Digital Transformation Step 4: Digital Roadmap / Digital Strategy
Answering the following questions will help:
– Do we see opportunities in these project ideas?
– Do the project ideas fit our business/strategies so far? If not, would these be good ideas for testing and further developing the organization? Do we have a need for this change?
– What is the implementation cost? Can we bear the risk?
– Do we have the knowledge and the finances to do this?
– Who in the organization can lead and implement the project?
To support conversations, project ideas can be visualized in a matrix (see figure), for instance with the two dimensions of business impact (how much impact do we expect from the idea?) and feasibility (do we have the market/customers, knowledge and finances to implement the idea/project?).
In a next step, the digital vision is described as a summary of all strategic initiatives. You will discuss questions like:
– Which products and services will be offered in a new way?
– How quickly and how intensively should the transformation be carried out?
– What kind of organization will we become?
And finally, all strategic initiatives and strategic projects will be documented with goals, responsibilities, project budgets and deadlines:
– Goals: what measurable successes (quantitative, such as process speed, cost reduction or sales growth, or qualitative, such as customer/employee satisfaction or product quality) are to be achieved with the initiative/project?
– Responsibilities: who leads the initiative/project and is assigned the appropriate tasks, responsibilities and capabilities?
– Budgets: what investment and operating budgets are available for the initiative/project?
– Deadlines: when does the initiative/project start and end, and what are the key milestones that need to be met (e.g. due to reliance on other initiatives)?
A template digital roadmap together with an SME example is available on https://the-digital-transformation-canvas.com/roadmap/.
In the next blog post, we will discuss step 5 of the transformation method, the implementation of a digital roadmap / digital strategy.
Strategy questions for the digital age:
1: How do you assess your digital initiatives and projects regarding their business impact and feasibility?
2: Did you document and internally communicate all strategic digital initiatives/projects?
3: How quickly and how intensively should the transformation be carried out?