Leading IT Transformation – Workshop 8 (Team Building)
The Appleton Greene Corporate Training Program (CTP) for Leading IT Transformation is provided by Ms. Drabenstadt MBA BBA Certified Learning Provider (CLP). Program Specifications: Monthly cost USD$2,500.00; Monthly Workshops 6 hours; Monthly Support 4 hours; Program Duration 24 months; Program orders subject to ongoing availability.
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Learning Provider Profile
Ms. Drabenstadt is a Certified Learning Provider (CLP) at Appleton Greene and she has experience in Information Technology, Information Governance, Compliance and Audit. She has achieved an MBA, and BBA. She has industry experience within the following sectors: Technology; Insurance and Financial Services. She has had commercial experience within the following countries: United States of America, Canada, Australia, India, Trinidad, and Jamaica. Her program will initially be available in the following cities: Madison WI; Minneapolis MN; Chicago IL; Atlanta GA and Denver CO. Her personal achievements include: Developed Trusted IT-Business Relationship; Delivered Increased Business Value/Time; Decreased IT Costs; Re-tooled IT Staff; Increased IT Employee Morale. Her service skills incorporate: IT transformation leadership; process improvement; change management; program management and information governance.
MOST Analysis
Mission Statement
IT transformation of an organization is not a one-man show. It requires the combined effort of different people from different functional areas of the organization. People with unique skill sets have to come together for the transformation to be effective and sustainable. Although digital transformation is about the deployment of new technology or migrating the existing system to a new platform, it requires more than just technical knowledge. Since digital transformation has an impact on different areas of the business, it also requires people from the business side to work on the implementation. That is why building a cross-functional team is essential for the IT transformation program. The digital transformation team often has to include people from both within and outside the organization. The internal resources of the team include the right mix of people from within the organization. This will be the core team working on the transformation and should consist of people from the technical side, finance side, and the business side as well. Quite often the teams are heavier on the technical side with little to no inputs from the business sector. There may also be disagreements or friction between the members from different departments working in the same team. These issues may slow down the transformation process and must be addressed by the leadership. Apart from the internal members, the transformation should also work with the partner resources. These include technology partners who will help with the deployment of technology. System integrators are an important part of the digital transformation team and they are the bridge between the technology solutions adopted and their successful implementation. Critical members who will be especially helpful to the program should be chosen based on the skills and experience.
Objectives
01. Digital Product Managers: departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. Time Allocated: 1 Month
02. Security & Risk Advisors: departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. Time Allocated: 1 Month
03. Internal Communications: departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. Time Allocated: 1 Month
04. System Integrators: departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. Time Allocated: 1 Month
05. Chief Experience Officers: departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. Time Allocated: 1 Month
06. Compliance Specialists Including Digital Ethics: departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. Time Allocated: 1 Month
07. Project Managers: departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. 1 Month
08. Cloud Specialists: departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. Time Allocated: 1 Month
09. Organizational Development (HR): departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. Time Allocated: 1 Month
10. Vendor Managers: departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. Time Allocated: 1 Month
11. Data Analysts: departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. Time Allocated: 1 Month
12. Solutions Architects: departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. Time Allocated: 1 Month
Strategies
01. Digital Product Managers: Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development.
02. Security & Risk Advisors: Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development.
03. Internal Communications: Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development.
04. System Integrators: Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development.
05. Chief Experience Officers: Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development.
06. Compliance Specialists Including Digital Ethics: Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development.
07. Project Managers: Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development.
08. Cloud Specialists: Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development.
09. Organizational Development (HR): Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development.
10. Vendor Managers: Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development.
11. Data Analysts: Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development.
12. Solutions Architects: Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development.
Tasks
01. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze Digital Product Managers.
02. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze Security & Risk Advisors.
03. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze Internal Communications.
04. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze System Integrators.
05. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze Chief Experience Officers.
06. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze Compliance Specialists Including Digital Ethics.
07. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze Project Managers.
08. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze Cloud Specialists.
09. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze Organizational Development (HR).
10. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze Vendor Managers.
11. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze Data Analysts.
12. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze Solutions Architects.
Introduction
Building the Right Team for Your Digital Transformation Initiatives
Collaboration between People, Process, and Technology is required for IT Transformation initiatives. ‘People,’ according to many studies and research, are the most important factor in driving and succeeding in the Digital Transformation initiative.
There are a few things to keep in mind while forming teams for the DT Initiative before detailing the designations, competencies, and skills required for a successful digitalization team.
• People Track – Appoint a digital visionary leader to steer the strategy. To fulfil the objective, cross-functionality and collaboration must be enabled.
• Process Track – Determine the most important procedures and make improvements to improve the company’s “hard wiring.” More efficient processes should be the end result.
• Technology Track – To make business more agile, scalable, and efficient, aging technology is being replaced with new technology.
• Information Track – Streamlining the data gathered and turning it into information; and regulating the information that is sent out in order to better service existing customers and attract new consumers more quickly.
People
Having the right team to champion the idea from top to bottom and across the business is an important part of any successful transformation.
Why?
People form teams, which in turn create culture, generate the correct vision, and hold the necessary future skills to move the Digital Agenda forward.
51% of the highest performing enterprises see their cultures as holding them back in the digital transformation journey. Laggards, on the other hand, are missing the warning signs – only 36% of the lowest performing enterprises identify culture as a problem to progress. – HfS Research
Organizations that focused on culture were 5x more likely to achieve breakthrough performance than companies that ignored culture, according to a BCG study of 40 digital transformations.
Digital Transformation Team – What does it look like?
1. Executive Leadership – Management must fully support digital transformation initiatives. To make the transformation successful, executives must have a broad view of the business and industry. There are numerous alternatives for the chief of DT efforts, including Chief Digital Transformation Officer, Chief Digital Officer, Chief Technology Officer, Chief Information Officer, and so on. While the Chief of Digital Transformation is responsible for operational efforts, business transformation is a strategic initiative that requires full C-suite participation. Otherwise, the strategy would result in surface adjustments that will be difficult to percolate deep into the firm and bring about the necessary cultural change. Organizations should choose someone from the current C-suite to lead this shift since they know the business better than anyone else. If it isn’t possible, I advocate employing someone with experience driving business change at a higher level from a similar industry.
Skills required – The head of the Digital Transformation team should have a strong grasp of the company’s operations and customers. The entire DT concept revolves around customers. Understanding new-age technology such as Cloud, AI, ML, and Data Science, as well as how to utilize the necessary talent to construct a modern and futuristic business model, is the second crucial skill. People management is the third and most crucial talent, as it is required to persuade board members, manage people and cultural change, and bring the entire organization’s Digital Transformation ideas into alignment.
2. Core Digital Transformation Team – Hands-on practitioners of many technologies and business verticals make up the core digital experience team. Product Managers, Program Managers, Solution Architects, and Senior Managers of Business and Technical Teams are some of the positions that fall within the core digitization team. Organizations must hire and re-skill existing staff in order to build a core Digital Experience Team.
Organizations must educate employees about new initiatives and provide opportunities for individuals who want to change careers. This will necessitate comprehensive training programs and sessions depending on the new skills that the organization requires.
Skills required – These skills will differ depending on the tools and technologies used to facilitate company transformation. For example, a corporation moving to the cloud needs cloud professionals who are familiar with new technologies like Microservices, Containers, and Serverless architecture. Cloud architects, Cloud Engineers, Data Center Operations, Analysts, Administrators, and Help Desk will all be part of the team. Another example is forming an AI team comprised of Machine-Learning engineers, Data Scientists, Applied Scientists, Data Engineers, and other professionals. People who are strong at adjusting to change, team players, agile practitioners, management, and excellent communication skills are needed in these professions.
3. Extended Digital Transformation Team – Developers, designers, visualizers, junior data scientists, AI and ML engineers, business analysts, and other members of the extended digital team may be included.
Skills Required – To give finesses in the Digital Transformation program, the expanded digital transformation team requires specialist talents in development, design, data science, coding, and infrastructure. The extended digitalization team might be quite substantial, depending on the size of the firm. This necessitates further hiring and reskilling of existing employees in many tools and technologies.
Digital Transformation-It’s a Team Game
The success of Digital Transformation is primarily dependent on culture, and your Digital Transformation team is vital in implementing this culture management program. It is recommended that you create a long-term digital team capable of bringing and maintaining Digital Transformation initiatives. A high-performing Digital Transformation team will include a combination of experienced team members that know your business inside and out, as well as new team members who can bring a fresh perspective to the table as you look for the best technologies.
What staff and skills do you need to enable Leading IT Transformation?
You simply cannot ignore the current agenda: 55% of businesses without a digital transformation believe they have less than a year before losing market share. Now is the time to take action.
Companies can no longer afford to sit back and wait due to the rapid rate of change, new markets, competitive conditions, and customer demands. They must respond swiftly and show their adaptability.
Many businesses automatically turn to their IT departments to help them modernize for the current day. According to data from Gartner, 62 percent of digital transformation programs are managed by the IT department.
Digital technologies, on the other hand, only deliver ‘potential’ increases in efficiency, production, and experience. Organizations must consider them alongside their people and processes in order to achieve a successful transformation. That is why, in truth, digital transformation is about the entire business, not just technology.
A laser-focused leadership team is required for successful digital transformation
According to McKinsey, your digital transformation project is 1.8 times more likely to succeed if you have the proper people in critical roles to ensure communication between business functions. Nearly 70% of organisations report changing their top team during the transformation process.
Getting the ‘right people’ in place may necessitate re-structuring or adjusting the management layer prior to implementing the necessary changes and getting them accepted into business as usual.
It may appear frightening, especially since job security concerns are common during times of transition, but it is actually a wonderful thing. Redefining roles and responsibilities to fit with your digital transformation goals clarifies what talents your company requires to succeed in the modern day. For your employees, this could mean taking on more/less/new duties, as well as additional training and development possibilities.
But who are the ‘right people’?
Leading the digital transformation agenda
Around 40% of businesses have established specialized digital transformation teams. It’s maybe unexpected that 84 percent of CEOs are also involved in and committed to transformative change as the person in charge of managing the organization.
Furthermore, the CISO is significantly involved in defining the digital transformation plan. When it comes to acquiring and integrating new technologies into the existing IT infrastructure, it’s critical to maintain the status quo during a period of change to avoid exposing the company.
The new roles that the digital transformation agenda has generated
New strategic roles, such as Head of Digital Transformation, Head of Technology Transformation, and Head of Innovation, are being formed at the middle management level. These people are now in charge of assisting specific aspects of the transformation agenda.
However, digital transformation has resulted in the creation of key new senior positions in the C-suite, such as the Chief Digital Officer (CDO). The CDO, a transformation advocate with boundless energy, might potentially take over the role of CEO during the process, allowing the CEO to focus on overseeing the entire organization. According to McKinsey research, organizations employing a CDO have a 1.6x higher likelihood of success.
The digital transformation agenda has changed various roles
While certain roles have experienced small changes, such as the CSO’s training now incorporates new skills for interacting with the rest of the company, the CIO’s function has altered the most.
Over the previous three years, 83 percent of CIOs say their role has become more strategic. Because technology has always been relegated to the sphere of the IT department, the function has traditionally focused on concerns such as infrastructure maintenance and compliance. However, we now live and work in the digital era, when technology has become an integral part of our lives.
The job of the CIO has changed to become increasingly connected with business challenges, with 25% of CIOs exerting greater responsibility over digital transformation initiatives.
The CIO is now expected to bridge the gap between IT and the rest of the business, rather than focusing just on technology. Their duty, similar to that of a marriage counselor, is to listen to the wants and requirements of both sides of the business and assist them communicate in a common language and work toward a common goal.
Three things must change for the CIO:
• Modernize IT: Investing in deeper industry domain knowledge and contacts.
• The IT organization’s mindset: offering a seamless operational environment by hastening the company’s transition to automation and the cloud.
• The organizational structure: enhancing the organization’s agility and speed in order to seize new opportunities.
It’s achieved through:
Process of questioning
Because the CIO is typically not in charge of the company’s profit and loss, they might be seen as neutral in many ways because they have no financial agenda. This means they can pose potentially painful and tough questions that challenge the current quo and force the senior leadership team to think about the organization’s long-term future.
Researching technology
The CIO must be on the cutting edge of new technology, aware of every new invention and innovation, assessing whether or not it will benefit the company and being able to describe the value it will provide. They must be aware of the alternatives, overlaps, and prospective alliances that could help the company’s digital transformation efforts.
Managing people
The CIO must be able to listen to the objections, worries, and suggestions of both IT and business stakeholders, empathize with their predicament, and clearly convey the path forward. This may need them to negotiate to reach an amicable agreement, or it may force them to make a “executive decision.”
The Overlooked Areas
The entire change management side of things is an area that is sometimes disregarded. In general, if you’re going to make a change, you’ll need a change leader. You might even have change management resources to assist that change management lead. The change team here will be in charge of ensuring that not only people are trained and that we’re leveraging the technical expertise, but that the training is also tailored to your specific business processes and technology.
Prior to training, it’s critical to remember that change management is accountable for ensuring that the organization is designed correctly.
Digital transformation is more about people than technology
Never forget that people are key to your digital transformation project.
According to a McKinsey Global Survey of executives published in 2020, the ongoing Covid-19 problem has driven businesses around the world to hasten the adoption of digital technology by three to four years. The improvements have primarily occurred in three areas: consumer interactions, supply chain, and internal operations. The share of offerings that are digital in nature has increased the most – by seven years – across business areas.
However, previous research has indicated that digital transformations have a low success rate. Only 16 percent of respondents to a 2018 survey claimed that digital transformations at their companies had enhanced performance and equipped them to endure changes over time. A further 7% claimed their performance had improved, but that it had not been sustained.
The causes for digital transformation failure are numerous, and they have been extensively discussed elsewhere. However, many of these factors may be reduced to a single factor: people. Most firms forget that these key endeavors – from defining a vision and crafting a strategy to communicating it to the rest of the organization and executing it – are facilitated first and foremost by people.
In this workshop, we will discuss the two categories of people – leaders and employees – who are important to every organization’s digital transformation success.
Leaders
“If you think about digital transformation as two words, we pay too much attention to the digital and not enough to transformation. It’s not a technology challenge, it’s a leadership one.”
– Dr George Westerman, senior lecturer, MIT Sloan School of Management
Digital transformation is more than just adopting new technologies. It’s about transforming business processes, models, and organizational culture using technology. It’s about imagining new business models, marketplaces, and more efficient ways of attracting, engaging, and providing value to customers using the data provided by technology. This is why companies that start their digital transformation efforts by employing bright people in critical roles are more likely to succeed.
Good leaders will have a clear vision of the digital path that the company must pursue and will be able to motivate staff to strive toward it. When obstacles arise, they can quickly modify and pivot their strategy while keeping the overall picture in mind. Good leaders will also put money into employees who can use technology to help the company achieve its objectives. They keep companies from slipping into the costly trap of innovation theater, when resources are invested to promote innovation but few concrete outcomes are visible.
Synchronized transformation
Because of the nature of the beast, it’s not uncommon to have multiple departments working on their own digital transformations ad hoc, often before the C-suite has even drafted a comprehensive plan for the entire company. This can be evident in function heads’ attempts to automate specific operations or mine data with digital tools to assist their business decisions. However, allowing each department to go its own way in terms of digitization can lead to inefficiencies later on when the entire organization decides to become digital and business systems are unable to connect with one another due to differing technologies.
Worse, the digital technologies in use by specific departments can sometimes influence the organization’s entire digital strategy. This is a costly blunder. Your organization’s digital technology acquisition and use should be determined by your future vision and strategy, not the other way around.
Your vision and strategy for the future should determine what digital technology your organisation acquires and uses, not the other way around.
This will be ensured by good leaders. To use an analogy, they’re like orchestra conductors who make sure that separate functions aren’t playing their own digital tunes in their own silos, but instead are working together to create a single organizational melody that is in sync with the overall goal.
Too many cooks?
However, simply bringing in new leaders with fancy digital titles will not suffice, as having too many digital leaders in an organization can lead to confusion, a lack of responsibility, frustration, and inefficiencies, jeopardizing your entire transformation initiative.
According to a poll of 700 executives, organizations have close to two CxO-level digital leaders on average, with some having six or more. A third of respondents were unsure who in their organization was in charge of the majority of digital/technology functions. The fact that many functional leaders in today’s businesses also have digital duties adds to the uncertainty.
As a result, it’s critical for businesses to explicitly define each digital leader’s roles and responsibilities. Everyone in the company should know who is in charge of the digital transformation initiative.
Here’s something to consider in a similar vein: According to a 2017 McKinsey poll, organizations with digital executives reporting directly to the CEO were seen to be more productive than those without.
Employees
Our natural reaction to new ideas or efforts is to resist them; it’s in our DNA. This is why, whether the transformation is digital or not, employee buy-in is crucial to its success. Employees in all roles are more involved in effective digital changes, according to research.
When organizations fail to engage employees in suggested transformations, “innovation antibodies” are activated. Similarly to how our bodies use antibodies to combat foreign cells, an organization’s innovation antibodies are activated when employees see a threat to the status quo posed by the disruptive demands of the proposed change and resist it either consciously or unconsciously.
Staff help you shape the right strategy
Employee buy-in is important for a variety of reasons, including project success. Early employee involvement aids leadership in gaining ground-level insights, allowing them to build a really helpful digital transformation strategy with a high possibility of success. Employees, after all, have firsthand experience of what works and what doesn’t, and can advise the company on process changes. A top-down strategy, on the other hand, may not be able to match the needs of the organization and may fail.
While working on your strategy, ask your employees the following questions to gather their feedback: Are there any routine jobs that could be automated? Do they have any workplace issues that could be resolved with better processes or technology? Is there any data that can assist them in doing their tasks more effectively?
Another benefit of involving employees early in the project is that they will be more invested. It gives employees a sense of ownership, which is exactly what you need for employee buy-in.
Communication is key
All of this necessitates effective internal communication. Similarly, after the strategy has been finalized, it is critical to communicate its aims and benefits to all personnel. It also helps comfort employees who are concerned that the proposed changes will make their jobs obsolete. To overcome aversion to change, experts recommend focusing on three things. They’re as follows:
• Discontent with the status quo – Discuss how the existing method of working can be frustrating and contribute to poor business performance, which has a direct impact on employees.
• The future vision – Explain how the suggested changes will improve things, allowing staff to accomplish their tasks more effectively and possibly opening up new career prospects.
• Specific steps to achieve that goal – the current strategy and each employee’s responsibility.
Additionally, find transformation advocates among employees to gather support. These are individuals who believe in your vision and are willing to act as early adopters and evangelists. Some of them could be integrators – employees who are experts in their field and can seamlessly merge the new digital method of working with the old.
Skills development
After you’ve dealt with the mindset, it’s time to concentrate on your skills.
According to a 2018 Gartner poll, 70% of respondents don’t have the skills they need for their jobs today, and up to 80% say they lack the abilities they need for both their current function and their future career.
Training all employees to use all of the new digital technologies is critical since your project will only succeed and give a good return on investment if all employees use all of the new systems and tools to their full potential.
Executive Summary
Chapter 1: Digital Product Managers
What Does It Mean to Be a Digital Product Manager?
A product manager is in charge of driving product development to market success. This is the responsibility of a digital product manager for digital products. Software tools, apps, and any other electronic product fall under this category.
What Are the Skills of a Digital Product Manager?
A successful digital product manager possesses several of the same key competencies as any other product manager. Digital products are fundamentally different from physical products. As a result, they will have various more abilities necessary to be a successful digital product manager. Here are some instances of both skill sets.
All product managers (including digital product managers) have certain abilities.
1. Strategy planning
The ability to see the larger picture is required of all product managers. Then, using that knowledge, develop strategies and objectives for their cross-functional team.
2. Prioritization
Even the most well-funded organizations have limited resources for product managers. They also only have a limited amount of time to devote to any given assignment. That is why they require the capacity to select and prioritize the most important activities to include in their product roadmap.
3. Analysis and research
Successful product managers require exceptional research skills, whether they are in charge of physical or digital products. They must locate relevant data and convert it into information that will aid in the improvement of their products.
For monitoring digital products, digital product managers must also develop a new set of abilities. For instance:
4. Iterative development and deployment
Today’s digital product managers have no choice but to follow agile concepts. These principles support regular delivery of working items to users. This means that digital products must learn to rate minor changes. Because the ability to rank is critical for pushing updates to clients on shorter timescales.
5. Design thinking
A digital product’s user experience is a critical component. If the user design and experience are annoying or confusing, even the best software or mobile app will fail. A digital product manager must learn how to design a user-friendly product.
6. Comprehending usage data
Product managers in charge of digital products have an advantage over those in charge of physical ones. They can learn what works and what doesn’t by tracking how customers use their products. Product managers for digital products must learn to understand and comprehend product metrics. Because these insights must be translated into the ability to improve their products.
What Are the Duties of a Digital Product Manager?
In each firm, the particular responsibilities of a digital product manager will vary. However, you can anticipate at least the following responsibilities:
• Oversee the creation of a digital product (or a suite of such products).
• Examine the market to ensure that the product continues to outperform its competitors.
• Recognize the user and buyer personas and create unique value propositions for each.
• Keep track of crucial product analytics, analyze them, and take action. Continue to improve the product, promote client retention, and increase customer lifetime value (LTV).
• Make a strategic product roadmap and prioritize it.
Digital Product Manager vs. Digital Project Manager: What’s the Difference?
People frequently mix up the roles of product manager and project manager. The jobs are extremely different, despite the fact that the titles sound and seem virtually identical.
Digital product manager:
The position of digital product manager is a strategic one. The focus of the role is on the product vision, primary goals, and determining product-market fit. As well as managing a cross-functional team to ensure that everyone is on the same page in terms of strategy.
Digital project manager:
This is mostly a tactical role. The digital project manager is in charge of overseeing the actions and resources required to accomplish a project within the established scope, on schedule, and within the budget.
To bring a successful digital product to market, these two positions can and should collaborate. Then, over time, to continue to improve the product.
Chapter 2: Security & Risk Advisors
Consumers and organizations are rapidly adopting digital technology, which is bringing new opportunities while also introducing new threats.
Many businesses are well on their road to digital transformation. New technologies such as robots, the internet of things (IoT), artificial intelligence (AI), cloud computing, predictive analytics, and blockchain are already transforming the way many firms design and curate experiences, manufacture, distribute, and support products as part of Industry 4.0.
The internal risk function, as well as the IT department, are being put under more strain. Firm leaders are making strategic decisions about investment, technology, resource levels, and the skills required to run a digital business, all of which will affect their companies’ short- and long-term profitability. These strategic decisions are invariably fraught with danger. At the same time, companies must deal with external dangers. For example, when firms go through digital transformations and more of their assets become digital, cybercrime and data privacy issues are becoming more prevalent.
While digital transformation offers significant benefits to businesses, it also adds a new dimension to the traditional risk assessment.
The security challenge: Keeping up with the times, with increased risk
According to a new Altimeter survey, IT decision-makers are not only considering cybersecurity as a top factor when it comes to digital transformation, but it is also their second most important investment priority (35 percent), just behind the cloud (37 percent). The complexity and speed of development continue to challenge even the largest security operations, making investments in disruptive technology pointless if they can’t safeguard the organization, its customers, or other critical assets.
Security leaders must be aware of the new threats that digital transformation brings. According to Ponemon’s Digital Transformation and Cyber Risk research, 82% of IT security and C-level respondents indicated digital transformation caused at least one data leak.
A growing reliance on third parties, which 55 percent of respondents claimed were responsible for at least one of their breaches, is one reason for the heightened risk. Despite their reliance on third parties, 58% of respondents stated they lack a third-party cyber risk management program, and 56% of C-level executives said it was difficult to tell whether third parties had policies and processes in place to ensure the protection of their data.
According to the Ponemon analysis, misalignment between security and the C-suite is the leading cause of vulnerabilities created during digital transformation programs. Only 16% of respondents thought IT and business lines were completely linked.
Cybersecurity and business are inextricably linked
The essence is obvious. With its platforms, ecosystems, API economy, and concentration on data sharing, today’s increasingly connected world increases the hazards. As a result, cybersecurity and risk management are becoming increasingly vital to businesses.
We’re doing more business digitally, allowing workers to work from home, migrating workloads and assets to the cloud, decentralizing and thereby expanding our digital footprint; the list goes on and on.
Unlike hackers, who are constantly seeking for new weaknesses, we frequently have no idea what digital assets we have on the Internet.
Chapter 3: Internal Communications
Communication, openness, and an inclusive culture are all important factors in DT’s success. Internal communications is critical in keeping everyone informed about the progress and business impact of DT, including stakeholders, top management, and the entire organization. Given the numerous DT journeys / projects running concurrently, it is critical to provide employees with a sense of the wider picture and how DT will lead the company to profitability, higher market share, new solutions/products, and improved customer/ employee experience. Internal communications can distribute internal blogs, films, mailers, graphics/posters, and guarantee that such themes are discussed at town hall meetings. Employees should grasp the initiative’s business aim, the impact of technology, what changes are coming, and why they should adopt them.
Internal communications is at the heart of an IT transformation for three reasons:
1. The ability—and motivation—of employees to fulfill corporate goals and drive success is critical to the success of any company project. The organization’s program is likely to fail if the majority of employees feel alienated from the firm and don’t understand why decisions are made.
Internal communications and reaching every employee are therefore critical. Employees may not grasp or even be aware of company-wide business goals if they are not receiving appropriate information. Finally, effective internal communications promote employee engagement, which leads to desirable business outcomes.
A more connected workforce is also a catalyst for better business outcomes.
2. Effective internal communication promotes and maintains change.
HR and internal communications must step up to assist transformation across the board because communications is the crucial link connecting employee experience, company-wide business goals, and digital transformation.
You’ll need a communications strategy to tie everything together. And it must be a completely integrated campaign, not an afterthought. HR and communications professionals should incorporate digital marketing abilities such as employee journey planning.
A complete communications plan is required to investigate each point of employee collaboration and to track communications data. Internal communicators may improve internal communications at every level, with all types of employees—from gig workers to field workers—by using specific measurements and feedback.
3. Human resources and communications professionals must communicate with employees on their terms and include them in the company’s story.
Some tools, such as email or intranets on their own, or even workplace social networks, just do not operate properly. Employee communication systems, on the other hand, encompass the entire workforce and can connect a variety of tools. They are better at communicating with hard-to-reach personnel, such as frontline or deskless workers, who are now getting the attention they have been missing.
I also want to emphasize the value of a brand story that stems from a company’s own history: the “goodness” of its previous actions. Employees become actors in the corporate story if you can include them in it, creating a groundswell of employees who are invested in the success of the digital transformation program.
Organizations that leverage integrations and can provide a single point of publishing tool to many media, as well as a solid communications strategy, will be able to reach every employee, regardless of location, and achieve the required transformation.
Internal communications play a critical role in any digital transformation team, as explained in greater detail in this course manual.
Chapter 4: System Integrators
What is the definition of system integration?
System integration (SI) is a method of connecting an organization’s multiple IT systems and applications so that they function together in a coordinated and uniform manner.
In a nutshell, system integration is similar to piecing together a puzzle.
An organization’s information subsystems are dispersed and must be brought together into a well-coordinated, coherent architecture or integrated application mesh. It’s a complicated construction process that connects an organization’s functions from many systems, simplifying diverse systems such as current hardware, software (customized or off-the-shelf), and communications.
The end result of system integration is that an organization’s working relationships with customers and partners improve, workflow efficiency improves, and operational expenses decrease. Business process management, computer networking, enterprise application integration, and/or manual programming are all options for a system integrator.
IT System Integration Has 5 Advantages
When a company decides to move forward with modernized environment integration, the benefits are numerous. A modernized IT infrastructure can give endless benefits, from allowing employees to spend less time on boring data entry to allowing them to sleep soundly at night due to improved levels of security. Some of the advantages of IT system integration for businesses include:
1. Simplicity
The complexities of multiple business processes and apps are replaced by a simple-to-use, unified environment through an integrated infrastructure. Instead of many computer systems and business processes running concurrently and on top of each other, an integrated architecture is intuitive and allows modifications to be made from a single screen, wherever the employee is located.
2. Conserve funds
Costs will be substantially lowered if you choose to handle all of your data and applications from a single platform. Typical costs associated with the installation of various systems and applications, as well as the maintenance and management of piles of in-house equipment, will no longer be a significant financial burden for businesses.
3. Security
A single system eliminates the need for an organization to safeguard several systems, each with varied degrees of success and risk when it comes to data security. Organizations may more quickly construct the essential security measures to prevent unwanted access and better meet compliance obligations with an integrated solution. The more tools you have, the more difficult it is to administer and setup a security system.
4. Real-time visibility
Because it has real-time access to its data, an organization with an integrated architecture can make better, more informed business decisions. Gone are the days when a business had to make a vital decision based on old legacy software. Enterprises may now track their data from beginning to end. Companies may access their data at any time and stay informed with up-to-date information available from anywhere, rather than waiting hours for accounting and finance reports.
5. Efficiency
An integrated and modernized environment can help employees become more efficient and productive. Structured, formatted data may bounce throughout the company ecosystem via automation, letting staff to spend their time on more productive initiatives rather than manually entering data, which is typically arduous and time-consuming. Furthermore, when it comes to keeping and employing talent, an integrated system allows a company to increase employee quality rather than hiring additional employees for mundane duties, saving money.
Chapter 5: Chief Experience Officers
A chief experience officer (CXO) is a C-suite executive who is in charge of a company’s total customer experience and interactions. The chief executive officer (CEO), chief operating officer (COO), or chief marketing officer (CMO) will often report to the customer experience officer (CXO). Of course, CX personnel report to the CXO.
Customer experience (CX) initiatives are used by a CXO to offer differentiated brand experiences that increase customer loyalty and advocacy. Employee experience (EX) is now included in the role to ensure that staff exemplify the company’s customer promise and deliver on brand expectations.
Change management, learning and development, and human resources teams all work closely with a CXO. Employees’ grasp of customer happiness and leadership’s feeling of their people and employee satisfaction are both enhanced by this necessary cross-functional teamwork.
Why Should Every Company Have A Chief Experience Officer?
When customers first come into contact with a brand, the customer experience begins. Even after a product or service is no longer required, the customer’s relationship with the brand endures. The chief experience officer’s job is to keep customers happy by ensuring that every phase of the buyer’s journey and customer lifecycle is pleasant and easy to use. Customer satisfaction should be maintained throughout the relationship.
Consumer experience, according to Gartner, accounts for almost two-thirds of customer loyalty, exceeding brand equity and price combined. In fact, a positive customer experience increases a person’s likelihood of recommending a firm and purchasing in the future by five times. That’s a lot of money on the line.
Furthermore, during their purchasing experience, the NOW Customer (consumers who are always on and always online) seeks quickness, results, and an emotional connection with companies. At all times and across all touchpoints, the NOW Customer wants speedy resolutions and active engagements from their brands.
As a result, a CXO must constantly develop the customer experience to match their changing needs and ensure that no customer is forgotten.
However, the client experience is only one factor to consider. Employees’ ability to understand and identify with the brand’s mission, vision, and values ultimately determines how the customer experience is designed and delivered. Employee engagement is also strongly linked to a variety of business results.
The overall percentage of engaged workers in 2020 was 36 percent, according to three Gallup measures and a study of employee engagement this year. This is indicative of persons who are deeply invested in, excited about, and dedicated to their profession and workplace.
Chapter 6: Compliance Specialists including Digital Ethics
Organizations must embrace digital transformation in order to fulfill escalating customer expectations, create scalable, personalized experiences, and respond to market dynamics with ever-increasing business agility. Digital services and disruptive technologies like cloud computing, robotics, AI, and big data, when paired with optimized operating models, enable enterprises to drive innovation and adapt to internal and external events faster and more cost effectively than ever before.
Surprisingly, over 60% of executives believe their digital transformation efforts are behind schedule, according to a renowned research and advising organization. Many organizations have recognized the ability to create change and the availability of finances as important impediments to success. While technology enables digital transformation, these findings should remind us that the human factor is just as vital as technology. The essential notions of ethics are what we stand for and how we behave, and if organizations want to achieve long-term success in the digital world, they must first and foremost recognize the need to act ethically.
Compliance Specialists are required in a digital transformation team
Ethics is the discipline of making a principled decision between right and wrong, based on how people should act rather than how they do act. And, while the topic has previously struggled to acquire traction among business leaders, things are thankfully different now. Ethics is now as crucial as products and services in a highly competitive industry.
While all firms with a digital transformation plan should prioritize ethics, the most challenging task will be at the individual level – corporations do not make decisions; individuals do. From an ethical standpoint, digital professionals at all levels will need to figure out what the ‘correct’ thing to do is. What is considered ethical can differ across individuals, groups, faiths, and cultures, and this leaves wide opportunity for interpretation in a global and fast-moving digital society.
Even when the best course of action is obvious, real-world competitive pressures can lead to individuals making judgments that are harmful to others. Being ethical will entail having the abilities and moral bravery to question established standards and act ethically. So, what does it mean to be ethical in a digital society, and how can those involved in the design, development, and deployment of digital services translate ethical concepts into professional behaviors that will support digital transformation initiatives?
Organizational ethics in the digital age
When businesses engage in ways that others consider unethical, they are likely to receive negative local, national, and even international media attention. The events surrounding Volkswagen, in particular, will be remembered. Volkswagen, formerly known around the world as a pioneer in automobile engineering, is today more likely to be remembered for its unethical actions than for any of its prior accomplishments.
Organizational behaviors that promote trust and exhibit integrity will be just as crucial as the technological difficulties they confront, such as application integration, cybersecurity, and data governance, if they are to achieve digital success. Digital efforts have the ability to provide long-term benefits and boost the value of a company, but these benefits must be balanced against the challenges posed by eroding trust, which is caused by concerns about how some businesses are utilizing digital technology.
Data security and confidentiality challenges persist; not only do data breaches occur at alarming rates, but corporations have been hesitant to notify people affected when they do. Concerns about accountability are also growing, since present systems may become obsolete or, worse, corrupted as AI and machine learning algorithms become increasingly capable of making autonomous judgments.
Chapter 7: Project Managers
As digitalization gains pace, with every industry confronting disruptive forces, C-level executives are becoming increasingly obsessed with their company’s digital imperative.
While senior management is responsible for driving their organization’s high-level strategy by talking digital, the project manager is ultimately responsible for laying the groundwork and giving expression to the vision set out by their senior management. The project manager’s role has never been more crucial than it is now, when every firm wants to be a part of the digital revolution.
If the company is digitally mature, the project manager will have his or her hands full managing ongoing transformation and high-stakes stakeholder management.
While every job in the organizational structure has been defined and redefined, the project manager’s role has remained the same: chief interlocutor and primary firefighter when it comes to resolving conflicts among the many teams participating in project execution. It’s past time for the project manager to be seen as a digital leader rather than just someone who manages projects under budgetary constraints.
While serving as a vital link between senior management and delivery teams, the Project Manager is best suited to guide the organization into the digital age. With the introduction of the digital age came a new set of issues, the most important of which was fulfilling the always changing end-user/stakeholder expectations. As a result, the project manager’s function had to be repositioned as the de facto digital leader to drive the enterprise-wide change.
The world has reached a turning point. Industrialization 4.0 is driving businesses to either meet the digital headwinds head on and win the digital battles, or risk becoming the next Kodak. It is the project manager’s responsibility to make it happen from the ground up as firms try everything they can to win in this new digital economy. The digital transformation should be done from the ground up, with the core processes and delivery team buying into the entire digital story.
The digital economy has given rise to two types of players around the world: digital non-natives and digital natives. The digital non-natives are established businesses whose old business strategies are being disrupted by the emerging digital economy. The digital natives are the new pure play digital enterprises, the Ubers and AirBnBs of the digital world, who are displacing existing players and imagining fresh solutions to previously inert business models.
The digital non-native companies are the ones that are responding to, or rather attempting to combat, the digital natives by devising massive digital transformation initiatives in order to extract more value from these programs while continuing to run their core legacy systems. Their legacy systems are just as critical as their new digital ambitions. Bimodal IT, with two-part teams looking at the more stable core system and the digital transformation programs, goes a long way toward keeping the incumbents’ status quo.
Chapter 8: Cloud Specialists
A cloud specialist’s major responsibility is to oversee the migration of data and services to the chosen cloud provider. The job of a cloud specialist does not end once the company’s data and services have been moved to the cloud. In a digital world, this position is crucial for continuing operation. They must not only manage the initial transfer, but also be available to solve any issues that develop as the organization continues to operate in the cloud. You can’t expect every member of your staff to be an expert at navigating the cloud.
Cloud specialists can make or break company operations for firms that had to shift quickly owing to COVID-19. A speedier metamorphosis allows for more room for mistakes. Cloud experts assist the team in resolving any challenges so that they can migrate smoothly and efficiently.
The Cloud’s Importance in Digital Transformation
In today’s digital economy, businesses rely on technology to not only support existing business activities, but also to provide new sources of competitive distinction.
For many businesses, the effectiveness of their IT service delivery environments determines whether they succeed or fail.
The majority of IT organizations and datacenters are designed to support their organizations’ mission-critical systems of record for supply chain management (SCM), enterprise resource planning (ERP), and online transaction processing (OLTP).
Companies must devote more IT resources and employees to the design and ongoing development of systems of engagement, insight, and action that improve the customer experience, thanks to the Internet, the mobile explosion, and now the big data analytics revolution. They must also ensure that existing applications as well as these new digital services are handled consistently in terms of security, stability, and scalability.
This new agile business environment is built on the cloud. It’s the platform that makes agile app development possible. Cloud infrastructure is critical for providing flexible, on-demand access to the resources that underpin these new digital business services. It enables businesses to grow infrastructure as needed to meet changing business needs while decreasing the risk of squandered IT resources, which has previously stifled investments in innovative digital services.
Chapter 9: Organization Development (HR)
Priorities for HR leaders in the digital transformation
Much has been said and spoken about the future of work, as well as HR’s strategic role in digital transformation. The extent to which the numerous forecasts about the future of work are realized will be seen in the future. Work will change, and HR will change with it.
HR leaders should work with business leaders to understand and maintain the correct balance of developing, existing, and legacy skill sets to ensure that employees have the talents they require.
HR departments are widely agreed to play a more strategic role in not only assisting the organization in addressing a variety of (often industry-specific) challenges, but also in making business transformation journeys and change/innovation initiatives possible, let alone successful — HR in digital transformation or even at the very center of digital business transformation.
HR’s strategic role in digital transformation (DX) and supporting the business in all aspects is sometimes overlooked. The same can be said about the requirement for clear HR transformation strategy, as digital HR maturity is still lacking. As with other company tasks, the focus is frequently on today and the immediate future, with difficulties that management wants to address immediately in admittedly complex times marked by several uncertainties.
Any HR strategic transformation path that enables HR to play an important role in digital transformation must consider the big picture. It involves numerous factors, the most important of which is people, and it necessitates a realistic assessment of the steps to be taken, including the long-term.
As is customary, the manner in which each step is taken and the extent to which it results in real benefits will drive overall – incremental – advancement. Unfortunately, as new CEOs take over, there is always the potential of unforeseen shifts and changes in strategic imperatives.
The essence, however, remains. How can a company stay relevant to its customers and internal customers – employees – who are required to accomplish so much? And, in a future where the organization’s main business may evolve, how will the organization become profitable – and how will the abilities of exceptional individuals be crucial in steering that process?
Enterprise HR leaders must continue to prioritize digital business transformation
Automation, artificial intelligence, and the connection between humans and machines are among the more prevalent topics discussed in discussions about the future of work.
Future skills, reskilling and upskilling, talent management, labor shortages, employee contentment and happiness, the nature and role of work, evolving motives among workers, and how we organize work on a social level are among the most interesting themes. Then there’s the question of how HR teams can assist HR in enabling digital transformation.
In 2019, the average employee went through 12 organizational changes, ranging from large changes like restructuring or executive leadership transitions to more mundane but nevertheless extremely disruptive changes like shifting to a new team or manager.
While HR professionals consider the difficulties of employment, talent management, the digital workplace, and workforce planning in 2020, achieving digital business transformation remains a top goal.
According to Gartner, other key measures that should enable HR leaders to continue driving business outcomes in 2020 include 1) improving employee experience, 2) developing the necessary skills and competencies to grow/transform the business, 3) incorporating organizational design and change management, and 4) strengthening both current and future leadership.
According to the firm, only 9% of chief human resource officers believe their organization is equipped for that “future of work.” And that’s essentially where these five crucial measures fit in, taking us well beyond 2020.
How Can HR Become a Digital Transformation Leader?
RPM’s impact on people strategy is just one of many examples of how digital transformation has a direct impact on HR. Despite the various issues that this change brings, it also gives HR with an opportunity. It’s an opportunity to boost HR’s role as a strategic differentiator inside the company.
HR professionals may raise three important questions to enhance the dialogue with executives about digital transformation.
1. How is our business model evolving? What does this signify for our organization? Adopting new technologies is not a straightforward process. It necessitates multiple simultaneous adjustments and numerous touchpoints across a long time horizon. Employee involvement and training best practices can help ensure a smooth launch.
2. Do we have the necessary talent? Is it necessary to develop or acquire that talent? Are we in the correct geographical location to attract the talent we need to complete this digital transformation? What abilities (such as coding) do we need to develop inside to maintain and optimize what we’ve switched on? These questions about talent will help you develop a talent acquisition strategy that assures your company can support new technology and make the most of it.
3. How will we ensure that iteration is consistent? The process of digital transformation is never-ending. HR is well-equipped to receive feedback and provide useful insights for continuous improvement, thanks to its experience in change management.
There are two advantages to asking these three questions. It brings HR into leadership discussions and can assist HR in thinking about transformation. HR may save up time and increase its skills for driving an organization-wide change by embracing digital transformation first.
Chapter 10: Vendor Managers
Organizations that are going on a DT journey need a solid plan for partnering with vendors. Questions around insourcing and outsourcing must be addressed when the overall DT strategy is being developed. Organizations commonly outsource a variety of IT services in order to focus on their main business while ensuring best-in-class IT. The vendor manager assists in identifying vendors/partners who are familiar with the organization’s digital vision and strategy and are willing to collaborate in a clear and collaborative manner.
A smart vendor strategy is required for your digital transformation
A group of people is responsible for every digital transition. A C-suite sponsor is often involved, as well as competent personnel from various business divisions and functions. External providers contribute abilities and talents that aren’t available within the organization.
In any transformation, these are crucial players. Companies that properly manage support from their external technology vendors can easily transition from a legacy to a forward-thinking, digitally driven organization. Those who do not will rapidly learn that a company cannot completely restructure itself from the inside out.
According to a recent survey performed by BCG and the University of Auckland, at least 55% of businesses are dissatisfied with their digital transformation initiatives. When these conversions run into problems, it’s possible that tech sourcing is at blame. Companies have a choice of vendors from which to choose, yet many overlook the complexities of sourcing. Vendor objectives, experience, and knowledge, as well as familiarity with the organization and desire for a transactional versus a partner relationship, all differ significantly. Organizations must weigh in on both the vendor’s and their own points of view, determining how well they connect with the digital transformation goals.
Companies must have a robust plan for partnering with vendors to improve the chances of a successful program. According to our findings, they should concentrate on five key areas: sourcing model, sourcing strategy, vendor selection and contracting, vendor management, and implementation.
Effective vendor management requires mutual trust and respect
As we progress toward a digital-first workplace, you’ll almost certainly be responsible for several technology vendors. Working with external vendors, suppliers, or contractors is critical to the success of any organization, no matter what industry you’re in. Effectively managing these partnerships can help you meet your company’s objectives while also demonstrating your value.
Working with people to accomplish a goal is the essence of vendor management. If the relationship is well-managed, it can lead to increased revenue. Poorly managed vendor relationships, on the other hand, frequently result in bad service, costly setbacks, and, in the worst-case situation, the loss of your job.
The foundations of any good relationship are mutual trust and respect. This is especially true when it comes to digital transformation. In simple terms, cultivating strong vendor connections is similar to cultivating personal relationships in your professional or personal life. You establish a mutually beneficial connection by building a strong foundation of trust and respect with your vendors.
Chapter 11: Data Analysts
Data Analysts’ Crucial Role in Your Digital Transformation
As more businesses consider digital transformation, it’s vital to understand how data and analytics constitute the backbone of the project from beginning to end.
For any company emerging from the last few years, the stakes are tremendous. As the marketplace got more volatile, it became critical for firms to digitize their interactions with employees and customers. Organizations of all types, sizes, and industries have had to rethink their business models and processes in order to survive, compete, or disrupt. “Digital transformation” has been at the forefront of every business-related conversation for a time, but corporations’ interest has increased since the COVID-19 disruption. Digital transformation was the top goal for IT technology projects in worldwide firms in 2021, according to research firm Statista.
We’ll go over why data analysts are so important in any successful digital transformation, from start to end and even afterward, in this Course Manual.
Why Data and Analytics Are the Backbone of Your Digital Transformation
Businesses must stay up with technological advancements and changing consumer expectations. The ability to make timely, informed data-driven decisions will decide a company’s ability to compete and grow. Data can also be utilized to create new products or improve existing ones, and it can even be sold as a product, allowing your company to compete in the digital market.
Where data gives the data, analytics provides the insights that lead to better decisions. Using data and analytics as the thread that runs through your digital transformation, both before and after it begins, allows you to overcome fundamental current business issues that might stymie data initiatives. These contemporary business issues include:
• Data Siloes: When data is segregated and separated among different business divisions, technologies, and platforms, it makes it more difficult for enterprises to integrate the data, obtain insights from it, and maximize its value. Considering technologies and techniques that enable merging data from many sources and systems to see the big picture as the major driver of your digital transformation helps you to consider data and analytics as the key driver of your digital transformation.
• Data Quality Issues: Good data can help a company achieve its goals. However, failing to take steps to assure data quality might result in costly errors and missed opportunities. When you value data as an asset across your business, you can think about data management, data security, and data ownership, all of which will lead to data openness and trust, as well as better decision-making.
• Legacy System/Application Complexities: Legacy systems are expensive to maintain and upgrade, and they can be difficult to integrate with more current aspects of your infrastructure in some situations. They also offer security risks to the organization. They make it difficult for you to compete in the digital economy. Looking at it through the lens of data and analytics will help you choose technologies that are right for the job, allowing for agility, user acceptance, improved security, and improved performance.
• Exceeding Customer Expectations: Today’s customers demand flawless end-to-end experiences, and businesses rely on data to deliver them. Data may help you figure out who your consumers are, what they need and desire, what they buy, when and how often, and how they prefer to interact. A data-driven digital transformation can enable technology and processes that help you gather and analyze data so you can meet customer expectations as they change.
These modern business issues may be a bottleneck for any company, and they’re probably why you’re considering digital transformation in the first place. Understanding and prioritizing the challenges you wish to tackle is crucial to achieving a good conclusion. You’ll discover that allowing data and analytics to drive and complete your digital transformation sets you up for long-term flexibility and digital enablement and augmentation across the business. You may map out where you are now and where you want to go by defining your goals.
Chapter 12: Solutions Architects
Organizations must alter their processes and systems to suit evolving business requirements in a quickly changing technological environment. To match business emphasis with technology solutions, this digital transformation necessitates specific knowledge and a set of techniques.
Before any tech solution development begins, solution architecture is one of the most important principles to follow. In this Course Manual, we’ll define solution architecture, outline the function of a solution architect, and show how using this knowledge might aid in the resolution of digital transformation issues.
What exactly does a solutions architect do? IT-business alignment is critical
Any firm that wishes to match its business goals and demands with IT services, products, software, and infrastructure needs solutions architects.
Solutions architect definition
A solutions architect is in charge of assessing an organization’s business requirements and determining how IT can meet those requirements using software, hardware, or infrastructure. IT strategy must now be aligned with business objectives, and a solutions architect can assist in determining, developing, and improving technical solutions that support business objectives.
A solutions architect also acts as a link between IT and business operations, ensuring that everyone is on the same page when it comes to developing and executing technical solutions for business issues. In order to adequately design and implement viable solutions, the process involves constant input, changes, and problem-solving.
Business, system, information, security, application, and technology architecture are all included in solution architecture. Developing cloud infrastructure for efficiency, integrating microservices for eCommerce, and establishing security measures for data, systems, and networks are all instances of solutions architecture. While the work scope varies depending on the demands of the company, solutions architects must meet certain responsibilities, abilities, and credentials in order to be hired.
Responsibilities of a solutions architect
While job qualifications and responsibilities differ depending on the firm or industry, the following are the common expectations of a solutions architect:
Curriculum
Leading IT Transformation – Workshop 8 – Team Building
- Digital Product Managers
- Security & Risk Advisors
- Internal Communications
- System Integrators
- Chief Experience Officers
- Compliance Specialists Including Digital Ethics
- Project Managers
- Cloud Specialists
- Organizational Development (HR)
- Vendor Managers
- Data Analysts
- Solutions Architects
Distance Learning
Introduction
Welcome to Appleton Greene and thank you for enrolling on the Leading IT Transformation corporate training program. You will be learning through our unique facilitation via distance-learning method, which will enable you to practically implement everything that you learn academically. The methods and materials used in your program have been designed and developed to ensure that you derive the maximum benefits and enjoyment possible. We hope that you find the program challenging and fun to do. However, if you have never been a distance-learner before, you may be experiencing some trepidation at the task before you. So we will get you started by giving you some basic information and guidance on how you can make the best use of the modules, how you should manage the materials and what you should be doing as you work through them. This guide is designed to point you in the right direction and help you to become an effective distance-learner. Take a few hours or so to study this guide and your guide to tutorial support for students, while making notes, before you start to study in earnest.
Study environment
You will need to locate a quiet and private place to study, preferably a room where you can easily be isolated from external disturbances or distractions. Make sure the room is well-lit and incorporates a relaxed, pleasant feel. If you can spoil yourself within your study environment, you will have much more of a chance to ensure that you are always in the right frame of mind when you do devote time to study. For example, a nice fire, the ability to play soft soothing background music, soft but effective lighting, perhaps a nice view if possible and a good size desk with a comfortable chair. Make sure that your family know when you are studying and understand your study rules. Your study environment is very important. The ideal situation, if at all possible, is to have a separate study, which can be devoted to you. If this is not possible then you will need to pay a lot more attention to developing and managing your study schedule, because it will affect other people as well as yourself. The better your study environment, the more productive you will be.
Study tools & rules
Try and make sure that your study tools are sufficient and in good working order. You will need to have access to a computer, scanner and printer, with access to the internet. You will need a very comfortable chair, which supports your lower back, and you will need a good filing system. It can be very frustrating if you are spending valuable study time trying to fix study tools that are unreliable, or unsuitable for the task. Make sure that your study tools are up to date. You will also need to consider some study rules. Some of these rules will apply to you and will be intended to help you to be more disciplined about when and how you study. This distance-learning guide will help you and after you have read it you can put some thought into what your study rules should be. You will also need to negotiate some study rules for your family, friends or anyone who lives with you. They too will need to be disciplined in order to ensure that they can support you while you study. It is important to ensure that your family and friends are an integral part of your study team. Having their support and encouragement can prove to be a crucial contribution to your successful completion of the program. Involve them in as much as you can.
Successful distance-learning
Distance-learners are freed from the necessity of attending regular classes or workshops, since they can study in their own way, at their own pace and for their own purposes. But unlike traditional internal training courses, it is the student’s responsibility, with a distance-learning program, to ensure that they manage their own study contribution. This requires strong self-discipline and self-motivation skills and there must be a clear will to succeed. Those students who are used to managing themselves, are good at managing others and who enjoy working in isolation, are more likely to be good distance-learners. It is also important to be aware of the main reasons why you are studying and of the main objectives that you are hoping to achieve as a result. You will need to remind yourself of these objectives at times when you need to motivate yourself. Never lose sight of your long-term goals and your short-term objectives. There is nobody available here to pamper you, or to look after you, or to spoon-feed you with information, so you will need to find ways to encourage and appreciate yourself while you are studying. Make sure that you chart your study progress, so that you can be sure of your achievements and re-evaluate your goals and objectives regularly.
Self-assessment
Appleton Greene training programs are in all cases post-graduate programs. Consequently, you should already have obtained a business-related degree and be an experienced learner. You should therefore already be aware of your study strengths and weaknesses. For example, which time of the day are you at your most productive? Are you a lark or an owl? What study methods do you respond to the most? Are you a consistent learner? How do you discipline yourself? How do you ensure that you enjoy yourself while studying? It is important to understand yourself as a learner and so some self-assessment early on will be necessary if you are to apply yourself correctly. Perform a SWOT analysis on yourself as a student. List your internal strengths and weaknesses as a student and your external opportunities and threats. This will help you later on when you are creating a study plan. You can then incorporate features within your study plan that can ensure that you are playing to your strengths, while compensating for your weaknesses. You can also ensure that you make the most of your opportunities, while avoiding the potential threats to your success.
Accepting responsibility as a student
Training programs invariably require a significant investment, both in terms of what they cost and in the time that you need to contribute to study and the responsibility for successful completion of training programs rests entirely with the student. This is never more apparent than when a student is learning via distance-learning. Accepting responsibility as a student is an important step towards ensuring that you can successfully complete your training program. It is easy to instantly blame other people or factors when things go wrong. But the fact of the matter is that if a failure is your failure, then you have the power to do something about it, it is entirely in your own hands. If it is always someone else’s failure, then you are powerless to do anything about it. All students study in entirely different ways, this is because we are all individuals and what is right for one student, is not necessarily right for another. In order to succeed, you will have to accept personal responsibility for finding a way to plan, implement and manage a personal study plan that works for you. If you do not succeed, you only have yourself to blame.
Planning
By far the most critical contribution to stress, is the feeling of not being in control. In the absence of planning we tend to be reactive and can stumble from pillar to post in the hope that things will turn out fine in the end. Invariably they don’t! In order to be in control, we need to have firm ideas about how and when we want to do things. We also need to consider as many possible eventualities as we can, so that we are prepared for them when they happen. Prescriptive Change, is far easier to manage and control, than Emergent Change. The same is true with distance-learning. It is much easier and much more enjoyable, if you feel that you are in control and that things are going to plan. Even when things do go wrong, you are prepared for them and can act accordingly without any unnecessary stress. It is important therefore that you do take time to plan your studies properly.
Management
Once you have developed a clear study plan, it is of equal importance to ensure that you manage the implementation of it. Most of us usually enjoy planning, but it is usually during implementation when things go wrong. Targets are not met and we do not understand why. Sometimes we do not even know if targets are being met. It is not enough for us to conclude that the study plan just failed. If it is failing, you will need to understand what you can do about it. Similarly if your study plan is succeeding, it is still important to understand why, so that you can improve upon your success. You therefore need to have guidelines for self-assessment so that you can be consistent with performance improvement throughout the program. If you manage things correctly, then your performance should constantly improve throughout the program.
Study objectives & tasks
The first place to start is developing your program objectives. These should feature your reasons for undertaking the training program in order of priority. Keep them succinct and to the point in order to avoid confusion. Do not just write the first things that come into your head because they are likely to be too similar to each other. Make a list of possible departmental headings, such as: Customer Service; E-business; Finance; Globalization; Human Resources; Technology; Legal; Management; Marketing and Production. Then brainstorm for ideas by listing as many things that you want to achieve under each heading and later re-arrange these things in order of priority. Finally, select the top item from each department heading and choose these as your program objectives. Try and restrict yourself to five because it will enable you to focus clearly. It is likely that the other things that you listed will be achieved if each of the top objectives are achieved. If this does not prove to be the case, then simply work through the process again.
Study forecast
As a guide, the Appleton Greene Leading IT Transformation corporate training program should take 12-18 months to complete, depending upon your availability and current commitments. The reason why there is such a variance in time estimates is because every student is an individual, with differing productivity levels and different commitments. These differentiations are then exaggerated by the fact that this is a distance-learning program, which incorporates the practical integration of academic theory as an as a part of the training program. Consequently all of the project studies are real, which means that important decisions and compromises need to be made. You will want to get things right and will need to be patient with your expectations in order to ensure that they are. We would always recommend that you are prudent with your own task and time forecasts, but you still need to develop them and have a clear indication of what are realistic expectations in your case. With reference to your time planning: consider the time that you can realistically dedicate towards study with the program every week; calculate how long it should take you to complete the program, using the guidelines featured here; then break the program down into logical modules and allocate a suitable proportion of time to each of them, these will be your milestones; you can create a time plan by using a spreadsheet on your computer, or a personal organizer such as MS Outlook, you could also use a financial forecasting software; break your time forecasts down into manageable chunks of time, the more specific you can be, the more productive and accurate your time management will be; finally, use formulas where possible to do your time calculations for you, because this will help later on when your forecasts need to change in line with actual performance. With reference to your task planning: refer to your list of tasks that need to be undertaken in order to achieve your program objectives; with reference to your time plan, calculate when each task should be implemented; remember that you are not estimating when your objectives will be achieved, but when you will need to focus upon implementing the corresponding tasks; you also need to ensure that each task is implemented in conjunction with the associated training modules which are relevant; then break each single task down into a list of specific to do’s, say approximately ten to do’s for each task and enter these into your study plan; once again you could use MS Outlook to incorporate both your time and task planning and this could constitute your study plan; you could also use a project management software like MS Project. You should now have a clear and realistic forecast detailing when you can expect to be able to do something about undertaking the tasks to achieve your program objectives.
Performance management
It is one thing to develop your study forecast, it is quite another to monitor your progress. Ultimately it is less important whether you achieve your original study forecast and more important that you update it so that it constantly remains realistic in line with your performance. As you begin to work through the program, you will begin to have more of an idea about your own personal performance and productivity levels as a distance-learner. Once you have completed your first study module, you should re-evaluate your study forecast for both time and tasks, so that they reflect your actual performance level achieved. In order to achieve this you must first time yourself while training by using an alarm clock. Set the alarm for hourly intervals and make a note of how far you have come within that time. You can then make a note of your actual performance on your study plan and then compare your performance against your forecast. Then consider the reasons that have contributed towards your performance level, whether they are positive or negative and make a considered adjustment to your future forecasts as a result. Given time, you should start achieving your forecasts regularly.
With reference to time management: time yourself while you are studying and make a note of the actual time taken in your study plan; consider your successes with time-efficiency and the reasons for the success in each case and take this into consideration when reviewing future time planning; consider your failures with time-efficiency and the reasons for the failures in each case and take this into consideration when reviewing future time planning; re-evaluate your study forecast in relation to time planning for the remainder of your training program to ensure that you continue to be realistic about your time expectations. You need to be consistent with your time management, otherwise you will never complete your studies. This will either be because you are not contributing enough time to your studies, or you will become less efficient with the time that you do allocate to your studies. Remember, if you are not in control of your studies, they can just become yet another cause of stress for you.
With reference to your task management: time yourself while you are studying and make a note of the actual tasks that you have undertaken in your study plan; consider your successes with task-efficiency and the reasons for the success in each case; take this into consideration when reviewing future task planning; consider your failures with task-efficiency and the reasons for the failures in each case and take this into consideration when reviewing future task planning; re-evaluate your study forecast in relation to task planning for the remainder of your training program to ensure that you continue to be realistic about your task expectations. You need to be consistent with your task management, otherwise you will never know whether you are achieving your program objectives or not.
Keeping in touch
You will have access to qualified and experienced professors and tutors who are responsible for providing tutorial support for your particular training program. So don’t be shy about letting them know how you are getting on. We keep electronic records of all tutorial support emails so that professors and tutors can review previous correspondence before considering an individual response. It also means that there is a record of all communications between you and your professors and tutors and this helps to avoid any unnecessary duplication, misunderstanding, or misinterpretation. If you have a problem relating to the program, share it with them via email. It is likely that they have come across the same problem before and are usually able to make helpful suggestions and steer you in the right direction. To learn more about when and how to use tutorial support, please refer to the Tutorial Support section of this student information guide. This will help you to ensure that you are making the most of tutorial support that is available to you and will ultimately contribute towards your success and enjoyment with your training program.
Work colleagues and family
You should certainly discuss your program study progress with your colleagues, friends and your family. Appleton Greene training programs are very practical. They require you to seek information from other people, to plan, develop and implement processes with other people and to achieve feedback from other people in relation to viability and productivity. You will therefore have plenty of opportunities to test your ideas and enlist the views of others. People tend to be sympathetic towards distance-learners, so don’t bottle it all up in yourself. Get out there and share it! It is also likely that your family and colleagues are going to benefit from your labors with the program, so they are likely to be much more interested in being involved than you might think. Be bold about delegating work to those who might benefit themselves. This is a great way to achieve understanding and commitment from people who you may later rely upon for process implementation. Share your experiences with your friends and family.
Making it relevant
The key to successful learning is to make it relevant to your own individual circumstances. At all times you should be trying to make bridges between the content of the program and your own situation. Whether you achieve this through quiet reflection or through interactive discussion with your colleagues, client partners or your family, remember that it is the most important and rewarding aspect of translating your studies into real self-improvement. You should be clear about how you want the program to benefit you. This involves setting clear study objectives in relation to the content of the course in terms of understanding, concepts, completing research or reviewing activities and relating the content of the modules to your own situation. Your objectives may understandably change as you work through the program, in which case you should enter the revised objectives on your study plan so that you have a permanent reminder of what you are trying to achieve, when and why.
Distance-learning check-list
Prepare your study environment, your study tools and rules.
Undertake detailed self-assessment in terms of your ability as a learner.
Create a format for your study plan.
Consider your study objectives and tasks.
Create a study forecast.
Assess your study performance.
Re-evaluate your study forecast.
Be consistent when managing your study plan.
Use your Appleton Greene Certified Learning Provider (CLP) for tutorial support.
Make sure you keep in touch with those around you.
Tutorial Support
Programs
Appleton Greene uses standard and bespoke corporate training programs as vessels to transfer business process improvement knowledge into the heart of our clients’ organizations. Each individual program focuses upon the implementation of a specific business process, which enables clients to easily quantify their return on investment. There are hundreds of established Appleton Greene corporate training products now available to clients within customer services, e-business, finance, globalization, human resources, information technology, legal, management, marketing and production. It does not matter whether a client’s employees are located within one office, or an unlimited number of international offices, we can still bring them together to learn and implement specific business processes collectively. Our approach to global localization enables us to provide clients with a truly international service with that all important personal touch. Appleton Greene corporate training programs can be provided virtually or locally and they are all unique in that they individually focus upon a specific business function. They are implemented over a sustainable period of time and professional support is consistently provided by qualified learning providers and specialist consultants.
Support available
You will have a designated Certified Learning Provider (CLP) and an Accredited Consultant and we encourage you to communicate with them as much as possible. In all cases tutorial support is provided online because we can then keep a record of all communications to ensure that tutorial support remains consistent. You would also be forwarding your work to the tutorial support unit for evaluation and assessment. You will receive individual feedback on all of the work that you undertake on a one-to-one basis, together with specific recommendations for anything that may need to be changed in order to achieve a pass with merit or a pass with distinction and you then have as many opportunities as you may need to re-submit project studies until they meet with the required standard. Consequently the only reason that you should really fail (CLP) is if you do not do the work. It makes no difference to us whether a student takes 12 months or 18 months to complete the program, what matters is that in all cases the same quality standard will have been achieved.
Support Process
Please forward all of your future emails to the designated (CLP) Tutorial Support Unit email address that has been provided and please do not duplicate or copy your emails to other AGC email accounts as this will just cause unnecessary administration. Please note that emails are always answered as quickly as possible but you will need to allow a period of up to 20 business days for responses to general tutorial support emails during busy periods, because emails are answered strictly within the order in which they are received. You will also need to allow a period of up to 30 business days for the evaluation and assessment of project studies. This does not include weekends or public holidays. Please therefore kindly allow for this within your time planning. All communications are managed online via email because it enables tutorial service support managers to review other communications which have been received before responding and it ensures that there is a copy of all communications retained on file for future reference. All communications will be stored within your personal (CLP) study file here at Appleton Greene throughout your designated study period. If you need any assistance or clarification at any time, please do not hesitate to contact us by forwarding an email and remember that we are here to help. If you have any questions, please list and number your questions succinctly and you can then be sure of receiving specific answers to each and every query.
Time Management
It takes approximately 1 Year to complete the Leading IT Transformation corporate training program, incorporating 12 x 6-hour monthly workshops. Each student will also need to contribute approximately 4 hours per week over 1 Year of their personal time. Students can study from home or work at their own pace and are responsible for managing their own study plan. There are no formal examinations and students are evaluated and assessed based upon their project study submissions, together with the quality of their internal analysis and supporting documents. They can contribute more time towards study when they have the time to do so and can contribute less time when they are busy. All students tend to be in full time employment while studying and the Leading IT Transformation program is purposely designed to accommodate this, so there is plenty of flexibility in terms of time management. It makes no difference to us at Appleton Greene, whether individuals take 12-18 months to complete this program. What matters is that in all cases the same standard of quality will have been achieved with the standard and bespoke programs that have been developed.
Distance Learning Guide
The distance learning guide should be your first port of call when starting your training program. It will help you when you are planning how and when to study, how to create the right environment and how to establish the right frame of mind. If you can lay the foundations properly during the planning stage, then it will contribute to your enjoyment and productivity while training later. The guide helps to change your lifestyle in order to accommodate time for study and to cultivate good study habits. It helps you to chart your progress so that you can measure your performance and achieve your goals. It explains the tools that you will need for study and how to make them work. It also explains how to translate academic theory into practical reality. Spend some time now working through your distance learning guide and make sure that you have firm foundations in place so that you can make the most of your distance learning program. There is no requirement for you to attend training workshops or classes at Appleton Greene offices. The entire program is undertaken online, program course manuals and project studies are administered via the Appleton Greene web site and via email, so you are able to study at your own pace and in the comfort of your own home or office as long as you have a computer and access to the internet.
How To Study
The how to study guide provides students with a clear understanding of the Appleton Greene facilitation via distance learning training methods and enables students to obtain a clear overview of the training program content. It enables students to understand the step-by-step training methods used by Appleton Greene and how course manuals are integrated with project studies. It explains the research and development that is required and the need to provide evidence and references to support your statements. It also enables students to understand precisely what will be required of them in order to achieve a pass with merit and a pass with distinction for individual project studies and provides useful guidance on how to be innovative and creative when developing your Unique Program Proposition (UPP).
Tutorial Support
Tutorial support for the Appleton Greene Leading IT Transformation corporate training program is provided online either through the Appleton Greene Client Support Portal (CSP), or via email. All tutorial support requests are facilitated by a designated Program Administration Manager (PAM). They are responsible for deciding which professor or tutor is the most appropriate option relating to the support required and then the tutorial support request is forwarded onto them. Once the professor or tutor has completed the tutorial support request and answered any questions that have been asked, this communication is then returned to the student via email by the designated Program Administration Manager (PAM). This enables all tutorial support, between students, professors and tutors, to be facilitated by the designated Program Administration Manager (PAM) efficiently and securely through the email account. You will therefore need to allow a period of up to 20 business days for responses to general support queries and up to 30 business days for the evaluation and assessment of project studies, because all tutorial support requests are answered strictly within the order in which they are received. This does not include weekends or public holidays. Consequently you need to put some thought into the management of your tutorial support procedure in order to ensure that your study plan is feasible and to obtain the maximum possible benefit from tutorial support during your period of study. Please retain copies of your tutorial support emails for future reference. Please ensure that ALL of your tutorial support emails are set out using the format as suggested within your guide to tutorial support. Your tutorial support emails need to be referenced clearly to the specific part of the course manual or project study which you are working on at any given time. You also need to list and number any questions that you would like to ask, up to a maximum of five questions within each tutorial support email. Remember the more specific you can be with your questions the more specific your answers will be too and this will help you to avoid any unnecessary misunderstanding, misinterpretation, or duplication. The guide to tutorial support is intended to help you to understand how and when to use support in order to ensure that you get the most out of your training program. Appleton Greene training programs are designed to enable you to do things for yourself. They provide you with a structure or a framework and we use tutorial support to facilitate students while they practically implement what they learn. In other words, we are enabling students to do things for themselves. The benefits of distance learning via facilitation are considerable and are much more sustainable in the long-term than traditional short-term knowledge sharing programs. Consequently you should learn how and when to use tutorial support so that you can maximize the benefits from your learning experience with Appleton Greene. This guide describes the purpose of each training function and how to use them and how to use tutorial support in relation to each aspect of the training program. It also provides useful tips and guidance with regard to best practice.
Tutorial Support Tips
Students are often unsure about how and when to use tutorial support with Appleton Greene. This Tip List will help you to understand more about how to achieve the most from using tutorial support. Refer to it regularly to ensure that you are continuing to use the service properly. Tutorial support is critical to the success of your training experience, but it is important to understand when and how to use it in order to maximize the benefit that you receive. It is no coincidence that those students who succeed are those that learn how to be positive, proactive and productive when using tutorial support.
Be positive and friendly with your tutorial support emails
Remember that if you forward an email to the tutorial support unit, you are dealing with real people. “Do unto others as you would expect others to do unto you”. If you are positive, complimentary and generally friendly in your emails, you will generate a similar response in return. This will be more enjoyable, productive and rewarding for you in the long-term.
Think about the impression that you want to create
Every time that you communicate, you create an impression, which can be either positive or negative, so put some thought into the impression that you want to create. Remember that copies of all tutorial support emails are stored electronically and tutors will always refer to prior correspondence before responding to any current emails. Over a period of time, a general opinion will be arrived at in relation to your character, attitude and ability. Try to manage your own frustrations, mood swings and temperament professionally, without involving the tutorial support team. Demonstrating frustration or a lack of patience is a weakness and will be interpreted as such. The good thing about communicating in writing, is that you will have the time to consider your content carefully, you can review it and proof-read it before sending your email to Appleton Greene and this should help you to communicate more professionally, consistently and to avoid any unnecessary knee-jerk reactions to individual situations as and when they may arise. Please also remember that the CLP Tutorial Support Unit will not just be responsible for evaluating and assessing the quality of your work, they will also be responsible for providing recommendations to other learning providers and to client contacts within the Appleton Greene global client network, so do be in control of your own emotions and try to create a good impression.
Remember that quality is preferred to quantity
Please remember that when you send an email to the tutorial support team, you are not using Twitter or Text Messaging. Try not to forward an email every time that you have a thought. This will not prove to be productive either for you or for the tutorial support team. Take time to prepare your communications properly, as if you were writing a professional letter to a business colleague and make a list of queries that you are likely to have and then incorporate them within one email, say once every month, so that the tutorial support team can understand more about context, application and your methodology for study. Get yourself into a consistent routine with your tutorial support requests and use the tutorial support template provided with ALL of your emails. The (CLP) Tutorial Support Unit will not spoon-feed you with information. They need to be able to evaluate and assess your tutorial support requests carefully and professionally.
Be specific about your questions in order to receive specific answers
Try not to write essays by thinking as you are writing tutorial support emails. The tutorial support unit can be unclear about what in fact you are asking, or what you are looking to achieve. Be specific about asking questions that you want answers to. Number your questions. You will then receive specific answers to each and every question. This is the main purpose of tutorial support via email.
Keep a record of your tutorial support emails
It is important that you keep a record of all tutorial support emails that are forwarded to you. You can then refer to them when necessary and it avoids any unnecessary duplication, misunderstanding, or misinterpretation.
Individual training workshops or telephone support
Please be advised that Appleton Greene does not provide separate or individual tutorial support meetings, workshops, or provide telephone support for individual students. Appleton Greene is an equal opportunities learning and service provider and we are therefore understandably bound to treat all students equally. We cannot therefore broker special financial or study arrangements with individual students regardless of the circumstances. All tutorial support is provided online and this enables Appleton Greene to keep a record of all communications between students, professors and tutors on file for future reference, in accordance with our quality management procedure and your terms and conditions of enrolment. All tutorial support is provided online via email because it enables us to have time to consider support content carefully, it ensures that you receive a considered and detailed response to your queries. You can number questions that you would like to ask, which relate to things that you do not understand or where clarification may be required. You can then be sure of receiving specific answers to each individual query. You will also then have a record of these communications and of all tutorial support, which has been provided to you. This makes tutorial support administration more productive by avoiding any unnecessary duplication, misunderstanding, or misinterpretation.
Tutorial Support Email Format
You should use this tutorial support format if you need to request clarification or assistance while studying with your training program. Please note that ALL of your tutorial support request emails should use the same format. You should therefore set up a standard email template, which you can then use as and when you need to. Emails that are forwarded to Appleton Greene, which do not use the following format, may be rejected and returned to you by the (CLP) Program Administration Manager. A detailed response will then be forwarded to you via email usually within 20 business days of receipt for general support queries and 30 business days for the evaluation and assessment of project studies. This does not include weekends or public holidays. Your tutorial support request, together with the corresponding TSU reply, will then be saved and stored within your electronic TSU file at Appleton Greene for future reference.
Subject line of your email
Please insert: Appleton Greene (CLP) Tutorial Support Request: (Your Full Name) (Date), within the subject line of your email.
Main body of your email
Please insert:
1. Appleton Greene Certified Learning Provider (CLP) Tutorial Support Request
2. Your Full Name
3. Date of TS request
4. Preferred email address
5. Backup email address
6. Course manual page name or number (reference)
7. Project study page name or number (reference)
Subject of enquiry
Please insert a maximum of 50 words (please be succinct)
Briefly outline the subject matter of your inquiry, or what your questions relate to.
Question 1
Maximum of 50 words (please be succinct)
Maximum of 50 words (please be succinct)
Question 3
Maximum of 50 words (please be succinct)
Question 4
Maximum of 50 words (please be succinct)
Question 5
Maximum of 50 words (please be succinct)
Please note that a maximum of 5 questions is permitted with each individual tutorial support request email.
Procedure
* List the questions that you want to ask first, then re-arrange them in order of priority. Make sure that you reference them, where necessary, to the course manuals or project studies.
* Make sure that you are specific about your questions and number them. Try to plan the content within your emails to make sure that it is relevant.
* Make sure that your tutorial support emails are set out correctly, using the Tutorial Support Email Format provided here.
* Save a copy of your email and incorporate the date sent after the subject title. Keep your tutorial support emails within the same file and in date order for easy reference.
* Allow up to 20 business days for a response to general tutorial support emails and up to 30 business days for the evaluation and assessment of project studies, because detailed individual responses will be made in all cases and tutorial support emails are answered strictly within the order in which they are received.
* Emails can and do get lost. So if you have not received a reply within the appropriate time, forward another copy or a reminder to the tutorial support unit to be sure that it has been received but do not forward reminders unless the appropriate time has elapsed.
* When you receive a reply, save it immediately featuring the date of receipt after the subject heading for easy reference. In most cases the tutorial support unit replies to your questions individually, so you will have a record of the questions that you asked as well as the answers offered. With project studies however, separate emails are usually forwarded by the tutorial support unit, so do keep a record of your own original emails as well.
* Remember to be positive and friendly in your emails. You are dealing with real people who will respond to the same things that you respond to.
* Try not to repeat questions that have already been asked in previous emails. If this happens the tutorial support unit will probably just refer you to the appropriate answers that have already been provided within previous emails.
* If you lose your tutorial support email records you can write to Appleton Greene to receive a copy of your tutorial support file, but a separate administration charge may be levied for this service.
How To Study
Your Certified Learning Provider (CLP) and Accredited Consultant can help you to plan a task list for getting started so that you can be clear about your direction and your priorities in relation to your training program. It is also a good way to introduce yourself to the tutorial support team.
Planning your study environment
Your study conditions are of great importance and will have a direct effect on how much you enjoy your training program. Consider how much space you will have, whether it is comfortable and private and whether you are likely to be disturbed. The study tools and facilities at your disposal are also important to the success of your distance-learning experience. Your tutorial support unit can help with useful tips and guidance, regardless of your starting position. It is important to get this right before you start working on your training program.
Planning your program objectives
It is important that you have a clear list of study objectives, in order of priority, before you start working on your training program. Your tutorial support unit can offer assistance here to ensure that your study objectives have been afforded due consideration and priority.
Planning how and when to study
Distance-learners are freed from the necessity of attending regular classes, since they can study in their own way, at their own pace and for their own purposes. This approach is designed to let you study efficiently away from the traditional classroom environment. It is important however, that you plan how and when to study, so that you are making the most of your natural attributes, strengths and opportunities. Your tutorial support unit can offer assistance and useful tips to ensure that you are playing to your strengths.
Planning your study tasks
You should have a clear understanding of the study tasks that you should be undertaking and the priority associated with each task. These tasks should also be integrated with your program objectives. The distance learning guide and the guide to tutorial support for students should help you here, but if you need any clarification or assistance, please contact your tutorial support unit.
Planning your time
You will need to allocate specific times during your calendar when you intend to study if you are to have a realistic chance of completing your program on time. You are responsible for planning and managing your own study time, so it is important that you are successful with this. Your tutorial support unit can help you with this if your time plan is not working.
Keeping in touch
Consistency is the key here. If you communicate too frequently in short bursts, or too infrequently with no pattern, then your management ability with your studies will be questioned, both by you and by your tutorial support unit. It is obvious when a student is in control and when one is not and this will depend how able you are at sticking with your study plan. Inconsistency invariably leads to in-completion.
Charting your progress
Your tutorial support team can help you to chart your own study progress. Refer to your distance learning guide for further details.
Making it work
To succeed, all that you will need to do is apply yourself to undertaking your training program and interpreting it correctly. Success or failure lies in your hands and your hands alone, so be sure that you have a strategy for making it work. Your Certified Learning Provider (CLP) and Accredited Consultant can guide you through the process of program planning, development and implementation.
Reading methods
Interpretation is often unique to the individual but it can be improved and even quantified by implementing consistent interpretation methods. Interpretation can be affected by outside interference such as family members, TV, or the Internet, or simply by other thoughts which are demanding priority in our minds. One thing that can improve our productivity is using recognized reading methods. This helps us to focus and to be more structured when reading information for reasons of importance, rather than relaxation.
Speed reading
When reading through course manuals for the first time, subconsciously set your reading speed to be just fast enough that you cannot dwell on individual words or tables. With practice, you should be able to read an A4 sheet of paper in one minute. You will not achieve much in the way of a detailed understanding, but your brain will retain a useful overview. This overview will be important later on and will enable you to keep individual issues in perspective with a more generic picture because speed reading appeals to the memory part of the brain. Do not worry about what you do or do not remember at this stage.
Content reading
Once you have speed read everything, you can then start work in earnest. You now need to read a particular section of your course manual thoroughly, by making detailed notes while you read. This process is called Content Reading and it will help to consolidate your understanding and interpretation of the information that has been provided.
Making structured notes on the course manuals
When you are content reading, you should be making detailed notes, which are both structured and informative. Make these notes in a MS Word document on your computer, because you can then amend and update these as and when you deem it to be necessary. List your notes under three headings: 1. Interpretation – 2. Questions – 3. Tasks. The purpose of the 1st section is to clarify your interpretation by writing it down. The purpose of the 2nd section is to list any questions that the issue raises for you. The purpose of the 3rd section is to list any tasks that you should undertake as a result. Anyone who has graduated with a business-related degree should already be familiar with this process.
Organizing structured notes separately
You should then transfer your notes to a separate study notebook, preferably one that enables easy referencing, such as a MS Word Document, a MS Excel Spreadsheet, a MS Access Database, or a personal organizer on your cell phone. Transferring your notes allows you to have the opportunity of cross-checking and verifying them, which assists considerably with understanding and interpretation. You will also find that the better you are at doing this, the more chance you will have of ensuring that you achieve your study objectives.
Question your understanding
Do challenge your understanding. Explain things to yourself in your own words by writing things down.
Clarifying your understanding
If you are at all unsure, forward an email to your tutorial support unit and they will help to clarify your understanding.
Question your interpretation
Do challenge your interpretation. Qualify your interpretation by writing it down.
Clarifying your interpretation
If you are at all unsure, forward an email to your tutorial support unit and they will help to clarify your interpretation.
Qualification Requirements
The student will need to successfully complete the project study and all of the exercises relating to the Leading IT Transformation corporate training program, achieving a pass with merit or distinction in each case, in order to qualify as an Accredited Leading IT Transformation Specialist (ALITTS). All monthly workshops need to be tried and tested within your company. These project studies can be completed in your own time and at your own pace and in the comfort of your own home or office. There are no formal examinations, assessment is based upon the successful completion of the project studies. They are called project studies because, unlike case studies, these projects are not theoretical, they incorporate real program processes that need to be properly researched and developed. The project studies assist us in measuring your understanding and interpretation of the training program and enable us to assess qualification merits. All of the project studies are based entirely upon the content within the training program and they enable you to integrate what you have learnt into your corporate training practice.
Leading IT Transformation – Grading Contribution
Project Study – Grading Contribution
Customer Service – 10%
E-business – 05%
Finance – 10%
Globalization – 10%
Human Resources – 10%
Information Technology – 10%
Legal – 05%
Management – 10%
Marketing – 10%
Production – 10%
Education – 05%
Logistics – 05%
TOTAL GRADING – 100%
Qualification grades
A mark of 90% = Pass with Distinction.
A mark of 75% = Pass with Merit.
A mark of less than 75% = Fail.
If you fail to achieve a mark of 75% with a project study, you will receive detailed feedback from the Certified Learning Provider (CLP) and/or Accredited Consultant, together with a list of tasks which you will need to complete, in order to ensure that your project study meets with the minimum quality standard that is required by Appleton Greene. You can then re-submit your project study for further evaluation and assessment. Indeed you can re-submit as many drafts of your project studies as you need to, until such a time as they eventually meet with the required standard by Appleton Greene, so you need not worry about this, it is all part of the learning process.
When marking project studies, Appleton Greene is looking for sufficient evidence of the following:
Pass with merit
A satisfactory level of program understanding
A satisfactory level of program interpretation
A satisfactory level of project study content presentation
A satisfactory level of Unique Program Proposition (UPP) quality
A satisfactory level of the practical integration of academic theory
Pass with distinction
An exceptional level of program understanding
An exceptional level of program interpretation
An exceptional level of project study content presentation
An exceptional level of Unique Program Proposition (UPP) quality
An exceptional level of the practical integration of academic theory
Preliminary Analysis
Online Article
“Digital Transformation Comes Down to Talent in 4 Key Areas
By
Thomas H. Davenport and Thomas C. Redman
May 21, 2020
Harvard Business Review
Over the years we’ve participated in, advised on, or studied hundreds of digital transformations. In doing so, we’ve gained a perspective on just how difficult true digital transformation really is and what it takes to succeed. Digital transformation is not for the faint of heart — the unfortunate reality is that, to date, many such efforts, like transformation programs in general, have failed.
Success requires bringing together and coordinating a far greater range of effort than most leaders appreciate. A poor showing in any one of four inter-related domains — technology, data, process, or organizational change capability — can scuttle an otherwise well-conceived transformation. The really important stuff, from creating and communicating a compelling vision, to crafting a plan and adjusting it on the fly, to slogging through the details, is all about people.
More than anything else, digital transformation requires talent. Indeed, assembling the right team of technology, data, and process people who can work together — with a strong leader who can bring about change — may be the single most important step that a company contemplating digital transformation can take. Of course, even the best talent does not guarantee success. But a lack of it almost guarantees failure.
Let’s explore the talent needed in each of the four domains in turn.
Technology
From the Internet of Things, to blockchain, to data lakes, to artificial intelligence, the raw potential of emerging technologies is staggering. And while many of these are becoming easier to use, understanding how any particular technology contributes to transformational opportunity, adapting that technology to the specific needs of the business, and integrating it with existing systems is extremely complex. Complicating matters, most companies have enormous technical debt — embedded legacy technologies that are difficult to change. You can only resolve these issues with people who have technological depth and breadth, and the ability to work hand-in-hand with the business.
Challenging as these difficulties are, an even more critical issue is that many business people have lost faith in their IT department’s ability to drive major change, as many IT functions are primarily focused on “keeping the lights on.” Eventually, however, digital transformation must incorporate institutional IT, so rebuilding trust is essential. This means that technologists must provide, and demonstrate, business value with every technology innovation. Thus, leaders of the technology domain must be great communicators, and they must have the strategic sense to make technological choices that balance innovation and dealing with technical debt.
Data
The unfortunate reality is that at many companies today most data is not up to basic standards, and the rigors of transformation require much better data quality and analytics. Transformation almost certainly involves understanding new types of unstructured data (e.g., a driver-supplied picture of damage to a car), massive quantities of data external to your company, leveraging proprietary data, and integrating everything together, all while shedding enormous quantities of data that have never been (and never will be) used. Data presents an interesting paradox: Most companies know data is important and they know quality is bad, yet they waste enormous resources by failing to put the proper roles and responsibilities in place. They often blame their IT functions for all these failures.
As with technology, you need talent with both great breadth and depth in data. Even more important is the ability to convince large numbers of people at the front lines of organizations to take on new roles as data customers and data creators. This means thinking through and communicating the data they need now and the data they’ll need after transformation. It also means helping front-line workers to improve their own work processes and tasks such that they create data correctly.
Process
Transformation requires an end-to-end mindset, a rethinking of ways to meet customer needs, seamless connection of work activities, and the ability to manage across silos going forward. A process orientation is a natural fit with these needs. But many have found process management — horizontally, across silos, and focused on customers — difficult to reconcile with traditional hierarchical thinking. As a result, this powerful concept has languished. Without it, transformation is reduced to a series of incremental improvements — important and helpful, but not truly transformative.
In building talent in this domain look for the ability to “herd cats” — aligning silos in the direction of the customer to improve existing processes and design new ones, and a strategic sense to know when incremental process improvement is sufficient and when radical process reengineering is necessary.”
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Research Article
Frontiers in Psychology
“Preparing Workplaces for Digital Transformation: An Integrative Review and Framework of Multi-Level Factors
The rapid advancement of new digital technologies, such as smart technology, artificial intelligence (AI) and automation, robotics, cloud computing, and the Internet of Things (IoT), is fundamentally changing the nature of work and increasing concerns about the future of jobs and organizations. To keep pace with rapid disruption, companies need to update and transform business models to remain competitive. Meanwhile, the growth of advanced technologies is changing the types of skills and competencies needed in the workplace and demanded a shift in mindset among individuals, teams and organizations. The recent COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated digitalization trends, while heightening the importance of employee resilience and well-being in adapting to widespread job and technological disruption. Although digital transformation is a new and urgent imperative, there is a long trajectory of rigorous research that can readily be applied to grasp these emerging trends. Recent studies and reviews of digital transformation have primarily focused on the business and strategic levels, with only modest integration of employee-related factors.
Our review article seeks to fill these critical gaps by identifying and consolidating key factors important for an organization’s overarching digital transformation. We reviewed studies across multiple disciplines and integrated the findings into a multi-level framework. At the individual level, we propose five overarching factors related to effective digital transformation among employees: technology adoption; perceptions and attitudes toward technological change; skills and training; workplace resilience and adaptability, and work-related wellbeing. At the group-level, we identified three factors necessary for digital transformation: team communication and collaboration; workplace relationships and team identification, and team adaptability and resilience. Finally, at the organizational-level, we proposed three factors for digital transformation: leadership; human resources, and organizational culture/climate. Our review of the literature confirms that multi-level factors are important when planning for and embarking on digital transformation, thereby providing a framework for future research and practice.
Introduction
The rapid advancement of digital technologies such as smart technology, artificial intelligence (AI) and automation, robotics, cloud computing, and the Internet of Things (IoT) is fundamentally changing the nature of work and organizations. Collectively termed the Fourth Industrial Revolution (Schwab, 2015) or Industry 4.0, the speed and scale of current technological change are raising concerns about the extent to which new technologies will radically transform workplaces or displace workers altogether (Acemoglu and Autor, 2011; Frey and Osborne, 2013; Brynjolfsson and McAfee, 2014). The impact of digital disruption on labor markets remains contested, with some predicting substantial job losses through automation within a short time period (Frey and Osborne, 2013; McKinsey and Company, 2017). Others paint a more optimistic picture, predicting that as many new jobs will be created by new technologies as are displaced (Arntz et al., 2017). Nonetheless, the effects of digitalization are already being felt across a number of job roles and industries (Skog et al., 2018) and it is clear that organizations need to integrate new technologies and transform business models to remain competitive (Sebastian et al., 2017). Despite significant academic attention on how digital technology is disrupting job tasks and occupations (e.g., Acemoglu and Autor, 2011; Brynjolfsson and McAfee, 2014), there is less understanding of how workers and organizations can best respond to disruptive technological change. A central concern is how to bolster employee and organizational resilience to disruption from new technologies.
Although digital transformation is a new and urgent imperative, there is a long trajectory of rigorous research across multiple disciplines that can readily be applied to grasp these emerging trends. The impact of technology in the workplace has been studied for several decades (Davis, 1989; Orlikowski, 1992) and has its origins in information systems, psychology, and sociology (Venkatesh et al., 2003), alongside contributions from organizational behavior, management and communications (Huber, 1990; Dewett and Jones, 2001; Orlikowski, 2010). Recently, there has been sharp increase in studies from business and strategic information systems (Matt et al., 2015; Hess et al., 2016), human resources (Bondarouk et al., 2017; Marler and Boudreau, 2017), and healthcare (Agarwal et al., 2010; Burton-Jones et al., 2020), suggesting that digital disruption is increasing in a wider variety of industries and occupations.
In light of the scope and scale of digital transformation we are currently witnessing and the wellspring of diverse and valuable academic perspectives that have emerged to make sense of these changes, we believe that an evidence review of relevant literature is especially timely. Furthermore, we seek to lend greater coherence to our overall understanding of this fast-evolving landscape by taking an integrative approach that seeks to draw linkages across different disciplinary approaches. Hence, we have reviewed studies across disciplines and organized their findings into a holistic, multi-level framework. Our framework identifies and consolidates key factors critical for an organization’s overarching digital transformation at the individual, group, and organizational levels.
Key Dimensions of Digital Transformation
There is a clear business case for digital transformation. By integrating new technologies into strategic processes, digital transformation aims to change business operations, processes, and services (Matt et al., 2015; Hess et al., 2016). In turn, these new digital capabilities can improve performance and expand products, services and customer bases (Westerman et al., 2014; Verhoef et al., 2019), leading to increased sales and profits (Warner and Wäger, 2019). There is consensus that industry-leaders in innovation and digital transformation have a greater competitive advantage and can attract a wider range of customers and employees (Berman, 2012; Chanias et al., 2019). Moreover, organizations that are more responsive to market trends and can adapt quickly to customer demands will also have the “first choice of talent, partners and resources” (Berman, 2012, p. 22). Indeed, competing for skilled employees is often cited as a key challenge to industry and workforce digital transformation (Karacay, 2018). In this way, digital transformation is not only about technology (Kane et al., 2015) but requires a focus on employee factors, alongside shifts in organizational strategy, structures, and processes (Hess et al., 2016).
Digital transformation is a more recent academic concept, although it draws on previous theories of IT-enabled change (Besson and Rowe, 2012; Wessel et al., 2020). While digital transformation is similar to other organizational change processes (e.g., Orlikowski, 1992; Weick and Quinn, 1999), it is a distinct form of organizational change (Hess et al., 2016; Vial, 2019; Wessel et al., 2020). Studies of IT-enabled transformation have identified various factors in the change process, such as organizational inertia, process, agency, and performance (Venkatesh, 2000; Kim and Kankanhalli, 2009; Besson and Rowe, 2012). While prior theory on IT-enabled change can inform the study of digital transformation, recent research suggests that digital transformation is a process of deep, structural change that occurs through the integration of multiple technologies and fundamentally redefines organizational value and identity (Besson and Rowe, 2012; Skog et al., 2018; Wessel et al., 2020).
Defined as a process that “aims to improve an entity by triggering significant changes to its properties through combinations of information, computing, communication, and connectivity technologies” (Vial, 2019, p. 121), digital transformation can occur at the organizational or broader entity-level. However, in contrast to other forms of technological change, digital transformation differs in terms of its scale, speed, and scope (Matt et al., 2015; Hess et al., 2016). When viewed as a process, digital transformation includes three main stages (Verhoef et al., 2019). First, organizations go through digitization, which involves transferring processes and systems, such as paper-based or non-analog systems, into digital formats (Tekic and Koroteev, 2019). Next, digitalization entails further integration and optimization of digital technologies and IT-capabilities to improve processes and add value to existing operations and services (Verhoef et al., 2019). While the different phases of digitization, digitalization, and transformation often overlap, digital transformation is conceived as the final step in the process and is triggered by extensive digital capabilities (Verhoef et al., 2019).
Recent reviews have sought to integrate studies on digital transformation across different disciplines, contexts, and research streams (Hausberg et al., 2019; Vial, 2019) and identify different stages of digital transformation, including key strategies and requirements to facilitate transformation (Verhoef et al., 2019). Some have focused on digital work design and leadership (Cascio and Montealegre, 2016; Cortellazzo et al., 2019) as well as attention to human resource factors, such as the role of Human Resource Development (HRD) professionals in facilitating skills development due to technological change (Chuang and Graham, 2018; Ghislieri et al., 2018). Reviews of industry transformation in the context of manufacturing and Industry 4.0 have focused on process-model automation (Liao et al., 2017) although digital transformation is fast becoming a priority for many other industries. This shift is reflected in the literature, with recent studies and reviews focusing on digitalization and transformation in a range of industries (Chanias et al., 2019; Vial, 2019). Despite these helpful contributions, there has been less integration of how digital transformation impacts workers and organizations across multiple levels.”
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Online Article
“Digital Transformation Is About Talent, Not Technology
By Becky Frankiewicz and Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic
May 06, 2020
Harvard Business Review
As The Economist recently noted, one of the most obvious consequences of the current Covid-19 pandemic will be “the infusion of data-enabled services into ever more aspects of life.” We expect digital transformation to be an even bigger imperative for organizations in the short-term future.
Contrary to popular belief, digital transformation is less about technology and more about people. You can pretty much buy any technology, but your ability to adapt to an even more digital future depends on developing the next generation of skills, closing the gap between talent supply and demand, and future-proofing your own and others’ potential.
As it turns out, most of us end up in jobs and careers for serendipitous reasons, and stay in them for a long time, rarely pausing to rethink our potential: Am I in the right job? Is my career the best fit for by interests and abilities? Would I enjoy my life more if I had chosen something else? Furthermore, while every job requires learning, we are prewired for familiarity, routine, and simplicity, which is why most of us end up learning less on the job, the more time we actually spend on the job. This is good in the short run, because we can do our jobs on autopilot, freeing up mental resources; yet it’s counterproductive in the long run, because what we gain in experience, we miss in new learning opportunities. An even bigger loss is that we may go through our entire working lives without discovering, let alone unlocking, our true potential. As Winston Churchill once said, we should never waste a good crisis.
Perhaps this is the biggest gift of the current pandemic, that it provides us with the opportunity to rethink our potential and ensure that we are positioning ourselves toward the future. To be sure, it is too soon for most people to realize this, yet in the long-term, a significant number of people will likely end up in better careers and look back on their less meaningful and less engaging past careers like someone who looks back without regret on the end of a less fulfilling personal relationship, even one where it wasn’t their choice to exit.
With this in mind, we wanted to provide a few suggestions: some based on science, and some based on our own experiences leading, coaching, and mentoring current and future leaders across a wide range of industries, helping them ready themselves for an even-more-digital future. Our main assumption here is straightforward: While the future is more ambivalent and uncertain than ever, we are confident that a pretty strong bet on the future is to focus on reskilling and upskilling people so that they are better equipped to adjust to change. Just as our past efforts have enabled us to adapt to our more digital and virtual present world (and a non-trivial fact is that we are writing this, and you are probably reading this, in physical isolation), there are few reasons to suggest that this trend will go away or be reversed anytime soon. If anything, an even bigger proportion of jobs, tasks, activities, and careers will find ingenious and novel ways to coexist in the digital world. Here’s how we can all prepare for that eventuality:
• Put people first: Technology is always about doing more with less, yet that combination is effective only if you pair technology with the right human skills. Just as technological disruption has generally led to automation and the elimination of outdated jobs, it has also always created new jobs. This is why innovation is commonly described as creative destruction. But the creative aspect of innovation is entirely dependent on people. If we can leverage human adaptability to reskill and upskill our workforce, then we can simultaneously augment humans and technology. It’s really quite simple: the most brilliant innovation is irrelevant if we are not skilled enough to use it, and even the most impressive human minds will become less useful if they don’t team up with tech. The main implication is that when leaders think about investing in technology, they should first think about investing in the people who can make that technology useful.
• Focus on soft skills: Just as digital transformation is more about people rather than technology, the key technological skills are soft skills rather than hard skills. Sure, the recruitment market is hot for cybersecurity analysts, software engineers, and data scientists. But as we recently argued in our article, “Does Higher Education Still Prepare People for Jobs?”, there’s an even bigger need for people who can be trained in the next wave of IT skills. Paradoxically, higher education is always playing catch up, because where universities perceive employer demand, they follow up with relevant courses and learning programs, creating a future surplus of talent supply in those areas. In our view, the best way to make your organization more data-centric and digital is to selectively invest in those who are most adaptable, curious, and flexible in the first place. Since nobody knows what the key future hard skills will be, the best action is to bet on the people who are most likely to develop them. Our own talent development philosophy is to combine this dual focus on potential for soft skills, and knowledge for hard skills: we select people with high learnability (people with a hungry mind) and match their interests to in-demand skills, while understanding that those hard skills may soon become outdated — so the key is that their curiosity remains intact. Technical competence is temporary, but intellectual curiosity must be permanent.
• Drive change from the top: The idea of bottom-up or grassroots change is both romantic and intuitive, but in reality, change is much more likely to happen if you drive it from the top down. This does not mean that you have to embrace an autocratic or hierarchical structure, or that you need a culture of fear. In fact, it’s a simple matter of leadership, whether transactional or transformational. In the context of digital transformations, the main implication is that you cannot expect big changes or upgrades to your organization unless you start by selecting and developing your top leaders in that vein to begin with. It has never been clearer that leadership — both good and bad — cascades down to impact every single aspect of the organization, with as much as 50% of the variability in group or unit performance being attributable to the individual leader. This is why when we are asked about the single most important factor in determining the effectiveness of an organization’s transformation, our answer is always the same: the CEO or head of the firm. Sure, industry, context, culture, people, legacy, and actual tech all matter, just as resources do. Yet most of these things tend to be rather similar among direct competitors, whereas the mindset, values, integrity, and above all, competence of the most senior leaders will stand out and be the main differentiator. Needless to say, everything in business can be copied except for talent, so if you are looking for impact, do invest in top talent, which is where you will get the most value. The distinguishing feature in the war for talent is always leadership: in-demand skills such as software engineering are what we talk about, yet the key is to find the people who can manage the software engineers and get them to work as a team to outperform other software engineers.
• Make sure you’re acting on data insights: So much of the current discussion on data is focused on AI (artificial intelligence), or specific types of computer intelligence, such as machine learning, deep learning, or natural language processing. These powerful advances in AI are exciting, yet we don’t see them as the main differentiator for future-proofing your organization. A much bigger competitive advantage is to harness valuable data, having the necessary skills to translate that data into meaningful insights, and above all being able to act on those insights. In our view, data without insights are trivial, and insights without action are pointless. We cannot overemphasize the importance of this point, because too many business leaders operate under the false assumption that if they hire smart data scientists or buy fancy AI tools, their problems will go away, or they will somehow become more high-tech. The big difference between Google and the rest, between Amazon and the rest, between Facebook and the rest, is not the brain power of their data scientists, or the actual functionality of their technology (and, yes, we may see them as first-in-class), but their radical data-driven cultures. They have harnessed amazing data assets and have great algorithms to interpret (and monetize) that data, but their key strategic advantage and biggest asset is that they live, breathe, and act according to the data. Data truly is their oxygen, and that is something you cannot buy; you cultivate it, nurture it, and harness it with time — and above all, with leadership (back to point 3).
• If you can’t fail fast, make sure you succeed slowly: The statements that speed is king, that action is key, that perfect is the enemy of good, and that you should be willing and eager to fail fast, have all become clichés in management thinking. But, the only way to adapt to a constantly changing and rapidly disrupted present is to speed up and operate at pace. Of course, there is always a trade-off between speed and quality, so if you cannot fail fast enough — meaning you don’t have a culture in place that tolerates quick experiments with the view that the lessons learned from those failed experiences will make you stronger and smarter, then you need to be sure that your long-term bets are working out. In other words, it’s okay to succeed slowly if you can’t fail fast. At the end of the day, failure is only a strategy for getting to success in the long run, so if you pick another strategy, that’s fine — just make sure you can actually get there. However, remember that few things breed stagnation and a false sense of security like an obsession with success. Indeed, we often hear leaders rationalize their failures with a self-congratulatory “we have learned from our mistakes,” yet it’s much harder to learn from your successes.”
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Course Manuals 1-12
Course Manual 1: Digital Product Managers
Because of the growing relevance of data in decision-making, a stronger customer and design emphasis, and the evolution of software-development processes, the function of the digital product manager is expanding.
Engineering, design, customer success, sales, marketing, operations, financial, legal, and other functions touch a product, and digital product managers are the glue that holds them all together. They not only make the decisions about what gets developed, but they also have a say in how it is built and launched.
Unlike product managers in the past, who were primarily concerned with execution and were evaluated based on project completion dates, today’s product manager is increasingly acting as the product’s mini-CEO. They wear several hats, making trade-off judgments based on a broad knowledge base, and bringing together cross-functional teams to ensure alignment between various roles. Product management is also becoming a new training ground for future tech CEOs.
It’s vital that organizations outside of the technology sector get the digital product-management job right as more companies seek to establish software capabilities for success in the digital era.
Why you need a digital product manager who thinks and acts like a CEO
A combination of advancements in technology, development processes, and the ways in which consumers make purchases have prompted the rise of the mini-CEO product manager. They make a compelling case for a well-rounded product manager who is more outside focused and spends less time managing day-to-day engineering execution while maintaining technical respect.
Data dominates everything
Companies today have vast amounts of internal and external data to draw upon when making product decisions. It’s natural for product managers, who are closest to the data, to expand their responsibilities. Product success can also be monitored at a granular level across a broader set of metrics (engagement, retention, conversion, and so on), and product managers can be given broad control over those indicators.
Products are built differently
Product managers now work at two speeds: daily or weekly feature releases and a six- to 24-month product roadmap. Instead of spending time up front creating long requirements, product managers must work directly with various teams to get feedback and iterate regularly.
Products and their ecosystems are becoming more complex
While software-as-a-service solutions are becoming more user-friendly, with modular features rather than a single monolithic release, product managers are finding them increasingly challenging. Multiple bundles, pricing levels, dynamic pricing, up-sell channels, and pricing strategy must now be handled by managers. With expectations of new features, frequent improvements, and upgrades after purchase, life cycles are growing more complex. Simultaneously, the value of the surrounding ecosystem is increasing: modern products are becoming more and more merely one component of a larger ecosystem of linked services and industries. As a result, responsibility for business development and marketing have shifted to product managers. Product managers will now be responsible for handling the application programming interface (API) as a product, as well as discovering and owning key relationships, managing the developer ecosystem, and more.
Changes in the ‘execution pod’
In addition to developers and testers, product-development teams include operations, analytics, design, and product marketers who collaborate closely in “execution pods” to improve software development speed and quality. The DevOps methodology is reducing organizational silos in many software companies, allowing product managers to acquire greater cross-functional insights and more effectively arrive at viable product solutions.
Consumerization of IT and the elevated role of design
Business customers are increasingly expecting a better experience from corporate software as smooth, user-friendly consumer software pervades our lives. The modern product manager must have a thorough understanding of the client. This entails obsessing over usage numbers and cultivating consumer empathy through internet channels, one-on-one interviews, and shadowing exercises to observe, listen, and learn how people use and experience things in real life.
Three archetypes of the mini-CEO product manager
The mini-CEO typology has three frequent profiles: technologists, generalists, and business-oriented. These three profiles represent the mini-CEO product manager’s major, but not exclusive, focus; like any CEO, they operate across numerous areas (for instance, a technologist product manager will be expected to be on top of key business metrics). Today’s technology firms are made up of a mix of technologists and generalists (Exhibit 1).
The project manager is a vanishing character, observed mostly at legacy product firms as these three archetypes arise. An engineering manager, program manager, or scrum master is now in charge of day-to-day engineering execution. With one product manager to eight to twelve engineers, vs one product manager to four or five engineers in the past, this allows for better leverage.
Common themes across the three archetypes
All product managers are known for their tremendous attention on the client. Product managers at Amazon, for example, are entrusted with writing press releases from the perspective of customers in order to crystalize what they expect buyers would think about a product before it is produced. This press release then functions as the product’s approval procedure.
However, there are distinctions in how product managers interact with users. While a technologist might spend time chatting to other developers at industry conferences or reading Hacker News, a generalist will most likely spend that time interviewing customers, talking to the sales staff, or studying usage analytics.
A new training ground for CEOs
The new CEO pipeline for Internet businesses is increasingly being filled by modern product managers. Sundar Pichai, Satya Nadella, and Marissa Mayer were product managers before becoming CEOs of Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo, and they learned how to influence and lead teams by shepherding projects from strategy to development to launch and beyond. Beyond IT, product management knowledge is valuable: PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi began her career at Johnson & Johnson and Mettur Beardsell, a textile manufacturer.
While such experience is still uncommon among CEOs today, product-management rotational programs are the new leadership development programs for many technology firms (for example, see the Facebook Rotational Product Manager Program, the Google Associate Product Manager Program, and the Dropbox Rotation Program). Any critic of the CEO/product manager connection will point out that product managers lack direct profit-and-loss duties and armies of direct subordinates, therefore product managers with C-suite ambitions should transfer into general management to extend their expertise.
The product manager of the future
We expect the product-management role to continue to evolve over the next three to five years, with a stronger focus on data (without losing empathy for customers) and a greater influence on non-product choices.
Future product managers will be analytics experts who will rely less on analysts for simple inquiries. They’ll be able to swiftly build up a Hadoop cluster on AWS, pull use data, analyze it, and make conclusions. They’ll know how to use machine-learning principles and techniques that are expressly developed to help product managers make better decisions.
According to McKinsey, most modern product managers will spend at least 30% of their time on external activities such as customer engagement and the partner ecosystem. As the consumerization of IT proceeds, B2B product managers will contact directly with end users rather than collecting feedback through numerous layers of sales and middlemen.
Similarly, future product managers’ backgrounds will change to reflect this new role. A strong foundation in computer science will be necessary, but it will be reinforced with design experience and courses. Product managers will be able to swiftly prototype a product or feature using mockups and frameworks and APIs. Typically, product managers begin their careers as engineers or as part of a rotational program. They might acquire an executive or full-time MBA with an emphasis in product management after three to four years, which is becoming a focus at several top-tier MBA institutions and which we expect to become more popular.
Frequent migrations between products and even businesses will be a crucial feature of a future product manager’s profile. “For success at our organization, it is vital that you are continually learning not only new technologies but also new business models,” a product manager at a large B2B technology firm stated. As a result, we hire a lot of people from Google, Amazon, and VMware on the side, and we encourage our product managers to rotate between different products.”
Redefining your product-management function
McKinsey recommend that organizations begin with a thorough assessment of their current product-management capabilities in six areas: a grounding in customer experience, market orientation, business acumen, technical skills, soft skills, and the presence of organizational enablers. Companies typically focus on being best in class in one to three areas and meeting the bar across the board (Exhibit 2).
Exhibit 2
Once a company’s product-management skills have been developed, it often takes one of two paths: acquiring new talent in strategic areas or investing in a wide capability-building program for current staff. A field-and-forum method, in which product managers work on real projects with constant mentoring and feedback, has proven to be the most effective.
In today’s digital era, software development must be a strategic focus for all businesses. Product managers are critical because they serve as the link between software engineering teams and the rest of the company. At leading technology companies, distinct archetypes have formed that can help organizations build new digital capabilities.
Course Manual 2: Security & Risk Advisors
Cyber threats (Ransomware, Phishing, Data Leakage, Hacking) are a constant and persistent threat to businesses, especially when they engage on the digital transformation road. The concern for businesses is no longer IF a cyberattack will occur, but WHEN a cyberattack will occur. This Security & Risk Advisor (s) must ensure that the business is prepared to respond to a cyber assault effectively. A serious cyber assault can result in significant and irreversible loss and reputational damage (effect on brand value and consumer loyalty). As a result, necessary policies must be created and written. The team is also critical in making decisions on process changes, automation, and data access, among other things.
What Is Digital Risk Management and How Does It Work?
When it comes to digital change, many firms have historically been slow. Manual methods were still appropriate for many teams’ needs, but they were inconvenient, and many firms didn’t want to deal with the cost, inconvenience, or hiring and training requirements that come with switching to a new system or process. In fact, according to Forrester, only 15% of businesses were “digitally savvy” prior to last year.
Things have changed in the aftermath of the COVID-19 outbreak, and Forrester expects that all firms will increase their investment in technology projects, including security, risk, network, cloud, and mobility solutions. Prioritizing digital transformation allows businesses to expand faster, become more productive, and have better data access.
While digital transformation can benefit a wide range of tasks, such as workflow process automation and increased quality control insights, it can also be quite useful for improving risk management.
What is the definition of digital risk management?
Cybersecurity risk, third-party risk, operational risk, and several other types of risk are all examples of digital risk management. These dangers can have an influence on the company’s financial performance, operations, and reputation, as well as the IT transformation process.
Process automation, decision automation, digitized monitoring, and early warning systems are all examples of digital risk management solutions, and they may provide in-depth analytics to assist your firm better monitor its compliance status and current danger level for all risk elements.
Why make the switch from manual to digital?
Many firms haven’t updated their risk management systems in many years, relying instead on manual review processes to monitor risks and ensure regulatory compliance. This approach is inefficient, as it requires duplication and redundancy across teams and departments, and it offers a lot of possibility for human mistake. It forces your subject matter experts to fill out spreadsheets, crunch figures, and answer to emails instead of doing the high-level strategic work that will propel your company forward.
As a result, threats may not be discovered in time, resulting in security breaches and other hazards that could have been avoided if an automated early warning system had been in place. This can seriously harm both your operating efficiency and the reputation of your company. Regulatory criteria may also be disregarded, resulting in fines and penalties from the government.
You may break down barriers and ensure that your teams can communicate with one another by digitizing your risk management process. The correct digital risk management solution will give you clear visibility into existing dangers as well as any necessary remediations, cutting down on the time it takes to respond to threats. You can also rely on digitized self-reporting and automatic notifications for many compliance requirements, enhancing workplace efficiency and compliance throughout the firm, rather than dispatching compliance managers to undertake constant site checks.
A digital risk management solution is an integrated platform that allows distant teams to obtain customized perspectives tailored to their specific requirements. It also has a detailed dashboard that displays compliance status, risk levels, and required actions. Your team may automate most of the data analysis work that was previously done manually by using industry-standard and proprietary algorithms. Employees can also assume responsibility for self-reporting on compliance evaluations, allowing compliance managers to focus on strategic objectives rather than onerous reporting.
A digital risk management solution powered by artificial intelligence can help a company increase efficiencies, acquire better data insights, and identify and mitigate dangers more quickly.
A digital risk management solution’s key features
For managing and mitigating risk exposure, businesses can employ one or more software tools. A technology solution for risk management should have the following features:
• Automated risk assessment – Based on monitored risk indicators, a digital risk management system should deliver ongoing automated risk assessments for your organization’s recognized risks. For example, one critical risk indication may be the percentage of scheduled maintenance tasks, such as software patching, that did not occur—if this figure exceeds a predetermined threshold, the system will send out an early warning signal to the appropriate managers.
• Risk prioritization – Your solution should allow you to quantify your risk appetite as well as the implications of each foreseeable risk, and then prioritize your mitigation efforts accordingly.
• Real-time risk reporting – Your solution should be able to interface with real-time data streams, which could include information like system outage warnings, credit risk reports, and other industry- and risk-specific data.
• Operational controls (1LoD), risk management and compliance (2LoD), and risk assurance (3LoD) are traditionally the three lines of defense (3LoD). In many firms, the three lines work separately, which might result in redundancies or miscommunication between them. An integrated digital risk management solution will unite the 3LoD operations into a single team, ensuring that all three lines have access to the same data and that all metrics are scored using the same scoring methodology.
• Intuitive for all users – A digital risk management system should be intuitive for all users across all 3LoD functions, not just specialized technical employees. Set triggers, respond to alarms, and acquire pertinent analytics data for future review should be simple for your team members. This will assist you in creating a more collaborative workplace and providing your team with the resources necessary to lead with a defined approach.
In an era of uncertainty, with cybersecurity risks growing by the day, implementing a best-in-class risk management system is important for safeguarding your company’s long-term viability and success. You’ll be well-prepared to make the most of technology to keep your organization safe from any attack if you choose a digital risk management system.
5 Cyber Risk Management Tips
All aspects of an organization, from legal to HR to IT to operations, are concerned about cybersecurity.
A data breach may be damaging for your entire firm, not just your technology team, and can have long-term consequences. You may need to shut down operations altogether for a period of time, depending on the severity of the breach, which might result in customer and revenue loss.
65 percent of data breach victims have lost trust in the organization that was breached, therefore reputational damage is a major problem. Companies that accidentally reveal personal information may be subject to multimillion-dollar class-action lawsuits. In terms of financial consequences, a data breach in the United States costs approximately $4 million on average.
Compliance with industry regulations is an excellent place to start when it comes to protecting your company. However, compliance alone is no longer sufficient. It’s not about checking a box; it’s about being aware of new and emerging risks, controlling existing risks, and streamlining the process. As a result, it’s critical to be proactive in monitoring and controlling your cyber risk.
As an example, With little time to prepare or set up new network security protocols, the COVID-19 outbreak prompted an abrupt and broad move to a distributed office environment. In 20% of the firms examined, this resulted in a security breach.
This is an excellent example of a risk that may have been detected earlier. The threat might not have been a global epidemic, but rather one of business continuity—are the necessary systems, tools, and processes in place if the workplace becomes unreachable for whatever reason? If not, how will this impact the company? This is an example of a risk-based cybersecurity approach.
It’s critical to take a strategic approach to identifying potential risks to your firm in order to remain ahead of future cybersecurity threats (including internal, third-party, infrastructure-based, and Act of God scenarios). You’ll be well-prepared to recover swiftly in practically any circumstance if you identify each particular risk and develop measures for minimizing and remediating it.
A cybersecurity strategy based on risk
The following are five stages to include risk management into your cybersecurity efforts:
1. Use analytics and risk scoring – Make a list of all of your potential dangers and assign them a high, medium, or low risk rating. Then decide how much risk you’re willing to take and how much you’re willing to invest to mitigate hazards beyond that. Apply and monitor your risk rating using a software platform with data analytics, and set up automated notifications when risk begins to move in an unfavorable manner. This post will walk you through the eight steps you may use to plan your cyber risk assessment.
2. Create a cyber risk committee – Identify risk owners across the organization. Typically, the Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) will serve as the executive in charge of managing cyber risk as a whole, with several teams and job responsibilities monitoring and managing specific threats. For example, IT may be in charge of managing and monitoring infrastructure and networks, while your security team may be in charge of establishing data access rules and monitoring risks. To serve on a cyber risk committee that reports to your board of directors, gather important leaders from each relevant department. This committee should be in charge of not only monitoring active hazards, but also analyzing the cybersecurity program’s ongoing needs, allocating resources, and changing regulations in accordance with your organization’s goals.
3. Take a phased approach – Take a staged approach to risk management, based on your existing money and resources, rather than trying to make numerous large strategic changes at once. Work with the risk management committee to understand the risk landscape, and use their priority list to help you develop a strategic risk management roadmap that includes a timescale for change. This will assist you in determining the resources (people, technology, and processes) required to implement change over time.
4. Make your cybersecurity endeavors the center of attention – After you’ve created a comprehensive cybersecurity risk management plan, inform the rest of your firm about your efforts. Start by updating your policies to reflect changes in standard processes, and implement departmental training programs to ensure that everyone knows what they’ll be doing. Once your organization is on board, you can spread the news to your clients and partners by exhibiting your cybersecurity initiatives, giving you a competitive advantage. Here’s where your reporting analytics can help: You’ll be able to demonstrate to your board as well as external partners and customers that your cybersecurity risk management initiatives have had a significant impact by focusing on data points like risk reduction speed.
5. Determine which automation tools will assist you in risk management – Human experience will help with cyber risk management, but automation and data analytics tools will be required to establish a sophisticated program that closely tracks your risk level in real time. Focus on finding a tool that will be intuitive to users without specific training, so it can be utilized across lines of business when selecting a solution. The tool should analyze emerging dangers using real-time data streams and anonymously exchange information as incidents and threats arise. It should include data for investment vs. impact to assist you determine your return on investment for each mitigation strategy.
You’ll be in a great position to detect and respond to any attacks as soon as they arise, rather than months later, if you shift away from a compliance focus and establish a cybersecurity plan tailored to your company’s particular risk profile.
This will assist your company avoid the operational issues and reputational harm that significant breaches may create, as well as help you stay competitive in your sector in the long run. It will also help with the IT transformation process. You can operate a cost-effective risk management program that produces results by leveraging technology that helps you not only assess risks but also analyze the expenses involved with mitigating them.
Course Manual 3: Internal Communications
Communication, openness, and an inclusive culture are all important factors in DT’s success. Internal communications is critical in keeping everyone informed about the progress and business impact of DT, including stakeholders, top management, and the entire organisation. Given the numerous DT journeys / projects running concurrently, it is critical to provide employees with a sense of the wider picture and how DT will lead the company to profitability, higher market share, new solutions/products, and improved customer/ employee experience. Internal communications can distribute internal blogs, films, mailers, graphics/posters, and guarantee that such themes are discussed at town hall meetings. Employees should grasp the initiative’s business aim, the impact of technology, what changes are coming, and why they should adopt them.
The Importance of Internal Communication (IC) in Digital Transformation
Source: Firstup.io
Internal communications departments are critical to employees’ participation in the digital transformation process.
When it comes to digital transformation, it’s not about enlightening half of the workforce, or even 80% of the workforce. If you want the process to work, everyone must be on the same page.
The following are 15 ways that internal communication might help you with your digital transformation:
1. Goals and advantages should be communicated.
You must explain why the change is being done if you want your staff to comprehend and embrace it. Digital transformation benefits and aspirations should be communicated to all employees within the organisation by IC departments.
2. Changes in company culture should be supported
According to research, fostering cultural change is the most difficult aspect of digital transformation.
Furthermore, 97 percent of businesses believe cultural change is critical for digital transformation, with 63 percent saying it is extremely important and 34% saying it is somewhat important.
Internal communications are critical for creating cultural change, which aids corporate transformation and makes change management easier.
3. Encourage cross-departmental cooperation
Interdepartmental collaboration, according to most executives, is a must-have for successful digital transformation. As a result, internal communications departments must make an effort to promote cross-departmental collaboration and ensure that everyone is on the same page.
4. Dismantle organisational barriers
Interdepartmental collaboration can lead to silos in large organisations. It might be difficult to communicate across departments without the right technologies.
Internal communications’ role is to facilitate these discussions and break down barriers.
5. Boost staff motivation
Lack of communication leads to a lack of participation. Internal communications should therefore seek to keep employees informed and engaged prior to, during, and after the changes are implemented.
6. Manage employee pushbacks and opposition
People prefer their routines and may be uncomfortable with changes. Furthermore, 62% of employees say they loathe being pushed out of their comfort zone.
As a result, resistance from employees is common throughout digital transformation efforts.
The goal is for corporate communications departments to lead and support consistency and transparency. Throughout the process, employees should be kept informed and involved.
7. Employee empowerment
Employees are more engaged when they feel empowered. Employee empowerment should be facilitated by empowering employees to make decisions and express their own opinions and ideas through internal communications.
8. Encourage knowledge sharing.
Sharing knowledge is an excellent strategy to accelerate digital transformation efforts. Some employees pick up new processes and learn them faster than others. As a result, internal communications should encourage employees to share their skills throughout the digital transformation process.
However, without the correct tools, knowledge sharing is difficult, and the use of ineffective technologies is the primary reason why employees do not share information. Internal communication solutions that are mobile-first, such as Smarp, are designed to make it simple for employees to transmit and share information.
9. Boost workplace flexibility
Workplaces that are not agile face significant challenges in adopting digital transformation. IC’s task is to foster a culture of agility and flexibility.
Managers and leaders must not simply communicate the value of agility to their teams. This is an attitude that the entire organisation should adopt in order to achieve success.
10. Provide access to information
Internal communications is responsible for keeping staff informed and making all information available to them at all times.
The average employee spends 2.5 hours each day looking for information, and they frequently miss critical information. This is not acceptable during the digital transformation process. Employee dissatisfaction and pushback can be caused by poor internal communications.
11. Encourage employee involvement
Do you have any internal influencers or workers who have huge social media followings? What these individuals say and believe often has a greater impact than what CEOs and other C-level executives say.
Internal communications should identify and encourage these influencers to become advocates for new technology adoption.
Consider this: businesses that invest in technology are 43 percent more likely to attract and retain talent. Wouldn’t it be fantastic if your staff could publicly discuss your digital transformation efforts?
12. Encourage team cooperation
The success of digital transformation is largely determined by teamwork. Leaders must encourage, drive, and support team cooperation throughout the digital transformation processes, with the help of internal communications teams.
13. Reward and recognize
Employee engagement in the digital transformation process can also be boosted by creating recognition and rewards programmes.
Employees that embrace new methods and become engaged should be commended. You can establish a set of new employee behaviours that are required for change acceptance and reward those who adopt them.
14. Establish a sense of urgency
Employees may not be motivated to comply if there is no sense of urgency. Internal communications is responsible for instilling a sense of urgency among various divisions and geographic regions, as this sense of urgency should be created company-wide.
15. Use the appropriate communication technology
As previously said, successful digital transformation and change management operations require the appropriate internal communication tools.
When looking for a solution, consider the following questions:
• Is the solution simple to implement?
• Is the solution suitable for mobile?
• Is the data readily available and shareable?
• Is it possible to modify internal communication based on your workers’ job titles and languages spoken?
• Is the solution promoting knowledge sharing among employees?
• Is the solution appealing to employees, and will they want to utilise it?
• Is the solution effective in improving interdepartmental communication?
• Is the solution safe for your data?
6 Key Pillars of Connected Work for Creating Connected Organizations
Understanding the underlying goal is critical to supporting an Internal Communications leader’s transformation programme. That is, collaborative work.
Connected work will be a crucial differentiator for successful firms in the future of work, as well as the cornerstone for effective digital transformation. But how does this work appear? What can companies do to prepare?
Source: www.linezero.com
1. Open – By breaking down organisational silos and encouraging teamwork and company-wide communication, open communication promotes cultural change.
2. Mobile – The usage of mobile tools is required by a changing workforce. Instant messaging and chatbots make mobile work easier and more pleasurable.
3. Visual – Mobile video is the next natural language. Leadership teams are more accessible and engaging when they use live video.
4. Integrated – As the number of workplace apps grows, work becomes increasingly fragmented and insecure. Integration is essential for more efficient teamwork.
5. Ubiquitous – By connecting everyone in a business, all employees will have a voice, resulting in increased productivity and performance.
6. Personalized – As the rate of information grows, personalization helps us understand what’s vital while filtering out the noise.
These traits are the foundations of digital transformation, and each has an impact on internal communications. The flow of information is quickening.
1. Open by Default
Open by Default aims to break down organisational walls and borders, provide individuals with faster access to information, and enable them feel more connected to the business mission and their coworkers.
In 2010, Facebook was run using email, IRC, and distribution lists. Because they appeared to work well, we didn’t think they were closed forms of communication.
How did Facebook go from a closed culture of email threads and 1:1 discussion to a culture of openness so quickly? In Groups, you may share, post, and comment on content. Colleagues were easier to reach. Finding possible colleagues was significantly easier. Executives were more accessible.
This increased not only company-wide communication and cooperation, but it also had a huge impact on culture, which continues to this day. Nearly 85% of Gen Yers believe that having more regular conversations with their superiors would boost their confidence. While 62% of people say that if an employer responds to both positive and negative online feedback, their view of the company improves. It’s apparent how open, transparent communication through an internal communication platform may have a significant positive impact on culture and digital transformation.
2. Designing for Mobile
Every business should embrace technology that allows employees to finish tasks quickly and stay connected no matter where they are. As a result, mobile by design will be the norm for connected enterprises.
Perhaps the most crucial mobile tool is messaging. Mobile-first messaging apps aren’t simply useful; they’re also becoming increasingly vital for getting work done.
Workplace chat isn’t just for text messaging; it can be used for everything from phone calls to video conferencing, all with the click of a mouse. We know how important this multipurpose feature is to executives because 46% of senior executives say video interactions are a regular part of their day.
Furthermore, if the future employment is mobile, it will be automated. Chatbots are at the heart of Workplace Chat for this reason.
Due to poor technology, workers can spend up to 40 minutes per day at work.
Bots help to speed up processes by automating laborious or repetitive tasks like checking pay stubs, obtaining IT help, reporting problems, and booking time off. They can also express gratitude, provide reminders, and automate entire processes such as hiring and onboarding.
Bots make working on mobile not only more convenient, but also more entertaining. That’s what happens when humans are at the centre of technology.
3. Visual by Nature
Why is video so useful in the workplace? It appeals to us for the same reason it appeals to us in our personal lives: it attracts attention. Consumers watch video in the News Feed for five times longer than they do photographs or text updates, according to linezero’s research. As the volume of information at work continues to expand, moving pictures remain the most powerful tool we have to break through the noise and acquire those crucial insights.
Senior executives can use live videos to broadcast town halls, weekly business updates, breaking news, or simply streaming live from their morning jog to the entire organisation.
4. Utilize Technology
The average marketing department in a large firm uses over 90 different apps to get job done. However, how many of these apps collaborate? How many have been security-vetted by IT? What metrics do you use to assess impact and ROI?
Integration will be incorporated into the most effective tools in connected businesses from the outset.
5. Continual Connections
Internal communication is frequently restricted to individuals having a computer and an email address. However, our working methods have evolved.
We can finally create ubiquitous workplace tools with mobile: technology that can connect everyone across an organisation – no matter who they are, no matter where they are – giving everyone a voice who was previously out of reach of traditional IT.
Multi-Company Groups and Chat substantially improve the speed and ease with which people from different companies communicate. Whether you’re a consumer and a media agency, a lease holder and a facilities management company, or any other type of company that works with agencies or partners, it’s now easier to engage with them.
6. Individualized Information
Although time is a precious resource, many firms waste it. One of the primary challenges is that the rate at which information is transmitted is increasing. How do we tell what’s valuable from what’s just noise when we’re surrounded by so much stuff?
Organizations can begin by ensuring that the tools we use (and the information we receive) are tailored to our specific needs.
Case Study
NatWest: Turning colleagues into vloggers
Over 17 million customers are served by NatWest Personal Banking’s 28k employees. When the Comms team needed to update their internal TV show, Watch, they didn’t just make a simple change; they went back to the drawing board. What was the outcome? Bee Vloggers is an interesting new employee vlogger channel.
They launched auditions to find Natwest’s seven Bee Vloggers and turned these coworkers into mini-celebrities, with the help of McCann Synergy. Regularly recording 2-minute vlogs on topics ranging from product updates to community news. Bee Vloggers got an award at Engage Employee for their innovative, engaging approach, which was well received by coworkers. In fact, it’s prompted departments throughout the company to start their own vlogs!
Why they like it: It embraces a novel approach to connecting employees. By using YouTube-style bite-sized content, NatWest has created a new channel that really is by colleagues, for colleagues. It’s been winning internal communication awards all year!
Course Manual 4: System Integrators
System integrators can help you personalise the employee experience by recommending the best hardware, software, networking, and storage options. The process of digital transformation is not one-size-fits-all. System integrators assist in the creation of a highly specialised solution that satisfies the organization’s specific needs and major business objectives.
Businesses can rely on a systems integrator to help them successfully mix preconfigured elements and off-the-shelf software at a fraction of the cost of more expensive implementations that frequently need original programming or manufacturing unique components. This is a big benefit when it comes to rapid transition. The digital transformation process is not only time-consuming, but also expensive, with businesses spending more than $2 trillion on it. A system integrator can help organisations decrease their transformation costs if they need to act quickly.
What exactly does a system integrator do?
To understand what a system integrator is, this type of engineer constructs a computing system for clients using software, hardware, and other storage materials. A system integrator assembles subsystems into a single integrated solution and performs activities such as obtaining subsystems from numerous contractual providers, analysing information technology requirements, and building an in-house solution. To thrive as a system integrator, you may need a broad set of technical talents in software development as well as problem-solving abilities.
What is a system integrator’s role?
In essence, a system integrator is in charge of connecting component subsystems and ensuring that they work as a cohesive one. You’re in charge of ensuring that computer systems and networks run properly, with other professionals such as system administrators. The following are some major responsibilities that illustrate what a system integrator does so that you may better comprehend the role:
Solution design, implementation, and integration
System integrators design, develop, synthesise, and implement technological solutions that are specific to an organization’s needs. System integrators work with other information technology specialists to analyse and authenticate software before integrating it into an organization’s principal system and networking architecture. System integrators also develop engineering blueprints, technical instructions, technical drawings, and other documents related to system integration for team members.
Assisting clients with solutions and assistance
System integration jobs are extremely technical and require someone with previous client-facing expertise. As a system integrator, your job is to evaluate and recommend integration alternatives depending on the client’s needs and preferences. You should anticipate to work closely with the organization’s management, administration, and legal staff to ensure that the solutions provided are lawful. You can anticipate to provide clients with post-installation and integration support as part of your job. This can involve everything from troubleshooting to upgrading to general system maintenance.
Server security is maintained
System administrators ensure that servers are safe, well-maintained, and free of viruses and defects, in addition to doing basic tasks such as creating user accounts, installing software, and monitoring system performance. You can start, stop, and resume the organization’s servers as needed, as well as inspect the settings and configuration. System administrators are also in charge of deploying service modules and online applications, as well as staff training for server shutdown and startup.
Creating a testing strategy, plan, and scenarios
The computer infrastructure is growing increasingly complicated. While system administrators ensure that an organization’s network system and computers are up to date and in compliance with the most recent technical developments, system integrators must regularly evaluate the system’s compatibility and spot any potential problems or weaknesses. To guarantee that everything is traceable and covered, you can set the plan, strategy, and scenarios for testing methods. If any problems arise during test run, report them using a configuration management tool and keep an eye on them until they are rectified.
Process documentation
A system integrator collects and organises documents and data related to integration principles. Produce documentation for the system’s installation, testing, and administration. Once you’ve completed the system integration, validation, and performance tests, offer documentation. In the long run, this provides for better tracking and handover.
What role do systems integrators play in digital transformation?
Every company on the planet is currently working out what it means to digital.
As a result, it’s no wonder that clients are increasingly turning to SIs for help with digital transformation. They require assistance in adopting new technologies and technology, such as cloud computing, digitising sales, connecting machines, and altering their IT application environment.
Because many of these customers lack the means and capabilities to do this in-house, SIs have a great and exciting opportunity to go beyond their typical infrastructure and application integration expertise and help customers with their digital transformation. In fact, we anticipate a 10% annual growth rate for SIs over the next few years as they begin to fill this new market need.
Simultaneously, SIs face new challenges that they must conquer if they are to advance. So, what’s holding them back?
New problems require strong partners
For starters, the pandemic has hastened organisations’ transition to a future of work in which people are dispersed across the workplace, at home, and on the go. In this new context, SIs will need to figure out how to interact effectively with their customers. Furthermore, while IT integration has long been a strong strength for these organisations, the quick shift to cloud necessitates a much more modular and software-driven approach to integration.
Because most SIs lack their own network, they rely on telecom service providers to provide network connectivity, infrastructure management, and security services, which are generally spread over numerous locations throughout the world. SIs will require strong partners in the infrastructure and application platform area if they want to shift their attention higher up the stack and swiftly produce greater value at the top of the value chain.
SIs should seek for two essential traits in a partner if they’re going to successfully supply innovative new solutions to help their customers digitally change, given this demand for support:
1. A trustworthy partner
Any strong, long-lasting partnership requires trust. A trustworthy partner will meet their promises the first time and every time, adhere to all agreed-upon timeframes, and build their proposals and pricing around you, not the other way around. They must also provide total transparency into how they work, such as a clear deployment strategy and real-time insight into what they’re doing at any given time. Finally, a trust-based relationship means that partners can rely on one another to expand their business.
2. A partner who is fully integrated into your processes
A good partner should not only be good at what they do, but also understand your business strategy and seamlessly integrate their services. The partner’s offerings must be complementary to yours. They must have a dedicated commercial staff that can quickly turn around appealing ideas while also engaging with you early in major negotiations. Their designs should be compatible with your overall architecture, and their service delivery methodology should be compatible with your ITSM strategy. If a customer has a problem, you’ll have complete visibility into the situation and be able to promptly handle and troubleshoot issues.
The role of the System Integrator (SI) in a large-scale digital transformation project
System integration (SI) is a method of connecting an organization’s multiple IT systems and applications so that they function together in a coordinated and uniform manner. The role of the System Integrator is to bring together all of the key pieces of the systems into a working whole that is both fit for purpose and suitable for the future. This allows several distinct components from various vendors to function together as one.
Some customers don’t adapt their systems to utilise their company’s particular business requirements, while others over-customize their systems and integrations, resulting in exorbitant implementation and maintenance costs. SI ensures that technical partners are capable of completing important aspects of the integrated solution delivery and addressing their specific business needs.
Source: www.fieldengineer.com
Assurance of Design
SI will create a solution that allows global processes to work together and cross-program handoffs. Maintenance is an example of such a process, in which financial operations are maintained in one system and maintenance service procedures are enabled in another, and both systems must function in concert, exchanging data in an automatic manner.
Outlining functional interaction between key components, identifying integrations required for data exchanges between various processes, identifying areas / issues that require customization, identifying number of master/reference data, providing standardisation for common processes through template definition, functional design for global processes followed by solution design, and creating integration are some of the steps SI will take to complete this work.
Across process, data, and integration, the integrated solution adheres to specified architectural principles and standards. This includes simplicity, efficiency, and the required agility. Each of the technical partners contributes to the solution architecture by providing integration patterns, APIs, data sets, and use case inputs. The level 3 and 4 processes, as well as business needs, influence Solution Design (SD) for global design processes.
Assurance of Programs
SI provides programme governance, which includes establishing and monitoring the plan and its related dependencies, as well as test governance. The integrated environment plan, integrated test plan, and integrated release plan are all created and managed by them. SI holds monthly meetings to guarantee that sub-programmes can discuss cross-program dependencies.
Potential Obstacles
Because there are so many moving parts in a huge change effort, there will always be jitters and obstacles. Every digital transformation programme may face different problems, but I’d like to focus on a few common ones.
The first issue may arise as a result of the varied delivery speeds of separate sub-programmes. Priorities and the rate at which separate sub-programs move must be complementary. Individual plans and design accomplishments would influence global design and integration plan selections. SI can sometimes be too early or too late in the game at times. At various stages of transition, there are several moving pieces and interim procedures.
The complexity of data movement from legacy to new systems could be the next challenge. This is important because transformation entails removing many legacy systems, which may not be achievable without migrating essential data, some of which is critical to the operation of new systems. Some of the data, such as product data, may be quite versatile, making harmonisation challenging.
Finally, if business stakeholders and enterprise architects are not properly engaged from the start, or if business decisions are delayed, the integrated plan may be jeopardised. They will assist in the identification of a specific set of business drivers and their realisation through the proposed business architecture. Business owners must understand the expected outcome of such transformations as well as the future business that the new system will support.
Benefits
Customers who are battling with various independent and federated systems and inefficiency due to manual data exchange can benefit from having a system integrator. This has a number of advantages, including ensuring cross-programme process alignment, realising integration and automation opportunities, the right level of agility and customization, standardisation of common processes, interconnected systems, interim process alignment, and foundation data management and governance. With system integration, an organization’s working connections with customers, suppliers, and partners improve, programme efficiency and design improves, and total costs for implementation and maintenance decrease.
Course Manual 5: Chief Experience Officers
If a company does not provide a differentiated experience from the start of the client journey, pricing will be the only deciding factor for products and services in today’s experience economy. According to Forrester, 76 percent of executives consider improving customer experience to be a high or essential priority, and many organisations have created a C-level job to oversee it.
A company can successfully engage the ecosystem of stakeholders – consumers, employees, and cross-functional leadership – needed to activate a consumer-centric vision and strategy by centralising customer and employee experience under the chief experience officer.
What is a Chief Experience Officer (CXO) and how does it differ from a Chief Marketing Officer (CMO)?
What exactly is a CXO? What exactly is a CMO? What are the differences between them?
It comes as no surprise to read a new Forrester Research estimate that the number of CX executives will grow by at least 25% in the coming year, as hundreds of news pieces extol customer service as the new marketing and firms rush to make customer experience (CX) key to their company.
But what is a CX executive, exactly?
What exactly is a CXO? The term “chief experience officer” has been defined.
Many firms are appointing a CXO — a chief experience officer – to oversee the c-new suite’s CX focus. Hasbro, the world’s largest toy company, hired its first CXO in April, while Mastercard hired its first CXO in January.
Some even argue that a shift from CMO to CXO should be considered: According to Shep Hyken of Forbes, PwC’s Global Chief Experience Officer (CXO) David Clarke (hired in 2018) believes it’s time for CMOs to drop the M and replace it with an X in their title. “By bringing in experience strategy, design, and user experience (UX) expertise,” Clarke was hired to “update the firm’s approach to business transformation.”
“Enlightened companies genuinely understand that experience trumps all, and that sales, marketing, and customer engagement are codependent,”Clarke added. “Experience, not marketing, is the goal.”
Is this, however, implying that the c-suite will be a winner-take-all battle? Will the CXO take on the CMO? Most likely not. However, just like company divisions, the functions of the CMO and the CXO are continuing to converge and overlap.
What Does A Chief Experience Officer Do?
The position of chief experience officer is new to the C-suite. CXO Definition: The chief customer officer has been replaced by this post, which has developed to incorporate experiences (CCO). Newness might entail new duties, which can make for a role that is both hard and gratifying. The responsibilities of a CXO differ depending on the industry and the firm. We’ll go over the most significant goals for a chief experience officer, followed by their responsibilities, to answer the question “What does a CXO do?”
1. The fundamental purpose of the CXO function is to monitor the present customer experience and to continuously develop the brand experience in order to exceed consumer expectations and boost customer happiness.
2. Engaged staff engage consumers, therefore the employee experience is equally important. A CXO’s main goals are to improve customer and employee understanding of the brand’s value proposition, establish and implement CX initiatives, prioritise the customer’s perspective in all decision-making processes, and maintain track of key performance metrics (KPIs).
Another significant goal for a chief experience officer is to connect customer and employee experiences across the organisation and to unify all employees around a shared mission and brand promise. The CXO breaks down divisions between marketing, business development, people and culture (human resources), customer success teams, and senior leadership in order to lead the organisation to become more experience-centered.
This cross-functional collaboration is crucial because most transformation projects fail due to organisational misalignment.
What Are the Responsibilities of a Chief Experience Officer?
To increase customer encounters while keeping staff motivated, chief experience officers must constantly assess business processes, tactics, and initiatives. A CXO accomplishes this by ensuring that staff are enthusiastic about the company’s products and services, and that this enthusiasm is conveyed to customers.
A typical chief experience officer job description includes the following responsibilities:
• Customer service teams, customer experience practitioners, designers, developers, and researchers dedicated to improving user experience across numerous platforms and touchpoints are all under my supervision.
• Employees and internal teams are being educated on the value of knowing customers, their motivations, the buyer’s journey, and the customer life cycle.
• Throughout the organisation, advocating for consumer demands in the development and implementation of projects and strategies.Championing customers’ and employees’ perspectives in the company’s strategic decision-making and co-creating innovative ways to elevate the customer experience.
• Working together with marketing and advertising to create and deploy initiatives aimed at increasing customer happiness, loyalty, and brand awareness.
• Measuring and tracking the impact of efforts on data and key performance indicators (KPIs), such as overall consumer sentiment and satisfaction measures.
While the executive team may be new to managing the consumer and employee experience, the CXO position is more than a job title and is likely to remain. Companies will require talented individuals who understand consumer wants and motivations and can build business strategies that retain consumers, improve sales, and grow the bottom line as the emphasis on customer experience as a strategic advantage and differentiator grows.
CXO vs. CMO: What’s the Difference?
The CXO assists the company in driving the total customer experience, which is the overall impression of an organization’s products and services. According to a CEO Monthly article, “the scope of the CXO extends beyond a Customer Service Manager: as the spokesperson for the customer experience they are tasked with ensuring each aspect of the business contributes towards a positive engagement between the brand and the consumer.”
What does this mean in terms of the CMO’s role? According to research, 88 percent of companies agree that the CMO’s function has changed in the last few years and will continue to change in the next two years.
What will be the most important factor in a CMO’s success? Of course, CX. According to Forrester, 26% of CMOs stated they planned to make interactions “more human,” while 25% said they will focus on cultivating customer involvement throughout the customer life cycle.
According to Liz Miller, SVP of marketing at the CMO Council, reports of the CMO’s demise are exaggerated as the CMO and CXO roles begin to converge. She claims that names like chief brand officer and chief experience officer are simply rebrandings of the CMO role, maybe to signal to the rest of the firm that the executive has the authority to expand their influence into other areas of the corporation.
“Today’s business doesn’t operate in lanes and has become so complex, so what I think we’re seeing is a natural evolutionary grind to figure out what to call the CMO role,” said Miller, “because if you look at the job descriptions of some of these new titles, the overarching goals sound shockingly like a CMO.”
In the C-suite, CX is here to stay
Of course, CX isn’t going anywhere: Customer experience will overtake price and product as the key brand differentiator by the end of 2022, according to experts, and Gartner calls customer experience the “new battlefield,” with 80 percent of companies expecting to compete mostly or entirely on the basis of customer experience by that time.
The customer experience is also changing as a result of digital transformation, with AI and machine learning capabilities delivering true personalisation and engagement to the full route to purchase. This movement, called “Beyond Marketing” by Deloitte, “moves marketing away from its historical mandate of bending customer will to promote a seller’s agenda and toward a new purpose of modifying engagement methods to fit individual customer expectations based on an ongoing relationship.”
Companies should acknowledge that the worlds of the CMO and the CXO are intersecting, aligning, and integrating rather than fomenting division. The bottom line is that the customer experience should be front and centre, with corporate executives working to deliver on the customer-centric promise every day, regardless of how brands organise their c-suite responsibilities.
A Crucial Function
It’s important to remember that consumer requirements and expectations, as well as staff’, are continuously changing. To increase loyalty, retention, and advocacy, delivering differentiated, consistent customer experiences is a strategic focus. To guarantee that these key forces are prioritised inside the business, companies might combine the CX and EX disciplines under the leadership of a chief experience officer.
In summary, a CXO improves the customer experience by educating employees, empowering them to make customer-centric decisions, facilitating cross-functional collaboration, and co-creating a distinctive, long-term competitive advantage.
High Demand for Chief Experience Officers
Customer experience is a C-level role in companies that integrate it in their value offering or are customer-centric by design. According to Gartner, nearly 90% of firms will employ a chief experience officer, or a CXO function equivalent, by 2020. This is a considerable increase from 2017, when more than 35% of businesses lacked a chief executive officer.
CXOs have a wide range of experience and backgrounds. A CXO typically comes from a marketing, operations, sales, customer service, or user experience background (UX). When an employee shows a special interest in customer service or is a brand champion, a company may hire a CXO from within. CXOs are typically excellent communicators and leaders who thrive at managing people and have great problem-solving and change management skills.
Many chief experience officers will be responsible for managing digital assets such as an ecommerce website and applications, as well as the usage of online communication channels such as email, live chat, and social media to engage customers, in addition to optimising and improving CX.
Course Manual 6: Compliance Specialists Including Digital Ethics
The top five ethical/moral principles for digital transformation
What is becoming clear is that trust in the digital economy will only be achieved if digital professionals are willing to make ethical decisions despite working in highly competitive environments where the desire to deploy digital services quickly often takes precedence over the need to consider the ethical implications. Five digital transformation ethical principles:
1. Create a system that prioritizes privacy, security, and integrity.
While there are likely to be huge potential to develop new and lucrative insights from big data, there are also likely to be significant hazards from perceived unethical activity, whether intentional or unintentional. It is not only a legal issue, but also an ethical issue, how data is acquired, maintained, and used.
Transparency and ethics must be the key ideals that guide professional behavior in the digital age. Data must be used responsibly and ethically by organizations, which means not in ways that are intrusive, manipulative, or disrespectful to others. Transparency requires organizations to state their data usage intentions and allow customers to consent. The amount of client data that businesses acquire and monetize is frequently questioned. The disconnect or lack of openness around the value exchange between customers and service providers is part of the problem. Any benefit derived from the collection of personal data must be shared by both parties and not used for financial gain.
The concept of ‘informed consent,’ which refers to permission given with full knowledge of the foreseeable consequences, is a crucial ethical precept. This is a substantial challenge for organizations collecting data, particularly personal data for analytics, because little is known about the data’s intended purpose at the time of collection. In practice, gaining informed permission may be impossible or prohibitively expensive due to the scope of the undertaking; still, the idea should be followed wherever possible during the design and development of digital services. Even so, companies will need to evaluate the legitimacy and scope of consent granted if agreements are required to use digital services, therefore informed consent will be a topic of discussion.
Concerns have already been raised about mobile phone software’s ability to track individuals’ movements even when the phone’s location services feature is turned off, and reports that facial recognition applications are being used in certain countries for a darker purpose – to collect personal data for reasons that are unlikely to be sincere.
2. Build trust.
Individuals, groups, and organizations that use data must be able to trust the digital services and data they are using. If data is to be of value to customers, those who gather and manage it must adhere to the notion that its integrity must be guaranteed. Organizations must have a responsibility to guarantee that the data they retain is subject to effective governance and audit procedures in order to assure data integrity. Simply put, organizations must be able to verify that what was previously placed there has not changed.
Digital infrastructures enable data to be made available to others for a variety of purposes, including validation, replication, and analysis, in addition to storing it. If digital customers are to have confidence in the underlying data that powers the services they use, it must have clear provenance, end-to-end traceability from source to user interface, and be of adequate quality and fit for its intended purpose. If the data’s source and validity cannot be checked, it poses a major danger to those who consume it; once the data has been processed, any actions taken as a result cannot be reversed.
Only 11% of people were at least “somewhat confident” that online video and social media sites would keep their personal data private, according to a 2014 survey by the Pew Research Center in the United States. Part of the problem is the difficulty of segmenting customers based on their privacy views, which are context-specific and difficult to generalize. However, it is a problem that businesses must address: in the UK and the US, nine out of ten internet users would reject doing business with organizations that do not respect their privacy.
Organizations that rush to produce “the art of the possible” without acknowledging the essential values of privacy, security, and integrity are putting themselves at a high danger of ethical lapses.
3. Be wary of bias.
Many factors can lead to unintentional ethical action, but one of the most common causes is sub-conscious biases that impact human behavior. The most well-known example is confirmation bias, in which people seek or interpret information in a way that confirms their ideas, hypotheses, or expectations while dismissing opposing views and information. ‘Cherry-picking’ data to support digital transformation business cases or drive digital service testing, for example, is likely to raise ethical concerns among people who want such activities to be carried out with a high level of integrity and impartiality.
When data contains prejudice, systems that consume that data are at risk of inheriting that bias. Machine learning algorithms, which are used to make millions of decisions every day, must be of great importance. Experts have already issued warnings about algorithmic prejudice, claiming that it is now ubiquitous in many businesses, with little action made to uncover or correct it. Machine learning is increasingly being used in various industries, including medical, banking, and law, which is a concerning concept.
Of course, the answer to the question of bias is ‘transparency.’ As they design, assure, and implement digital services, digital professionals will need to challenge status quo behavior and actively discover latent biases. Consumer trust must be generated and maintained by ensuring that customers purchasing systems that use AI and machine learning algorithms understand how the inference models were built and the data that drove them.
4. Establish a system of accountability.
Inference models and algorithms are essential components of the growing number of “smart” digital services that incorporate artificial intelligence and machine learning. Concerns have grown concerning the extent to which clear accountability systems can be maintained due to their potential to mix social data with decision-making engines. If financial services businesses, for example, use algorithms to make choices that would typically be made by qualified and regulated personnel, questions about accountability must be raised. As a result, organizations developing digital services must guarantee that they are not exploited to avoid or decrease corporate accountability.
5. Encourage an ethical mindset.
Organizational culture can be defined as a set of shared values, beliefs, and norms that shape how people think, feel, and act within it. Values are crucial because they express what the company stands for, such as “offering an outstanding digital experience” or “excellence through innovation and teamwork.” While corporate principles are easily accessible on company websites, posting a list of values is not the same as adopting them. Value-driven firms aggressively exhibit and use their values to govern their actions, even if it means making some unpleasant decisions.
While digital transformation has the potential to offer opportunity, value, and success at all levels of the business, it must be done in a fair, honest, and transparent manner. As a result, digital firms have a moral obligation to protect their employees from taking unwarranted risks that could be harmful to both the individual and the company. Let’s not forget that an individual’s professional reputation is just as vital as an organization’s.
Ethics for digital success
The successful organization in the digital economy will be one that is not only conscious of ethical values like trust, honesty, fairness, confidentiality, and accountability, but also actively adopts them to do the right thing and make judgments that are above reproach.
Ethics must no longer be looked of as only a marketing tool with little actual impact on the culture of digital firms, but rather as a core set of behaviors that all individuals involved in digital transformation should demonstrate. It must undoubtedly be today that ethical norms for digital transformation are required.
Digital ethics is a critical component of digital transformation success.
Digital ethics is not simply another term for the future organization; it is at the heart of its success.
Organizations that are successful in their digital transformation have widespread support and confidence in their use of digital technologies. To do this, companies must pay attention to digital ethics early in the transformation process and make it an inseparable element of their business operations. Their willingness to accept responsibility for adhering to their own ideals is the focus.
Digital technology cannot be trusted at face value.
Digitization is at the heart of today’s and tomorrow’s key economic and social transformations in our society. Innovative (data) technologies, such as “intelligent automation,” AI, and blockchain, have great societal and economic promise. Organizations and governments, for example, unquestionably turned to digital technologies to deal with the (consequences of) the COVID-19 crisis: technology for working from home, corona apps, and drones. At the same time, headlines and public debate demonstrated that trust in digital technologies is not a given. And that confidence is critical, because the usage of unknown digital technology is creating a lot of (unnecessary) expenditures for society and organizations.
Now that we are on the verge of the next wave of digital change, accelerated by the crisis, with a wider reach than ever before, it is more necessary than ever for businesses to pay attention to digital ethics. The ethical standards that an organization uses to design and execute digital technology responsibly are referred to as digital ethics. An organization’s digital ethics directs its actions toward its stakeholders in this way.
Increasing digitization poses ethical concerns.
At the same time, we’re seeing an increase in the complexity and effect of digital technology. Previously, the focus of digitization was mostly on automating relatively simple, standardized, and repetitive procedures in order to improve the efficiency of processes. Nowadays, it’s all about assisting with increasingly complex(er) decision-making, which has far-reaching implications for individuals such as consumers, employees, and other stakeholders in businesses. Human rights, for example, are now accessible thanks to digital technologies.
Data protection and privacy are only two aspects of digital ethics.
When it comes to digital technology trust, corporations are now concentrating their efforts on data security and privacy. This is understandable, as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) established legal requirements for this element of digital ethics in 2018, and there is a pressing need to comply with them. However, digital ethics encompasses much more than that. Other essential ethical ideas applicable to organizations, such as autonomy, non-discrimination, openness, accountability, and social justice, are in addition to privacy.
The European Commission’s ‘Ethics Guidelines for Trustworthy Artificial Intelligence,’ issued in 2019, exemplifies this larger breadth. These concepts and values must be followed in the development, deployment, and usage of AI systems, according to these recommendations. They make it apparent, for example, that AI systems must be designed, implemented, and used in accordance with ethical values such as respect for human autonomy, harm prevention, fairness, and responsibility.
Create a value-driven digital transformation strategy.
Many firms are still unfamiliar with this issue in the context of digital transformation. At the same time, because core design choices adhere to it, there is no time to resolve the issue of trust once the digital revolution is complete. Only through designing digital transformations in a value-oriented fashion, or ‘ethics by design,’ will new technologies and business models gain widespread social approval.
Digital ethics must be implemented as a core component of corporate operations.
Organizations are currently finding it challenging to adopt digital ethics, owing to a lack of recognized ethical laws to help society trust the digital economy and a shortage of people with the essential expertise. At the same time, organizations must invest in order to accomplish the desired outcome of their digital transformations and the speed with which they can achieve them in a dynamic market.
In practice, digital ethics necessitates the following actions from businesses:
• Determine what standards the organization must fulfill (legislation and regulations) as well as what requirements it wishes to meet (ethical principles and values) as part of its digital transformation.
Ethical principles and values give a foundation for what an organization perceives to be “right” and “wrong,” and are typically derived from the organization’s goal, vision, and strategic policy. For example, insurers are well-versed in the notion of solidarity, which is a basic value from which they get their raison d’être. ‘Autonomy,’ or honoring the patient’s desires as much as possible, is an important principle in healthcare. Such principles and values have significant consequences for how an organization can (and wants to) use digital technologies, as well as the expectations of its stakeholders. As a result, at an early stage of the digital transformation process, this must be clarified.
Identifying the above-mentioned ethical principles and values for the deployment of digital technology is not, incidentally, a one-off task in regard to company operations in general. More and more organizations are focusing their fundamental efforts on (re)defining and translating their broader social influence into their strategy. In this regard, the United Nations’ seventeen Sustainable Development Goals, adopted in 2015, are not only a catalyst for this process, but also a tool for giving substance to these social goals. The usage of technology is inextricably linked to this.
• Putting the chosen principles and values into practice. This translates to:
– Extending the meaning of these principles and values in terms of substance and how they will be met during the creation of relevant digital technologies. The fact that ethical principles and ideals have numerous widely accepted definitions is a distinguishing feature. When employing artificial intelligence in their loan or job matching processes, fintechs and recruittechs, for example, must deal with more than twenty statistical measurements of the worth of ‘honesty.’ As a result, an organization will need to invest strategically to further define the chosen principles and values using recognized standards.
– Determine where potential conflicts between distinct principles and values may develop, as well as how the company plans to address them. It is common for ethical principles and ideals to clash with one another or with commercial economic values. Transparency in algorithmic decision-making, for example, may conflict with data protection. As well as efficiency with non-discrimination, for example. There is no good or wrong within the confines of legislation and regulation. The organization must figure out what balance best serves its objectives and those of its stakeholders. This necessitates both explicit ethical leadership toward stakeholders and more detailed communication on digital-ethical issues with stakeholders.
• Monitoring and guiding adherence to the principles and values throughout and after the introduction of applicable digital technologies, and (being able to) account for it to the organization’s stakeholders.
– This necessitates closer collaboration between technology implementers and advocates of the chosen principles and values. As a result, what is projected to become operational is technologically assured.
Above all, the aforementioned acts should not be taken in isolation. They should, ideally, be compatible with the organization’s current choices, working styles, and processes. This ensures that digital ethics are always linked with the core of business activities, and that the organization is not burdened with additional requirements. In the future, rather than attempting retrospective control, the focus will be on integrating digital ethics standards.
Course Manual 7: Project Managers
Project managers are key to a successful digital transformation
Companies must keep up with the pace of innovation in order to avoid falling behind their competition. Although project managers provide the solution, they cannot change an organization on their own.
Every day, businesses all around the world face disruptions caused by technology that we once thought were inconceivable. Technology is driving change at all levels of every business, and keeping up is becoming increasingly challenging. In fact, technological disruption occurs so swiftly that a company must pivot as soon as it develops a new way to address a problem. This is frequently the result of someone else developing a better technology or a unique capability that puts them ahead of the competition, forcing other businesses to play catch-up. Simply said, the disruption landscape is a change frontier where a business must move quicker than the competition to make a claim.
A new operation, organizational model, or project may gestate within a corporation for a year or two before the competitors caught wind of it and attempted to construct their own version or accomplish the same thing but better just 15 years ago. Technology, on the other hand, has fostered a never-ending cycle of invention and rivalry that shows no indications of slowing down — if anything, it’s speeding up.
The disruptors
The shift from 4G to 5G is a significant development that will show to be a major disruptor for businesses across the board. Its capabilities and speed help businesses to transmit data more quickly and embrace cutting-edge technology, as well as take use of the Internet of Things, which will continue to act as the ultimate link for both businesses and individuals. A physician in another nation can direct an operation, a complex supply chain can be simplified to move faster, and drones can do the work of humans, freeing them up to do other things. 5G is a disruptor in any business, and when employed effectively, it can also be an enabler.
Organizations, on the other hand, are having difficulty capturing the value of these new technologies and fully unleashing their disruptive potential. The first step is to learn about the technology, its capabilities, and its limitations. The second stage is to accept that technology and determine what it can achieve for your company and its problems.
The considerably quicker data transfer of 5G allows businesses to discover new value. But what exactly is that value, and how do you go about creating it? What changes can you make to your operational model to take advantage of that speed? It’s a conundrum that every significant corporation on the planet must confront, yet the solution can help a company grow and outlast its competitors.
Change is difficult to achieve, especially when external pressures are constant and a company must accomplish daily goals while dealing with constant interruption. It can also be complicated, and implementing it typically necessitates a team of qualified professionals – just like business, it doesn’t happen in a vacuum. When one area of an organization undergoes change, it is likely to have a significant impact on another, which is how a corporation should work.
However, this does not imply that the company is prepared for a chain reaction. Employees may perceive technology as a threat – not only to their livelihoods, but also to the reasons why they do what they do – in a world where technology is disruptive and rapidly transforms the way organizations conduct business. Furthermore, the company and its personnel may lack the essential expertise to put it into action.
Here to help
Project managers are a group of individuals that are uniquely positioned to help with this shift. Every organization is undergoing change in some form, and project managers are the experts who can deploy technologies to assist a company implement change more efficiently, move faster, and accomplish more. However, this can add to project managers’ already high workloads, since they are now expected to do much more than just complete projects on time and on budget. They must be knowledgeable of all the numerous technologies that can impact an outcome today, and they must be empowered to assist in the implementation of those technologies. Project managers understand how changes in one business unit can affect others, and assisting them implies assisting change throughout the organization.
Train and transform
Companies can help project managers become even more relevant by giving the right training and support – not only by defining new standards, but by assisting these workers in acquiring new skill sets that allow them to accomplish their tasks more effectively. First and foremost, we must provide project managers with the information they require at their fingertips. The technology exists, but project managers must be provided the information they need to complete their tasks. Furthermore, they require it quickly, preferably via self-service, and particularly at critical stages of a project. The more project managers who are aware of the situation, the better.
Second, project managers must be able to use several approaches, such as the agile way of working. This expertise enables project managers to become more fluid and versatile, allowing them to seamlessly move between projects while supporting organizational growth and organic development. Project managers can help with the implementation of this transition, but they can also be change leaders if they are given the correct information and given the right organizational tools. A company that empowers its project managers will be able to fully capitalize on the disruption and change that technology delivers. It will leave its competitors far behind in the process.
The role of project management in digital transformation
Digital transformation is transforming not only how businesses interact with customers, but also how they run their businesses. When IDC estimates that direct digital transformation investment spending will reach $7.4 trillion between 2020 and 2023, it’s easy to see why.
Is there one aspect of company that will change? Management of projects.
Jay T. Ripton, a tech and business journalist for TechRadar, compiled a nice summary of five ways DX is altering project management:
1) Communication is asynchronous.
Communication is an important part of the current digital strategy. Meetings and emails of the past have given way to collaboration platforms like as Slack, Chanty, Hive, Google Hangouts, and Cisco Spark. As a result, team communication is swift, mobile, and real-time.
2) Hands-off management.
We’re in a “new era of self-guided, self-organizing” project management, thanks to the aforementioned changes in the very methods we connect with colleagues, paired with agile project management.
The French startup Digicoop.io, which built the work management software Kantree, is one example given. They changed project managers’ roles to more closely resemble facilitators.
“We elected to employ coordinators rather than managers to ensure that what we decide collectively gets done,” the company recently revealed. “This is a temporary assignment, not a full-time position.” So that we may collectively tap into each person’s power, the coordinator takes on initiatives that are ‘up their alley’ and correlate to their skills.”
3) Concentrate on the end outcome.
Everything from tracking deliverables to defining goals to time management has grown easier, and to some extent, more automatic, thanks to a new breed of project management tools born out of the digital age.
Project managers may now take a step back and think about wider picture thinking and strategic planning thanks to digital transformation. Essentially, PMs can accomplish more with less.
4) The importance of analytics.
Almost every task provided to teams can now be tracked and quantified thanks to digital workflows. This means more data, as well as improved streamlining and tracking.
Project managers can get creative with data now that artificial and business intelligence are incorporated into software, discovering innovative ways to satisfy KPIs.
5) A flexible workforce.
Digital project management software strikes once more. Remote work has risen dramatically as a result of these factors, as well as videoconferencing and the resulting shift in work expectations.
Once scorned, digital tools have enabled remote work to flourish – with the sole constraint being organizational culture. “The project manager’s function has changed more toward being a’mother hen,’ and less about hard-nosed deliverables and controlling personnel,” Ripton argues.
Sure, project managers at digitally native businesses have seen these trends and shifts before — perhaps they were engrained from the start. However, it’s a one-of-a-kind adjustment for a vital job for firms currently experiencing digital transformation.
Course Manual 8: Cloud Specialists
What Is a Cloud Specialist?
A cloud specialist can assist businesses in moving their data and services to the cloud in the following ways:
• Examines business requirements to choose the best cloud technology.
• Finds ways to deploy, optimize, and secure important applications and data storage.
• Securely manages enterprise data across several cloud environments
• Develops procurement and integration best practices.
• When necessary, performs cloud technology patching.
When it comes to establishing or upgrading IT infrastructure, firms will adopt a cloud-first attitude, with flexibility and resilience as guiding principles for future success. The tasks of a cloud specialist may be wrapped into a more general IT support function in a smaller firm.
A cloud specialist might work for a company like Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, or Google Cloud. A cloud specialist’s responsibilities usually include onboarding new clients, debugging, and managing cloud computing solutions.
Why Do Enterprise Clouds Fail?
The constraint that enterprises experience when attempting to develop private cloud solutions based on disconnected sets of hardware and software components is the primary cause of all of these enterprise cloud disasters.
1. The IT teams created the incorrect cloud for the incorrect users.
When private clouds are developed without thoroughly considering the demands of the applications and app owners, they frequently fail. Your cloud should be application-centric. To simplify and minimize the cost of management, your cloud should use pre-set profiles and models for core applications.
2. IT teams constructed the correct private cloud, but due to a lack of agility in adding and reallocating capacity and resources, they became victims of their own success.
Many well-defined private clouds fail when they turn into a quest to create the perfect cloud out of elements that don’t naturally fit together, making upgrades and growth time-consuming and hazardous. Furthermore, because the cost recovery approach is rarely linked to the service’s development or performance, funding this expansion becomes a roadblock.
Your cloud should be turnkey so that you can deploy and expand your cloud quickly and go on to using it instead of constantly recreating it. Private clouds will rarely be the only cloud platform used to serve workloads. The public cloud usually plays a role, and a successful private cloud must operate as part of a larger hybrid cloud ecosystem, not in isolation.
3. IT staff created a private cloud with too narrow a vision, limiting them from securely and consistently accessing a broader range of complementing cloud resources.
When private clouds are missing critical cloud characteristics, they can’t employ hosted and SaaS cloud services as complements and expansions to internal services. So that you can use a hybrid cloud architecture to expand your business reach, your cloud should have native integration with clouds from prominent SaaS and IaaS cloud providers. By deploying a cloud that uses portioning technologies to provide separation of important workloads via bare-metal resource provisioning, you can take advantage of new technologies like microservices and containers without danger of disruption.
The constraint that enterprises confront when attempting to construct private cloud solutions based on disconnected sets of hardware and software components is the primary cause of all of these failures. This approach, which differs from traditional virtualized environments, demands features, flexibility, and operational efficiency concessions that are opposed to the primary goal of cloud adoption. You need a partner who can provide a well-defined cloud platform that simplifies set-up and setup while also increasing agility and operating efficiency — all while maintaining dependability and security. The time and effort necessary to add/rebalance infrastructure resources in one datacenter and across several datacenters around the world will be greatly reduced with such a cloud platform.
Even the most well-designed cloud infrastructure must adjust to shifting demands and circumstances. You’ll also need a partner with the right mix of technical, financial, professional, and managed services to help you make the switch to the cloud in weeks or months, and for the foreseeable future. This partner should also be able to offer solutions that allow for complete control over data transfer, protection, and use across all cloud environments. Finally, you need a partner who can provide insight into constantly changing requirements as well as flexibility in cloud resource acquisition and payment.
Cloud Skills Challenges
When it comes to moving to a more cloud-centric IT infrastructure, businesses encounter a number of problems. Those that previously outsourced IT processes frequently lack the in-house capabilities necessary to drive the transition to IT-as-a-Service.
Those who retain control of their IT systems and processes have additional problems in terms of learning new technologies and managing service delivery, as well as modifying historical internal processes to take advantage of Cloud technology’s agility.
Enterprises require a cloud consulting partner with a broad set of competencies and skills to help them establish and implement a cloud strategy, including integration with existing systems (ITSM, CMP, etc.), automation, and organizational process, application and workload migration, and so on.
The requirement to design a strategy, lay a foundation, and begin the transition to offer technology that enables a comprehensive DevOps operating model and development tooling is a significant component of this skills dilemma. More than a virtualized and automated IT environment is required, and partners must understand that this isn’t only about infrastructure services. Organizations require assistance in implementing a turnkey, application-centric approach. Enterprises must get infrastructure and data right (data protection, data management, and so on), as well as middleware and emerging services like container and micro-services.
The role of Cloud Computing in Digital Transformation
Because we live in a world that is always changing, all businesses must adapt their operations to new forms of technology, which is why Digital Transformation has become a need. Cloud computing plays a crucial part in this transition, acting as a catalyst for change. Every company nowadays determines its success based on customer experience. A cloud-enabled and cloud-delivered business model enables enterprises to use innovative channels to provide superior customer service by distinguishing its strategy and solutions from those of its competitors.
What does Cloud Computing imply?
Cloud computing is the technique of storing, managing, processing, analyzing, and securing data through the use of a network of Internet-based servers. Data is stored in the cloud rather than on physical devices, which allows businesses to better manage administration, expedite processes, increase productivity, reduce expenses, and improve client digital experiences.
Cloud Computing Types
There are three types of cloud services:
• Software-as-a-Service (SaaS)
A third-party cloud provider hosts software programs and makes them available on demand to consumers all over the world with this option. Google Apps, Dropbox, BigCommerce, Hubspot, and other SaaS services are examples.
• Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)
Third-party vendors supply software and hardware tools, operating environments, databases, or computing platforms designed for developing Internet applications in the second choice. Windows Azure, AWS Elastic Beanstalk, Heroku, Google Cloud Platform, and others are some instances.
• Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS)
A third-party vendor provides access to computer resources such as storage, data center space, security, scaling, network components, or servers as the final option. Digital Ocean, Rackspace, and others are some instances.
Cloud computing facilitates the evolution of digital businesses
Each organization should embrace the digital transformation process when necessary to upgrade their outdated IT infrastructure into a new one in order to be competitive and add value to the company. A corporation should integrate new types of technology that speed up, automate, and improve operations, such as Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Big Data Analytics, and the Internet of Things (IoT), among others, in addition to cloud solutions. Because these technologies necessitate a lot of computational power and storage space, Cloud Computing emerges as a viable option for integrating them.
The Path to a Hybrid Cloud
Companies are migrating from the present public cloud model to a hybrid cloud that combines private and public cloud. This hybrid cloud enables organizations to accomplish regulatory compliance, data supremacy, cost optimization, and data security.
Customers can manage applications both on-premise and in the public cloud, allowing organizations to connect on-premise systems with an external cloud services provider to improve efficiency and operational effectiveness.
In this new digital era, becoming agile with the integration of new technologies should be a company goal, which may be accomplished by shifting to the cloud environment. Being in the cloud entails attaining embedded connectivity and intelligence, enabling smart operations interoperability, and constructing a secure infrastructure for cloud-connected digital services.
The 5 Benefits & Role of Cloud Computing in Digital Transformation
Artificial intelligence, machine learning, big data, the Internet of Things, and other technologies have ushered in new business models, rendering old ones obsolete. Businesses that have been operating in their various fields for years now must pivot their established business processes to meet the expectations of modern consumers. The method these companies make this change is through digital transformation. While the cloud provides the foundation for this shift.
What are the Benefits of Cloud Computing for Digital Transformation?
The usage of distant servers over a network is known as cloud computing. These servers can perform tasks such as storage, processing, security, and analytics, among others. A corporation must rethink its present business process and employ technology such as the internet of things (IoT), chatbots, augmented reality, machine learning, big data analytics, and others to achieve digital disruption. All of these technologies necessitate a significant amount of processing power, storage, and IT infrastructure. These services are provided by cloud computing based on a company’s specific needs.
Cloud computing is anticipated to rise from $67 billion in 2015 to $162 billion in 2020, representing a 19 percent compound annual growth rate (CAGR).
Cloud Computing Aids Digital Transformation in 5 Ways:
1. Flexibility:
A company’s business process will need to pivot numerous times to effectively execute a digital transformation strategy. Cloud computing relieves a company of the burden of investing in a diverse set of IT resources by delivering on-demand computing resources, infrastructure, and platforms. This allows a business to be more agile and adaptable.
2. Cost-effective:
Along with the ability to change requirements as needed, the cloud provides a scalable service model in which an organization only pays for the resources consumed. As a result, it not only saves firms money on IT infrastructure purchases and management, but it also allows them to effectively expand their resources based on demand.
3. Security:
If you keep your database in-house, you’re always at risk of losing important data due to data breaches, sudden system shutdowns, disasters, brute force attacks, and so on. You may quickly create several backups of your data when using cloud hosting. This is especially useful when dealing with large amounts of data, as the likelihood of system failures increases dramatically.
4. Prototyping Rapidly:
An organization must continuously develop, test, deploy, and repeat in order for digital transformation to succeed. Companies can use the cloud as a platform to easily design, test, and deploy apps without having to set up complex infrastructure. As a result, a corporation can experiment with several applications on various platforms throughout the transformation phase.
5. Improved Collaboration:
A company’s digital transformation demands it to adopt an innovative and creative culture and abandon the previous hierarchical command structure. Cloud computing allows users to view files from anywhere at any time. Controlling the user’s level of authority is also feasible, ensuring optimal delegation. Overall, it contributes to the company’s collaborative and cooperation culture.
All of these advantages suggest that if your company is considering a digital transformation, the cloud is the natural and best option. We can be a valuable partner if you are considering moving to the cloud or need an IT solution expert.
Customers’ behavior is changing as a result of the world’s digitalization, which is why businesses must evolve and adapt to this digital environment.
Companies should take advantage of cloud computing’s benefits to build solid digital transformation frameworks. Cloud computing facilitates innovation by providing a set of APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) that are compatible.
Cloud computing offers analytics, functional programming, and low-code platforms, all of which could be critical for making educated decisions. This allows a company to quickly launch enterprise-ready products.
Digital transformation is critical for standing out in a competitive environment, improving customer experience and usability, and reinventing the firm through generating business value.
Course Manual 9: Organizational Development (HR)
How can HR take the lead on workplace digital transformation?
People experts can use their knowledge and experience to help their businesses and workers manage and execute technological transformation.
Work as we know it is changing due to technological advancements. Digital and technology change was listed as one of five main topics that would influence the future world of work in the People Profession 2030 report. This essay, part of their Latest Insights series, looks at how people experts can utilise their knowledge to help organisations and their employees benefit from technological transformation.
Routine mental work is increasingly becoming mechanised, in addition to routine physical tasks. Automation occurs at various rates in various vocations and industries around the world. While drone delivery is still being tested in the UK, some Chinese enterprises have been utilising them to deliver goods to consumers in remote places since before 2017. In restricted places such as airports and metro lines, driverless vehicles are being employed. Many insurance brokers have been replaced by price comparison services advertised by fluffy animals and other eccentric characters, who have reduced the mental effort of buying insurance. HR payroll software streamlines typical payroll tasks and even allows employees to seek compensation through an app outside of the normal payroll cycle.
Within the next few decades, machines may be able to perform all normal physical and mental jobs for less money. How? Technology increases productivity by reducing production time and cost, resulting in increased demand and employment creation. However, future productivity gains may result in employment losses.
Professor Stuart Russell, an AI expert, uses house painting as an example in his book Human Compatible to explain this (see Figure 1). The hypothetical graph depicts the employment of house painters as technology advances. The width of the paintbrush represents the level of automation. There are no house painters if the brushes are only one hair wide. A few painters may be hired to paint the wealthy’s homes at one millimetre wide. Most homeowners can afford to have their houses painted when brushes are 10 centimetres wide, resulting in hundreds of house painter jobs. When huge areas can be painted with rollers and spray guns, demand for house painting rises, and the number of house painter jobs begins to decline. There will be fewer home painting jobs for individuals once one person can supervise a team of house-painting robots. Consider how this curve would affect all routine tasks.
Figure 1: Technology provides jobs, but additional productivity gains eliminate them.
The evidence suggests that, at least for the next few years, technology will continue to create more employment than it eliminates. According to the World Economic Forum (WEF), machines will create 97 million jobs and destroy 85 million by 2025. However, in 2025, the rate at which new occupations replace outdated jobs is likely to drop. The World Economic Forum’s Future of Opportunities Report 2020 makes no predictions on whether new jobs would pay sufficiently or be accessible to displaced workers. According to McKinsey, between 400 million and 800 million people would be displaced by technology by 2030 and will need to find new occupations. Despite the fact that projections differ, it is evident that millions of workers will need to learn new skills.
When roles are created or deleted, the people profession is more likely to be involved in the decision to invest in AI and automation, as well as its execution, according to the CIPD People and Machines survey (Figure 2). However, compared to other departments, HR is less likely to be involved in technology investment decisions or implementation (Figure 3).
Figure 2: Human resources involvement in AI and automation investment and implementation decisions
Figure 3: Departments involved in AI and automation decision-making and implementation
The various subtleties connected with digital transformation and its influence on people are the duty of people specialists. How can the profession play a bigger role in this transformation?
1. Conducting a skills gap analysis and workforce planning
Of course, the employee lifetime encompasses more than just being hired or fired. Employees must be onboarded, trained, and motivated to do their best work. If people professionals are included early in technology investment choices, they can play a more proactive role in workforce planning and skills gap assessments. As an example:
• assessing how internal and external trends may affect the organization’s future workforce needs and skills gaps collaborating with leaders to develop strategies to address the organization’s future workforce needs initiating early talks with employees who may be affected by new technology
According to the CIPD Workplace technology: employee experience research, employees who are consulted are more likely to agree with the commercial benefits of technology and feel more confidence in raising issues.
2. Job redesign, incentives, and other methods to increase job quality are being considered
People professionals should explore how the CIPD’s seven elements of job quality might be used to improve overall job quality when technology impacts work. The seven dimensions are as follows:
1. pay and benefits
2. employment contracts
3. work-life balance
4. job design and nature of work
5. relationships at work
6. employee voice
7. health and wellbeing
When used effectively, technology may boost staff productivity and job quality. It can have the opposite impact if approached incorrectly.
Examine how intelligent process automation can help managers and affected staff redesign and even save their careers. If some of the more time-consuming aspects of a work can be automated, more time can be spent on higher-value duties. Technology can aid the people profession in efficiently doing this procedure in order to acquire insight into current employee competencies. For example, if information on abilities across the firm is routinely updated, a talent management system like LinkedIn or similar social media networks could be used.
Consider how to motivate employees to use technology to automate their labour for the benefit of both themselves and the company. Employees who automate a considerable portion of labour, for example, may be rewarded with a four-day week, pricey training, or bonuses. These individuals could work as internal automation coaches or market their consulting skills to other businesses. Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation (SMBC) did the latter after automating 800 full-time positions across the company. The headcount did not decrease. Instead, SMBC retrained and relocated displaced employees to SMBC Value Creation, a new subsidiary. Other financial institutions can benefit from the subsidiary’s competence in intelligent process automation.
Bornet, Barkin, and Wirtz, the authors of Intelligent Automation, feel that rewarding automation could help prevent moral issues like the one raised by this popular Stack Exchange post: ‘Is it unethical for me not to tell my employer I’ve automated my job? After 18 months in the job, the employee’s labour had been automated to the point that they were paid full-time for work that required only one or two hours each week.
3. Working with government and other agencies to provide outplacement assistance if necessary
As seen in Figure 1, technology has the potential to eliminate jobs. There are occasions when personnel in an organisation have no other options. Outplacement services can be organised in these situations to provide redundant employees with the emotional and practical support they need to locate new jobs.
Unilever’s tea plantations in Kenya discovered that mechanisation would negatively affect low-skilled workers and their families. Reskilling programmes, as well as a funding scheme for employees to become entrepreneurs, were implemented in collaboration with local government and non-governmental organisations. As a result, over 2,000 redundant employees have found new jobs. Over 10,000 people’s livelihoods have been saved. The activities, according to trade unions and social partners, have had a good social impact in the town.
4. Taking part in the discussion on the future of work
Technology’s impact on the future of employment is far too crucial for businesses to deal with internally. Governments and other agencies must be involved when technology affects the livelihoods of thousands of people, as we saw with the Unilever case. Otherwise, social unrest may result. People professionals can use firsthand experiences on the ground to help shape future work conversations.
Skills, job design, and wealth distribution are frequently discussed in discussions on the future of work:
• What future skills do employees require, and what support do they require to acquire those talents?
• How may employment be developed to improve working conditions?
• How can we equitably share the financial benefits of technology to reduce the risk of low-paid or redundant workers falling into poverty?
Refocusing education and societal values will be required to address these issues:
• Shouldn’t education focus more on soft skills that are difficult to automate, such as empathy, creativity, and imagination, since all mental and physical jobs can someday be done more cheaply by machines?
• How can we use technology to build a jobs market that is more focused on allowing positive social and environmental change for everyone?
Work as we know it is changing due to technological advancements. However, how governments, corporations, and employees around the world respond will determine what occurs in the future. People managers should be at the forefront of this reaction.
The Importance of Human Resources in Digital Transformation
As the pace of digital transformation accelerates, now is a good moment to consider who in your organisation is leading these efforts and who has a say in the plans.
According to a recent study, 86 percent of manufacturers have named digital transformation leaders, with 37 percent coming from operations, 30 percent from IT, and the rest from engineering, finance, and dedicated digital transformation teams. However, HR and people operations are a crucial team to consider in connection to digital transformation projects.
People Drive Digital Transformations
Although digital transformation is highly technology-driven, focusing solely on tech-intensive roles and departments is a mistake. Digital transformations are about people as much as they are about technology.
“There’s a myth that digital transformation is more tech focused. In reality, it’s the people that make it happen,” said Christopher Lind, Head of Global Digital Learning at GE Healthcare. “If you’re viewing it through a single lens, digital transformation can look overly simplistic. But when the implications for all affected employees, business units, functions, and geographical groups are considered, it becomes exponentially more complicated.”
Digital changes aim to assist people in making better decisions and acting more quickly. As a result, several voices and stakeholders from various sectors of the business must be involved. Without those diverse viewpoints, you risk mismanaging deployments because employees will lack the necessary training for new processes, behaviours, and, in some cases, positions.
HR can offer valuable insights.
HR and people operations should be viewed as a critical voice when forming your digital transformation leadership team. These groups will ensure that your personnel receives the appropriate training and that their professional growth is in line with the developments taking place in your firm.
However, when it comes to implementing digital transformation efforts, HR is sometimes disregarded.
“People are at the core of what you do. Your ability to even access data for digital transformation is dependent on the people that you have,” Lind said. “Not considering the impact on your people and culture is one of the biggest reasons digital transformation fails so often.”
Digital reforms are frequently unsuccessful when people are not considered. The purpose of digital transformation is to maximise worker utilization—to have individuals spend more time on jobs that add value to the firm and to themselves, and less time on tasks that don’t. A narrow perspective that technology is the only solution without considering humans leads to frustration and failed attempts.
The Cultural Impact of Digital Transformation
Keeping up with change in the technology, finance, insurance, consumer products, and retail industries is a problem. This includes, maybe most critically, personnel training. Organizations must have a staff that is capable of not only implementing but also maintaining digital transformations.
“One of the largest challenges is being able to identify what the workforce for the future looks like and how it is able to support digital transformation,” said Michael Connolly, Chief Learning Officer at Ashley Furniture. “You can have the greatest plans in the world and the greatest strategy set up for how you want to transform your organization, but if you don’t have a skilled workforce it’s unachievable.”
Digital transitions are as much a cultural revolution as they are a technological one, which necessitates employee preparation. Leaders who understand culture are needed to open the way for new ideas and methods of doing things, as well as to set expectations for how workers’ lives and employment will change.
Finally, value isn’t created unless your teams take different and better actions than they did previously. Organizations and their people must become acclimated to change, and culture can assist in this development.
Change Management’s Importance In Digital Transformation
Continuous improvement and a cultural shift are both part of the change management process. It should be backed up by a “cultural organisation” that specialises in change management, particularly during periods of rapid transition.
“People now realize that the only people and businesses that are really successful are the ones that are comfortable with change,” said Connolly. “There is a shift in the way that we do business. We can’t just look at what’s in front of us anymore because then we’re missing opportunities to be able to advance more quickly.”
Human resources has long been regarded as a support department that focuses heavily on administration. However, modern HR departments are becoming increasingly involved in workforce transformation, utilising analytics and predictive analysis to assist in the creation of the proper talent mix and the development of employees. HR can now facilitate the cultural shift that firms require for effective digital transformation since it has a larger role and perspective.
“The most important thing you can do in digital transformation is to help people understand and support the why,” said Connolly. “If people don’t buy into a new process or a new technology, they’re not going to want to be a part of it.”
Increasing Digital Transformation Alignment
Finally, in order for digital transformation activities to meet expectations and add value, everyone must understand and support them. There must be leadership in place to inspire and motivate your staff to embrace digital transformation as a positive factor for their work and careers.
Course Manual 10: Vendor Managers
Sourcing model
According to a BCG report, most successful digital transformations were carried out with the help of advisory firms and a combination of insourcing and outsourcing. (See Figure 1.) 92 % indicated they employed a combination of insourcing and outsourcing, and 71% stated they used an advice firm. Furthermore, these organizations planned their sourcing requirements from the start and had C-level executives lead the transformation initiative. In fact, the CIO was cited as the primary driver of their change by 43% of respondents, followed by the CEO (33%), and the CTO (20%).
Clearly, a diverse staff mix is essential for a successful change. Without the help of external vendors, none of the companies evaluated could rely on internal resources. Without the cooperation of vendors, digital reforms are impossible to achieve. As a result, selecting the correct vendors is critical, which is why advisory firms that conduct market research and pick vendors for the effort may be extremely beneficial. The digital transformation is supported and enabled by combining these many resources.
When the vendor strategy is determined at the start of the initiative, a combination of insourcing and outsourcing is especially appropriate, according to one multinational food and beverage company. As the team developed their strategy, they explored issues like: What competencies do we require, and do we require them from ourselves or from our suppliers? Or do we want something more flexible and in the middle? Indeed, the primary question that arose was: Should we insource or outsource, or should we co-source? Our own client work shows that successful change initiatives necessitate client and vendor co-learning, with each altering its own processes and expertise as part of the digital transformation in a reciprocal relationship.
Sourcing strategy
There is no one-size-fits-all approach to digital transformation. Companies must consider the types of providers they require and the outputs they want in each case.
According to our research, specialty providers are frequently used by successful businesses (86 percent ). Over 70% of these businesses used a competitive vendor selection procedure, and 72% required candidates to exhibit their previous work. (See Figure 2.) A competitive selection process encourages suppliers to provide novel and cost-effective solutions, increasing the likelihood of a successful conclusion.
Vendors who look at the full business case and bring new ideas to the table are also sought by successful organizations. However, one corporation expressed concern regarding intellectual property, particularly when it came to genuine advancements. The issue of ownership must clearly be addressed during the contracting stage.
Long-term partnerships with vendors who understand the business can be extremely advantageous in particular changes. On the other hand, such partners may be too attached to business practices that must be altered or abandoned. Companies must consider whether the provider can adapt. Is it bringing the right resources, perspective, and mindset to the transformation? The organization should move on if the response is no. For example, a multinational banking institution took the difficult decision to switch from an incumbent partner to a niche vendor whose speciality and success with highly tailored solutions was well matched with the company’s customer-centric emphasis.
Contracting and selecting vendors
High-performing outsourcing contracts are built on strong relationships and open communication. Working with vendors who understand the business and developing a transparent and collaborative contractual process are both important aspects of a digital transition. The majority of organizations with effective change programs (77 percent) stated they chose incumbent IT vendors for their transformation projects, and 97 percent said the vendor executive team had a high degree of involvement and thus a strong commitment to the job, according to our poll. One significant worldwide vendor with 50,000 workers showed its commitment to a banking institution client by having its board of directors available to answer questions. “It helped to know that [the vendor’s] management was behind it,” the bank’s senior executive stated.
Contracting frameworks that are unique to digital transformations and not borrowed from previous (and potentially irrelevant) IT contracts are the foundation of successful vendor relationships. The survey respondents claimed they employed comprehensive (72%) and digital transformation-specific (57%) contracts, with 75 percent saying their vendors were involved in creating the project’s scope and execution strategy.
What distinguishes a successful digital transformation contract from others? The biggest shift in focus, according to one huge corporation, was from output to results. Vendors must adapt to agile modes of working as clients’ expectations for value delivery from their partners change, requiring them to provide several iterations rather than a single final result.
Management of vendors
The respondents placed a high value on vendor experience with digital transformations, with 72 percent saying they had requested possible vendors to disclose their work history, and 82 percent asking the vendors they chose to detail past triumphs and failures with change projects. Only 56% of respondents said suppliers gave significant information about failures, despite the fact that the majority of respondents (95%) thought vendors were upfront about failures.
Companies who have a good understanding of potential vendors’ historical experience will be considerably more positioned to build a strategy for working with the ones they choose. After its reform effort was underway, the banking organization mentioned above learnt this lesson all too well. It was about to cut connections with a vendor who was missing delivery deadlines and didn’t appear to be up to the task when the vendor revealed that the project was more complex than expected and that it lacked the necessary capabilities. Fortunately, there was still time to alter course, and the teams were able to identify areas that required additional staffing or training.
A vendor is first introduced to a company by the team participating in the pitching and contracting process. When a separate team is brought in to complete the work, however, the continuity is gone. Involvement of the vendor’s presale team in the transformation process was critical in keeping teams working together efficiently, according to 73 percent of survey respondents. This strengthened the project more than any other aspect of vendor management. The vendor’s presale team stayed on at 68 percent of the organizations surveyed to execute the digital transformation.
Implementation
Keeping the budget on track and holding vendors accountable are critical to the success of a digital transition. According to our poll, 71% of organizations with successful projects said they stayed on budget, demonstrating a link between solid preparation and a successful conclusion. Indeed, in 60% of these organizations, the project was completed on time and on budget. (See Figure 3.)
Of course, things go wrong from time to time. When a project’s scope threatens to expand or vendors appear to be falling behind schedule, management must be prepared to use the contract’s conditions to keep things on track. Companies who successfully undertook a digital transformation invoked contractual duties for non-delivery in 58 percent of cases in the survey, and 67 percent included incentives in their vendor contracts.
Vendor management will be critical to most firms’ digital transformation strategies. Vendors provide expertise and fill in the gaps in internal resources. A solid vendor strategy must be clear about the need to outsource and how suppliers will best serve the project. In addition, the company must conduct a competitive selection process, establish a working relationship with the vendors it chooses based on a thorough understanding of their previous successes and failures, commit work output to a contractual agreement, and closely manage vendors to ensure that the project stays on budget and meets deadlines. Most businesses may improve the outcomes of their digital transformation projects by enlisting the support of vendors—as long as a deliberate sourcing strategy is established from the start.
5 Ways to Improve the Outcome of Effective Vendor Management for Digital Transformation
1. Prioritize your homework
Nobody likes to perform any more work than is absolutely necessary. Except for one kid who sat in the front row every time and demanded extra homework over the weekend. Fast forward 20 years, and the same kid is probably wondering, “Is this worth my time? Which leads us back to the first point: do your homework and reach out to the proper people. Even if you’re not trying to sell something, vendors can take your reaching out to them in a variety of ways. Reach out to suppliers with suitable opportunities in this scenario, however we’re occasionally confronted with resistance and caution. Doing your research ahead of time is the greatest method to receive what you want from a provider. Choose the appropriate mate. Examine potential vendors thoroughly to ensure that their work matches your standards. Make sure you’re providing value to them, and vice versa. You should not squander anyone’s time.
2. Have long-term objectives
Long-term relationships clearly have greater advantages than one-time purchases. Finding a trustworthy vendor, and even better, a contact within that firm with whom you feel at ease, is ideal for both sides. Consider how much time you’ll save if you require similar responses. Plus, if the provider understands it can count on you for repeat business, you’re more likely to get better follow-up service. Make genuine connections wherever possible. Understanding a vendor’s business needs and how you may assist them is usually beneficial. Invoke the fundamental values we acquired in kindergarten. Be respectful, considerate, and understanding. It never hurts to have a little individuality.
3. Establish Clear Goals
Set clear expectations from the start. Outline the extent of work to be done, the methodology, dates, how the parties will communicate in the future, how decisions will be reached, and so on. Consider yourself in the shoes of the vendor. Provide succinct details of any information they may require in order to achieve a successful outcome, which will lead to a successful partnership. Although phone conversations may yield faster results, make sure to follow up. Always write down facts so that there are no misunderstandings. Organize your emails so that they are easy to read, understand, and reference.
4. Communication is essential
There is no such thing as too much communication when vendors are waiting to hear back about a potential sale or client feedback. Projects can take weeks or months to complete. Setting up a timetable for regular updates is beneficial to me. You obtain the advantage of them maybe doing the same if you set the example of keeping your partner informed. If anything changes—timelines, expectations, or anything else—inform your vendors as soon as possible. Early and frequent communication allows both parties to quickly respond to changing circumstances. After all, you’re in charge of vendors. As a result, take charge of the communication.
5. Analyze and provide feedback on performance
Even if a project or evaluation is a failure, make an effort to provide useful feedback. If a vendor is not picked for shortlisting, Olive generates a full report. Our goal is to show vendors how they stack up against their competition when it comes to a specific set of requirements. Regardless of the outcome, the collaboration should benefit both parties. Don’t be afraid to solicit vendor comments and insight on the relationship’s health and how it might be enhanced.
Course Manual 11: Data Analysts
What is the Role of a Data Analyst?
Data is rapidly being used by businesses across all industries to make crucial business decisions, such as which new goods to develop, which new markets to enter, which new investments to make, and which new (or existing) customers to target. They also use data to discover inefficiencies and other business issues that require attention.
The data analyst’s responsibility in these organizations is to assign a numerical value to these critical business functions so that performance can be measured and compared across time. But an analyst’s job is more than just looking at numbers: they must also understand how to use data to help a business make better decisions.
What exactly is analytics?
Analytics puts theory and practice together to find and communicate data-driven insights that help managers, stakeholders, and other executives make better decisions. Experienced data analysts think about their work in a larger context, both within their company and in light of external variables. Analysts can also take into account the competitive climate, internal and external company interests, and the lack of certain data sets when making data-based recommendations to stakeholders.
Analytical Data Types
Four types of data analytics build on each other to provide a company with more value.
• Descriptive analytics looks at what happened in the past, such as monthly revenue, quarterly sales, and yearly website visitors. These kinds of discoveries enable a company to spot patterns.
• Diagnostic analytics looks into why something happened by comparing descriptive data sets to find trends and dependencies. This assists a company in determining what caused a positive or negative result.
• Predictive analytics looks for patterns in descriptive and diagnostic data to predict likely outcomes. This enables a company to take proactive measures, such as reaching out to a customer who is unlikely to renew a contract.
• Prescriptive analytics tries to figure out what business action should be taken. While this type of analysis is useful for addressing prospective problems and staying ahead of industry trends, it frequently necessitates the use of complex algorithms and modern technologies such as machine learning.
The firm PwC determined that descriptive analytics is insufficient for informed, data-driven decision making in a 2016 poll of more than 2,000 company executives. As a result, diagnostic and predictive analytics are becoming more vital to businesses.
Data Analyst’s Primary Responsibilities
The answer to the question “What does a data analyst do?” will differ based on the sort of organization and the extent to which data-driven decision-making methods have been implemented. In general, though, a data analyst’s responsibilities usually involve the following:
• Creating and maintaining data systems and databases, including correcting coding errors and other data issues.
• Extracting data from primary and secondary sources, then rearranging it into a format that can be read by humans and machines.
• Interpreting data sets with statistical techniques, giving special attention to trends and patterns that could be useful for diagnostic and predictive analytics efforts.
• Demonstrating the importance of their job in relation to local, national, and worldwide trends that affect their company and industry.
• Creating executive-level reports that effectively communicate trends, patterns, and projections based on pertinent data.
• Working with programmers, engineers, and organizational leaders to identify process improvement possibilities, recommend system adjustments, and build data governance policies.
• Creating suitable documentation that enables stakeholders to comprehend the processes of the data analysis process and, if necessary, reproduce or replicate the analysis
What Data and Analytics Components Are Needed for A Successful Digital Transformation?
Too often, digital changes fail to meet their objectives, for a variety of reasons. Starting with a data and analytics framework in mind, on the other hand, can help you move the program forward and ensure you get a return on investment now and in the future.
A digital transformation is a continuous program that focuses on data and analytics, rather than a one-time initiative. It also demands a cultural transformation within the firm centered on putting data at the core of decision-making, rather than simply embracing new technology. A successful digital transformation requires the following data and analytics components:
• A clear data strategy to guide your digital transformation. A data strategy is about more than just data. It’s a well-defined strategy that specifies the people, procedures, and technology your company will need to use data to meet its objectives. A well-defined data strategy can help you with your digital transformation by providing answers to problems like:
– In a digital economy, how can you utilize data to support your business goals, solve business challenges, and ultimately propel your firm forward?
– Where did this data come from, and how good is it? Will it give you information that will help you better understand your clients and their requirements?
– What procedures must be followed to ensure that the data is of good quality and easily accessible?
– What technology will allow for data storage, sharing, and analysis?
• A well-defined data management strategy to aid your digital transformation. After you’ve established your data strategy, you’ll need to decide how you’ll manage your data, especially if your goal is to solve business challenges like data silos and poor data quality. A data management strategy that supports your digital transformation and allows you to:
– Define how your data will be managed, secured, and used during its entire existence.
– Provide business users with useful data and analytics, allowing them to drive forward corporate goals.
• A well-defined change management strategy that will help the organization become more data-driven. Without a strategy for encouraging user adoption, your chances of accomplishing your digital transformation business objectives are slim. Make a plan to effectively communicate your data and analytics strategy, obtain buy-in early and often, train end users on why data and analytics are important and how to use both in their daily work, and always remember to celebrate wins. Data and analytics must be integrated into an organization’s entire strategy, which necessitates the development of a culture that encourages and welcomes both.
As you consider where to begin your digital transformation, keep in mind that data and analytics are the thread that will carry your organization through the transformation and allow you to move with the market.
Why are data and analytics key to digital transformation?
Data and analytics are both critical components of a company’s successful digital transformation. To get the most out of their business transactions and processes, companies must embrace digital transformation. A business will struggle to meet the demands and wishes of its customers without digital transformation.
But how do business owners turn their company into a profitable one? The solution is really straightforward. It’s simply a matter of responding to new changes or advances that will benefit their company. Many clients seek to make their transactions easier as new technologies, devices, software, and different sorts of business applications become available. As a result, they anticipate that most businesses will accept these adjustments. This is only one of many reasons why businesses seek Digital Transformation Consulting.
Customers will likely migrate to another agency or organization if your company does not react to market advances, putting your company at a disadvantage. You will eventually notice that your firm is slowly deteriorating due to low productivity and a lack of consumer support or knowledge.
There are four different types of data analytics for digital transformation.
Diagnostic, descriptive, prescriptive, and predictive analytics are the four types of data analytics that are commonly used. Each one has a distinct goal and function in the data analysis process. Take a look at the following to gain a better grasp of these types:
• Diagnostic — It assists in determining why certain events occurred. This technique is frequently used in conjunction with more basic and advanced descriptive analytics.
• Descriptive — It aids in answering questions about what occurred. In describing outputs to stakeholders, this technique summarizes huge datasets. By generating Key Performance Indicators, this technique aids in tracking the business’s failures or successes.
• Prescriptive – It assists in addressing questions regarding what has to be done. A decision-making process can be formed using ideas and data from predictive analytics. It allows for proactive alterations, revisions, and innovations in response to client demands and desires.
• Predictive – It can assist answer questions about what will happen in the next days. This method makes use of historical data to discover trends and forecast what will likely happen in the coming days.
Data & Analytics in the Context of Digital Transformation
Digital transformation can be accomplished with the data and analytics that diverse companies might use. Furthermore, because many clients may support their products and services, business owners can successfully tap their target market.
Have you ever noticed how a company with cutting-edge technology and innovations attracts a large number of clients and customers? Customers desired to make their transactions and their lives easier and more easy, therefore this is why. To keep up with your competition, it’s best to use the power of data and analytics.
Source:www.epcgroup.net
Data and analytics benefits for digital transformation:
Aids in the decision-making process for the company’s benefits and advantages.
Your organization can be digitally transformed by utilizing data and analytics. These can substantially assist you in making judgments based on predictive analytic consultancy that affects customers and audiences. Customers’ reactions to the items and services you provide are critical factors in making decisions. In order to fully comprehend your clients’ preferences, your business organizations must use data resources.
Once you understand their preferences, you can consistently provide what they require. Furthermore, if you do this consistently, you will be able to keep them as devoted consumers for a longer time. As a result, you will have a positive impact on your business’ bottom line – that is, you will be able to reach your target market and benefit more from your commercial transactions.
All employees’ productivity and efficiency are improved.
The productivity and efficiency of all personnel in corporate organizations is largely due to data and analytics. When a company has completed digital transformation, all of the information, papers, and data that employees require may be located on a single server. This is already a significant benefit to your company, since everyone can immediately access all of the information and resources they require to achieve optimal productivity.
In fact, even in remote places, your staff may not need to use laptops or PCs to access the files, papers, or data they require because they can use their mobile phones.
Source: www.epcgroup.net
Improves the financial performance of the company.
The primary reason for corporations conducting business in the industry is to make more money by making a large profit. Business leaders can achieve the levels of success they desire by embracing the spirit of digital transformation.
As a result, if your organization has gone digital, you won’t need to buy any improvements. Furthermore, you will need to invest money on software and applications that are considered beneficial to the organization. As a result, the company’s required expenditures will be reduced. Furthermore, you will have the opportunity to spend your money on more important things such as team building, team dinners, and overtime compensation. Power BI is an excellent example of this, as it offers a robust Business Intelligence dashboard for instant insights into company processes, revenue, and other metrics.
Clients’ or customers’ experience is vastly improved.
Because your company has complete data and analytics, you can assert that these can help all of your customers have a better experience. As a result, you may monitor your clients’ activity and keep track of their support conversations. You can also inquire about their discontent with your products, services, and brands. You may quickly improve the experience of your clients or consumers with what you offer by simply incorporating data and analytics into your business tactics.
Conclusion
Data and analytics cover a wide range of topics. If appropriately employed, these important factors have a significant impact on the growth and profitability of the organization. Data analytics techniques are anticipated to be used by business management to ensure that decisions are made correctly. They may see positive results from their efforts if they develop these skills.
Course Manual 12: Solutions Architects
What exactly does a solution architect do?
The technique of creating, describing, and controlling solution engineering to match it with specific business challenges is known as solution architecture. Protecting client data under GDPR and other privacy standards, for example, is a business issue. The solution architecture describes how those requirements are translated into the behavior of a piece of software.
A solution architect is in charge of directing the practice and presenting the solution’s overarching technical vision.
While the discipline can be maintained in-house, solution architecture consultancy is offered as a separate set of services by some firms.
Each of these phrases has many meanings, which we’ll go over in the course manual.
The terms enterprise architect, solution architect, and technical architect are all interchangeable.
Solution architecture is a multi-step process that connects business problems to technological solutions. Its objectives are to:
• Determine the best technological solution to existing company issues.
• Explain the software’s structure, characteristics, behavior, and other features to project stakeholders.
• Specify features, phases of development, and solution requirements.
• Provide specifications for the solution’s definition, management, and delivery.
The enterprise architect and the software architect are two more architect-level positions that are sometimes conflated. Let’s go over the key distinctions.
What is an enterprise architect?
Enterprise architecture is concerned with the creation of complex business ecosystems and the resolution of high-level strategic concerns. The strategic directions of the business architecture are defined by enterprise architecture, which leads to a knowledge of what technical facilities are required to support that design. In other words, the enterprise architect determines what has to be done, while the solution architect determines how it should be done.
The enterprise architect has the most comprehensive understanding of the company’s present architecture and aspirations. This specialist is in charge of developing a strategy plan for making technological changes. This individual works closely with top-level executives and decision-makers, demonstrating the business value of proposed technical projects.
What is a technical or software architect?
The software or technical architect is primarily responsible for software architecture and engineering concerns.
The software architect, unlike the solution architect, usually does not deal with financial or organizational issues. This individual is responsible for all elements of software engineering on a given project, including development, implementation, maintenance, support, and evolution. Software architects work closely with development teams and have complete control over the development process. Using the prior case as an example, the software architect determines what has to be done and how the outcome may be maintained.
What is an infrastructure architect’s role?
An infrastructure architect is similar to a technical architect, but they focus on an organization’s on-premises server or cloud systems. This means that rather than developing software, an infrastructure specialist helps expand and maintain the production side of a business software ecosystem. These experts monitor existing IT systems and networks as well as investigate and integrate new ones, ensuring that they fulfill all standards for resilience, security, performance, and availability, among other things.
Technical architects specify how software must be developed, whereas infrastructure architects ensure that software is successfully installed and functions properly. However, a technical architect may also be in charge of infrastructure. As a result, the distinctions between these two positions are hazy.
The utilization of multiple components of business, information, and technological architectures in a solution is described by solution architecture. Solution architecture bridges the gap between corporate and technical architecture by focusing on specifics and solution technologies to solve a specific business challenge. The latter is solely concerned with technological difficulties. Combining enterprise architecture activities with solution and technical architecture activities is an effective method for businesses.
Solution architecture and its main processes
A well-designed solution architecture aids teams in developing products on schedule and on budget while also ensuring that they answer the problem for which they were created. So, what exactly does solution architecture accomplish?
Solutions that are compatible with the corporate context
Companies typically have operating systems, information contexts, and integration requirements in place. The solution architecture ensures that a new system fits into the existing business context. A solution architect must understand how all aspects of the business model, including procedures, operating systems, and application architectures, work together to do this objective. They will be able to build a specific solution that best matches the environment if they are aware of these factors.
All stakeholders’ requirements are met
Meeting the needs of stakeholders is one of the most difficult aspects of software development. A product usually has a variety of stakeholders, both technical and non-technical experts. The goal of solution architecture is to ensure that all of their requirements are met. Product development procedures, expenses, and budgeting must be communicated to stakeholders on a regular basis. A solution architect performs these roles by translating technical project specifics into a language that management and non-technical stakeholders can comprehend.
Taking into account project restrictions
Each project has limitations, which are known as constraints. Among them are:
• technology
• risks
• scope
• cost
• quality
• time
• resources
For example, a product must be designed with technologies that meet the needs of its individual components. The scope of a project is a section of software documentation that specifies precise objectives, tasks, features, and functionalities. A budget has been set aside for each project.
While these factors are limits in and of themselves, they each have their own set of limitations. To reconcile these constraints with project goals, the solution architect must first comprehend all of these constraints, compare them, and then make a series of technological and administrative decisions.
Choosing the technology stack for the project
The selection of technology for product development is an important aspect of establishing solution architecture. The technology stack chosen will have a direct impact on the technical architectural strategy. Platforms, programming languages, and tools are all related with a variety of practices. The solution architecture function here is to determine which of them is best for a specific project. It’s not an ordinary task that necessitates technology evaluation and comparison.
Non-functional needs must be met
Non-functional requirements that characterize the system’s characteristics must be met by all software initiatives. These are sometimes referred to as quality characteristics. While the exact list of non-functional criteria varies depending on the complexity of each product, the most typical are security, performance, maintainability, scalability, usability, and product reliability. The solution architect’s job is to examine all non-functional needs and make sure that future product development meets them.
Let’s break down the high-level goals of solution architecture adoption into specific tasks and underlying skillsets now that we’ve addressed them.
Description and responsibilities of the solution architect role
The role of the solution architect is to make solution-level decisions and analyze their impact on overall business goals and outcomes. A person in this position, like an architect in the construction business who creates a general layout for a future structure, must have a thorough understanding of various technologies in order to recommend the optimal solution based on the incoming requirements and existing surroundings. As a result, we can say that the output of a solution architect’s work is a collection of technological solutions as well as a strategy for implementing them.
The solution architect is responsible in estimating the budget and delivering it to the stakeholders after generating a strategic technical vision for the product. He or she watches the development process and keeps stakeholders informed once everything has been agreed upon.
The responsibilities of a solution architect are derived directly from processes in practice:
• Analyzing the technology environment
• Analyzing enterprise specifics
• Analyzing and documenting requirements
• Setting the collaboration framework
• Creating a solution prototype
• Participating in technology selection
• Controlling solution development
• Supporting project management
While most of these roles necessitate a solution architect’s leadership, this individual only assists PM activities by ensuring that resources, risk recognition, and planning remain aligned with the solution goals.
Technical background and experience as a solution architect
A solution architect, who provides technical guidance to digital transformation teams, has a technical background with at least eight years of work experience in one or more IT fields, including but not limited to:
• Engineering and software architecture design
• Business analysis
• DevOps
• Project and product management
• IT architecture, infrastructure, and cloud development
Exceptional communication skills
Communication is an important aspect of the solution architect’s skill set. Because this job requires negotiating with stakeholders, understanding everyone’s needs, managing risks, and delivering products, a lack of communication skills can be a serious barrier. Working closely with enterprise and software architects, business analysts, and project teams is required for this position. As a result, a skilled solution architect can listen, advise, empathize, and explain.
Deep analytic abilities
Understanding how different aspects of the business interact is necessary for designing a solution. The architect understands the corporate strategy and all business procedures that define how a corporation achieves its strategic objectives. However, the architect is well-versed in technical details. As a result, solution architects are always dealing with analytical work and moving between different business levels.
Skills in project and resource management
While a solution architect isn’t directly involved in project management, they must account for deadlines and available resources. Solution architects can determine which solutions are beneficial and which are ineffective in a specific situation. They are focused on business outcomes and know how to attain them within the constraints of time and resources.
Aside from that, solution architects think on the project in the long run and recognize that the solution may need to scale and adapt to future developments. As the ones who know the end goal, they direct the development process accordingly.
Workshop Exercises
Team Building Exercises
01. Digital Product Managers: Explain in your own words how this process will directly impact upon your department?
02. Security & Risk Advisors: Explain in your own words how this process will directly impact upon your department?
03. Internal Communications: Explain in your own words how this process will directly impact upon your department?
04. System Integrators: Explain in your own words how this process will directly impact upon your department?
05. Chief Experience Officers: Explain in your own words how this process will directly impact upon your department?
06. Compliance Specialists Including Digital Ethics: Explain in your own words how this process will directly impact upon your department?
07. Project Managers: Explain in your own words how this process will directly impact upon your department?
08. Cloud Specialists: Explain in your own words how this process will directly impact upon your department?
09. Organizational Development (HR): Explain in your own words how this process will directly impact upon your department?
10. Vendor Managers: Explain in your own words how this process will directly impact upon your department?
11. Data Analysts : Explain in your own words how this process will directly impact upon your department?
12. Solutions Architects: Explain in your own words how this process will directly impact upon your department?
SWOT & MOST Analysis Exercises
01. Undertake a detailed SWOT Analysis in order to identify your department’s internal strengths and weaknesses and external opportunities and threats in relation to each of the 12 Team Building processes featured above. Undertake this task together with your department’s stakeholders in order to encourage collaborative evaluation.
02. Develop a detailed MOST Analysis in order to establish your department’s: Mission; Objectives; Strategies and Tasks in relation to Team Building. Undertake this task together with all of your department’s stakeholders in order to encourage collaborative evaluation.
Project Studies
Project Study (Part 1) – Customer Service
The Head of this Department is to provide a detailed report relating to the Team Building process that has been implemented within their department, together with all key stakeholders, as a result of conducting this workshop, incorporating process: planning; development; implementation; management; and review. Your process should feature the following 12 parts:
01. Digital Product Managers
02. Security & Risk Advisors
03. Internal Communications
04. System Integrators
05. Chief Experience Officers
06. Compliance Specialists Including Digital Ethics
07. Project Managers
08. Cloud Specialists
09. Organizational Development (HR)
10. Vendor Managers
11. Data Analysts
12. Solutions Architects
Please include the results of the initial evaluation and assessment.
Project Study (Part 2) – E-Business
The Head of this Department is to provide a detailed report relating to the Team Building process that has been implemented within their department, together with all key stakeholders, as a result of conducting this workshop, incorporating process: planning; development; implementation; management; and review. Your process should feature the following 12 parts:
01. Digital Product Managers
02. Security & Risk Advisors
03. Internal Communications
04. System Integrators
05. Chief Experience Officers
06. Compliance Specialists Including Digital Ethics
07. Project Managers
08. Cloud Specialists
09. Organizational Development (HR)
10. Vendor Managers
11. Data Analysts
12. Solutions Architects
Please include the results of the initial evaluation and assessment.
Project Study (Part 3) – Finance
The Head of this Department is to provide a detailed report relating to the Team Building process that has been implemented within their department, together with all key stakeholders, as a result of conducting this workshop, incorporating process: planning; development; implementation; management; and review. Your process should feature the following 12 parts:
01. Digital Product Managers
02. Security & Risk Advisors
03. Internal Communications
04. System Integrators
05. Chief Experience Officers
06. Compliance Specialists Including Digital Ethics
07. Project Managers
08. Cloud Specialists
09. Organizational Development (HR)
10. Vendor Managers
11. Data Analysts
12. Solutions Architects
Please include the results of the initial evaluation and assessment.
Project Study (Part 4) – Globalization
The Head of this Department is to provide a detailed report relating to the Team Building process that has been implemented within their department, together with all key stakeholders, as a result of conducting this workshop, incorporating process: planning; development; implementation; management; and review. Your process should feature the following 12 parts:
01. Digital Product Managers
02. Security & Risk Advisors
03. Internal Communications
04. System Integrators
05. Chief Experience Officers
06. Compliance Specialists Including Digital Ethics
07. Project Managers
08. Cloud Specialists
09. Organizational Development (HR)
10. Vendor Managers
11. Data Analysts
12. Solutions Architects
Please include the results of the initial evaluation and assessment.
Project Study (Part 5) – Human Resources
The Head of this Department is to provide a detailed report relating to the Team Building process that has been implemented within their department, together with all key stakeholders, as a result of conducting this workshop, incorporating process: planning; development; implementation; management; and review. Your process should feature the following 12 parts:
01. Digital Product Managers
02. Security & Risk Advisors
03. Internal Communications
04. System Integrators
05. Chief Experience Officers
06. Compliance Specialists Including Digital Ethics
07. Project Managers
08. Cloud Specialists
09. Organizational Development (HR)
10. Vendor Managers
11. Data Analysts
12. Solutions Architects
Please include the results of the initial evaluation and assessment.
Project Study (Part 6) – Information Technology
The Head of this Department is to provide a detailed report relating to the Team Building process that has been implemented within their department, together with all key stakeholders, as a result of conducting this workshop, incorporating process: planning; development; implementation; management; and review. Your process should feature the following 12 parts:
01. Digital Product Managers
02. Security & Risk Advisors
03. Internal Communications
04. System Integrators
05. Chief Experience Officers
06. Compliance Specialists Including Digital Ethics
07. Project Managers
08. Cloud Specialists
09. Organizational Development (HR)
10. Vendor Managers
11. Data Analysts
12. Solutions Architects
Please include the results of the initial evaluation and assessment.
Project Study (Part 7) – Legal
The Head of this Department is to provide a detailed report relating to the Team Building process that has been implemented within their department, together with all key stakeholders, as a result of conducting this workshop, incorporating process: planning; development; implementation; management; and review. Your process should feature the following 12 parts:
01. Digital Product Managers
02. Security & Risk Advisors
03. Internal Communications
04. System Integrators
05. Chief Experience Officers
06. Compliance Specialists Including Digital Ethics
07. Project Managers
08. Cloud Specialists
09. Organizational Development (HR)
10. Vendor Managers
11. Data Analysts
12. Solutions Architects
Please include the results of the initial evaluation and assessment.
Project Study (Part 8) – Management
The Head of this Department is to provide a detailed report relating to the Team Building process that has been implemented within their department, together with all key stakeholders, as a result of conducting this workshop, incorporating process: planning; development; implementation; management; and review. Your process should feature the following 12 parts:
01. Digital Product Managers
02. Security & Risk Advisors
03. Internal Communications
04. System Integrators
05. Chief Experience Officers
06. Compliance Specialists Including Digital Ethics
07. Project Managers
08. Cloud Specialists
09. Organizational Development (HR)
10. Vendor Managers
11. Data Analysts
12. Solutions Architects
Please include the results of the initial evaluation and assessment.
Project Study (Part 9) – Marketing
The Head of this Department is to provide a detailed report relating to the Team Building process that has been implemented within their department, together with all key stakeholders, as a result of conducting this workshop, incorporating process: planning; development; implementation; management; and review. Your process should feature the following 12 parts:
01. Digital Product Managers
02. Security & Risk Advisors
03. Internal Communications
04. System Integrators
05. Chief Experience Officers
06. Compliance Specialists Including Digital Ethics
07. Project Managers
08. Cloud Specialists
09. Organizational Development (HR)
10. Vendor Managers
11. Data Analysts
12. Solutions Architects
Please include the results of the initial evaluation and assessment.
Project Study (Part 10) – Production
The Head of this Department is to provide a detailed report relating to the Team Building process that has been implemented within their department, together with all key stakeholders, as a result of conducting this workshop, incorporating process: planning; development; implementation; management; and review. Your process should feature the following 12 parts:
01. Digital Product Managers
02. Security & Risk Advisors
03. Internal Communications
04. System Integrators
05. Chief Experience Officers
06. Compliance Specialists Including Digital Ethics
07. Project Managers
08. Cloud Specialists
09. Organizational Development (HR)
10. Vendor Managers
11. Data Analysts
12. Solutions Architects
Please include the results of the initial evaluation and assessment.
Project Study (Part 11) – Logistics
The Head of this Department is to provide a detailed report relating to the Team Building process that has been implemented within their department, together with all key stakeholders, as a result of conducting this workshop, incorporating process: planning; development; implementation; management; and review. Your process should feature the following 12 parts:
01. Digital Product Managers
02. Security & Risk Advisors
03. Internal Communications
04. System Integrators
05. Chief Experience Officers
06. Compliance Specialists Including Digital Ethics
07. Project Managers
08. Cloud Specialists
09. Organizational Development (HR)
10. Vendor Managers
11. Data Analysts
12. Solutions Architects
Please include the results of the initial evaluation and assessment.
Project Study (Part 12) – Education
The Head of this Department is to provide a detailed report relating to the Team Building process that has been implemented within their department, together with all key stakeholders, as a result of conducting this workshop, incorporating process: planning; development; implementation; management; and review. Your process should feature the following 12 parts:
01. Digital Product Managers
02. Security & Risk Advisors
03. Internal Communications
04. System Integrators
05. Chief Experience Officers
06. Compliance Specialists Including Digital Ethics
07. Project Managers
08. Cloud Specialists
09. Organizational Development (HR)
10. Vendor Managers
11. Data Analysts
12. Solutions Architects
Please include the results of the initial evaluation and assessment.
Program Benefits
Information Technology
- Agile IT processes
- Improved value delivery
- Decreased defects
- Continuous improvement
- Modernized infrastructure
- Re-tooled staff
- Increased morale
- IT Business partnership
- Meaningful metrics
- Effective sourcing
Management
- Decreased costs
- Aligned strategies
- Servant leadership
- Clarified priorities
- Improved effectiveness
- Improved transparency
- Reduced risk
- Measurable results
- Satisfied customers
- Vendor partnerships
Human Resources
- Empowered teams
- Servant leaders
- Re-tooled staff
- Improved teamwork
- Enhanced collaboration
- Improved performance
- Reduced turnover
- Improved loyalty
- Leadership development
- Employee development
Client Telephone Conference (CTC)
If you have any questions or if you would like to arrange a Client Telephone Conference (CTC) to discuss this particular Unique Consulting Service Proposition (UCSP) in more detail, please CLICK HERE.