Should COVID-19 start, slow down, or pivot your digital transformation strategy?

The answer is yes, but it depends on how your organization defines digital transformation and where it is in its journey.

There’s a running joke floating on social media, “What started your organization’s digital transformation,” and the answer circled is “COVID-19.”

Hopefully, your organization started it’s digital transformation long before COVID-19.

The Strategic Answer to What is Digital Transformation

Is your organization adapting its business model, renewing its views on target markets, finding innovative ways to improve customer experiences, leveraging analytics or machine learning as part of becoming a data-driven organization, and deploying new citizen-capable technologies to the workforce?

Those are the strategic elements of a digital transformation. In fact, in my book Driving Digital, I define digital transformation.

“Digital transformation is not just about technology and its implementation. It’s about looking at the business strategy through the lens of technical capabilities and how that changes how you are operating and generating revenues.” — Isaac Sacolick

In my definition, technology is a driver, an enabler, and a differentiator. But transforming requires changes to the business operating model and with an eye toward growth.

And not just technology in its commoditized definition. I’m also referring to analytics, customer experience, and innovation.

When I use the word “lens,” I’m referring to culture, values, and collaborative practices.

Transforming because of COVID-19 and Remote Work

So if we put digital transformation definition through a COVID-19 and remote working lens, digital transformation is not about the technologies that CIOs deployed to enable it. In other words, it’s not about whether everyone received laptops, that the VPN had sufficient capacity, that employees were educated on securing their home networks, or that everyone had access to collaboration tools.

That’s the technology! That’s executing a business continuity plan. That’s not digital transformation. To be transformational, consider:

• How well teams are collaborating with the provided tools. Have you adjusted how people meet because not all meeting types work well on Zoom, Google Meet, or Microsoft Teams?
• Do you have new workflows and collaborations that can be easily instrumented with low code platforms?
• Whether agile development teams have adjusted to remote scrum or whether the devops team has aligned to new priorities.
• Has the CIO and the PMO evaluated priorities through a COVID-19 lens and created an offensive and defensive strategy?
• Are product managers engaging customers to uncover new issues and opportunities?
• What are sales and marketing reporting as buyer-behavior differences, and how are they adjusting go-to-market strategies?
• What are citizen data scientists in the operating units reporting as significant usage and behavior differences pre, during, and hopefully soon, post-COVID-19?
• Are you meeting with executives and colleagues to map short and longer-term financial impacts and operational needs?