiently as possible.

Choosing software services which offer a variety of contact mediums is also useful, as you can choose to contact them in the best way that suits your needs at that time.