Best Practices for Business Transformation 

Business Transformation refers to the process of making significant changes to the structure, processes, and/or culture of an organization to achieve a new level of performance and competitiveness. Earlier, Anand Jayapalan had spoken about how developing a business transformation process and strategy requires a good amount of time and thoughtful planning. Here are a few best practices that can be used for building a successful business transformation strategy

• Define goals and objectives: Prior to identifying the specific personnel changes, processes, initiatives or digital technologies that a company must consider implementing, it is imperative to define the overall goals of the strategy. Doing so would help the team of a company to better determine business transformation priorities and next steps. The goals of the business transformation would vary from one company to the other. It can include increasing revenue, expanding into a new market and improving the customer experience to optimizing budgets, automating manual internal processes and consolidating technology solutions across the organization. 
• Establish a clear roadmap and timeline: After the initial objectives and goals of the transformation have been identified, one must get started with developing a business transformation roadmap to outline the required tactics and processes. Having a concise and clear roadmap in place can help hold a team accountable for staying on track with discerning business goals and objectives. When establishing a roadmap, companies should typically start working backward from their overall three- or five-year business plan, which would include both short-term and long-term milestones along the way. Incremental milestones can be helpful in motivating workers to celebrate small wins as they work together toward long-term strategic business transformation objectives.
• Engage and align stakeholders:  Even though a single individual or a group of cross-functional leaders might be tasked with creating the initial business transformation plan, securing approval and alignment from all relevant business stakeholders is crucial before moving forward with implementation. Without consensus on the goals, objectives, tactics, and timeline of the transformation strategy, one is quite likely to encounter resistance or slow adoption when the plan is executed.
• Build a cross-functional and diverse team: The people on the business transformation team would have a huge impact in making sure whether the transformation goals are effectively achieved or not. Hence, it is vital to magnetize and engage a team of motivated workers who are equipped with diverse skills that can help support a culture of innovation at a company.  

Depending on new and emerging critical drivers or disruptors, business transformation strategies tend to continually evolve. Earlier, Anand Jayapalan had pointed out that while not all business transformation efforts are successful, it is vital to encourage a culture of innovation and creativity. Efficiently evaluating progress and embracing data-based decisions can help improve business transformation strategy over time. By competently tracking important metrics, a company can put higher degree of focus on replicating successful initiatives, as well as learn from the ones that do not necessarily drive the best outcomes. This shall go a long way in enabling a company to effectively achieve its long-term business transformation goals.