Why EVERY Company should have a Transformation Strategy (and review it frequently!)

The IT challenges of today are complex and can be daunting as they appear to change focus quite often, Today’s news and buzzwords become tomorrows forgotten dreams. Keeping pace with evolving business needs requires IT to move quickly and deliberately. Use of an agile, measurable benefits delivery model has become common but can in-and-of itself be confusing for an organization to implement. Understanding the core interactions and benefits across technology, process, and people (especially when a solution is a seemingly stand-alone) is not only prudent but is necessary for the business to succeed.

​A formal and managed process to system alignment will ensure that the business and IT teams remain in lockstep and can agree on the benefits realization expectations. Formally driven “change” also helps to ensure understanding across the organization, the core stakeholders, and the ultimate stakeholders, the customers. All too often IT is viewed as an island and the business carries on running the day to day, with limited understanding of what each of the groups is truly doing.
As a leading practice, each leadership team should set and measure the speed to benefit expectations of each project within an overall program. A “quick win” can turn out to be a stepping stone to short-term benefits realization, however they need to be weighed against the overall vision in order to ensure it is not viewed as a “throw away” exercise from which the business sponsors see little benefit.

---

Just as if you were thinking of building a new home, or remodeling an existing one, a key element or first step is to understand the current “state”, what do you like, not like, and where are your opportunities to make it shine. Transforming business systems requires the same type of “deep introspection”, so that your investments and resources are spent in the best ways possible along the way. You need to look deep into the key business processes and establish a vision for how they will emerge from the “construction” by using a design blueprint phase by phase. Likewise, you have to examine the roles and operational alignment across the organization to assess impacts that changes will have and pave the road to success for each area of impact.  From there, it is best to document the future state, incorporate best-in industry systems and processes to build off of.   As in building or remodeling a home, substantial tools exist and are within the purview of transformation teams at Ascent.  Without this type of approach in building and maintaining your roadmap, it is difficult to achieve success in systems and processes that result in qualitative progress for your organization. 

Written By:

​Donna Lekites
Senior Consultant
​Ascent Enterprise Solutions

​