Bringing people and technology together through process to drive digital transformation

However, despite a consensus that digital transformation is a requirement to successfully operate today, challenges remain for many organisations in the pursuit of technological transformation because they’re often only looking at the technology piece of the transformation puzzle. But to be successful with any digital transformation strategy, organisations must bring three critical pieces together: people, process, and technology.

Manage change to drive digital transformation

The role people play in creating the right conditions for a collaborative culture of change across an organisation is often underestimated. Oftentimes, organisations will implement a change in technology and assume that the changes will be adopted and utilised. It would be wonderful if it worked that way, but leaders should be prepared for hiccups and roadblocks in new technology implementation, just in case.

With any change comes challenges – technology changes are no exception. When considering the people impact of digital transformation, consider factors like concerns around impact to internal teams, confusion around how to use new technology, and more. Any digital transformation strategy should proactively consider, and address questions and concerns people may have, which starts by clearly communicating how the changes tie into the organisation’s business objectives and outlining the expected outcomes of the change.

One management framework that can be leveraged is the Lippitt-Knoster model, which highlights six key elements required for effective change: vision, consensus, skills, resources, incentives, and an action plan. Without any one of these elements, change efforts are likely to fail. For best results, teams should be armed with clear roles and responsibilities, as well as simple and accessible process knowledge.

Bring people and technology together with process automation

When it comes to implementing new technology, it must be connected to the rest of the tech stack. Think about the sheer number of applications your organisation has and the amount of data each piece of technology contains. If the dots aren’t connected, then your people won’t be able to easily connect the data they need to do their jobs. Simply put – you’ll have a major process problem, and your digital transformation effort will be stopped before it even starts. That’s why any digital transformation effort must have a focus on automating, orchestrating, and optimizing the workplace.

The first step in bringing technology and people together is by discovering where inefficiencies lie in your technology systems and processes. When your overall goal is to modernize your existing processes, you need to examine your current process inventory. Mapping your business processes will allow you to see every single process active within your existing workflows, helping you identify inefficiencies, and address them.

Once you understand where and what your inefficiencies are, process automation can help you orchestrate the flow of work between people and systems. Process automation technology is the connective tissue between all the points in an organisation and can help ensure that you can govern processes moving forward. And, if an organisation has automated its processes, it can easily monitor, manage, and improve processes by leveraging the insights around performance to optimize its workforce.

Don’t just take my word for it. A recent IDC report found that organisations that were consistently successful in improving business processes through automation saw a higher overall benefit from it and had an above-average completion rate of their automation pipeline (40% when compared to an average of 32% - 35%).

Any digital transformation effort should be seen as an opportunity for an organisation to evaluate the entirety of its business processes – not just the technology they are leveraging. A digital transformation strategy should keep people at its core and begin with an action plan to implement the new technology and processes across the organisation. Another critical part of any action plan is process automation so that organisations can connect people and technology.

Process is the piece of the digital transformation puzzle that brings people and technology together. If your technology systems are connected seamlessly, so can your people.

At the end of the day, one of the main objectives of digital transformation for many is to make organisations more efficient. Without process automation, it’s unlikely that an organisation could achieve the efficiency it is seeking – no matter how great the technology they’ve implemented is.