Digital transformation is a journey rather than a destination. That can make it tricky for IT teams that are traditionally accustomed to measuring success in postmortem-type results or ongoing performance metrics. However, it’s especially important to track digital transformation progress. Digital transformation success metrics will vary depending on your goals, but you can learn from your peers and the broader market.
Consider these seven factors that signal your organization is making positive progress along its digital transformation path.
1. Repeatable processes for digital initiativesThis will look different depending on the baseline level of maturity of the organization, says Mark Sami, director of technology at business and technology consultancy West Monroe. Generally speaking, IT functions focused on digital transformation develop an approach to digital projects and programs that serves them well long term.At a high level, says Sami, these include defining goals; identifying gaps between the current state and those goals; KPIs to measure success; cross-functional pilot teams and processes; enterprise change management; agile training; modern architecture and infrastructure; and ongoing learning, iteration, and scaling what works.
2. Increases in lean business processes“One interesting aspect of measuring success is assessing the new processes that resulted as part of digital transformation,” says Joshi. “The process needs to be lean, efficient, and achieve its intended objectives by consuming as little resources and time as possible.”Better utilization of human resources also falls under this category of positive indicators.
3. Shared ownership of digital transformation strategy and executionIt is generally accepted wisdom that digital transformation is not – and cannot be – driven solely by IT. Or by the business. “It is hard for IT teams to react quickly to a business’s needs if they don’t know where the business is going, or if the IT teams aren’t actively involved in business strategy planning,” Sami says.“There needs to be a major shift at the organizational level to allow the business and technology teams to work together. Ownership of business strategy and technical execution need to be shared,” Sami says.