In the current challenging economic climate, businesses realize the increasing significance of differentiating their offerings, satisfying customer needs, and fostering business innovation – with strategic digital transformation and knowledgeable consulting partners.
Having timelines and objectives on a spreadsheet is only one aspect of your strategic planning for implementing digital technology. Before devoting a significant amount of time, money, and resources, you must be ready with the appropriate insights and an overview. In order to achieve your digital objectives, you also need the cooperation and consensus of your key stakeholders regarding the future course of action.
You must implement tested best practices for digital strategic planning. Let’s look at the top four to think about for your own projects.
1. Bring your digital stakeholders together
You need support for your strategic planning from all important stakeholders if you want to build a solid foundation. Board members, business executives, and workforce teams might be included in addition to your core strategy team in this. You could also ask your partners, suppliers, and clients for their opinions.
Making a digital vision can help your stakeholders become more focused and aligned. Your digital strategy outlines how you will carry out your vision, which outlines what your company wants to be in terms of digital presence. You should establish a vision for the future of your organization in light of emerging technologies. It outlines the problems you’ll address for customers, how they’ll interact with your goods and services, and the nature of your teams, processes, and overall company.
2. Recognise the needs of your customers
Your business objectives and your digital strategic planning must be in line, especially when it comes to satisfying the needs of your customers. The Jobs To Be Done (JTBD) framework is a useful tool for maintaining focus on this. You can then consider what tasks customers actually want to accomplish and how technology can help them do so more effectively. It liberates you from merely attempting to recreate a version of how things are done today and allows you to concentrate on new opportunities and the ideal future state.
3. Find out more about your digital ecosystem
You must have a clear understanding of your current situation in order to move forward with your digital strategic planning with assurance. Discovering your digital landscape, strengths, and challenges should be the first step in your digital transformation initiative. Interview or survey your leaders, teams, customers, and other stakeholders, as well as conduct in-depth research on your technology and processes.
4. Make a plan for achieving digital strategy success
Your company can quickly adopt best practices in strategic planning and create the road map for your digital future with the appropriate approach and a partner who is an expert in digital consulting, like Elsewhen.
5. Compare the benefits of building vs. buying
A variety of digital products and solutions will probably be used in your strategic plan.
If you choose the build option, you get a task-specific solution but also have to deal with the difficulties, expenses, and delivery schedules of development. The buy option may be easier to implement, well-supported, and initially less expensive, but it may also be less fit for purpose and necessitate expensive ongoing licenses. The best digital technology decisions can be made by weighing the benefits and drawbacks of each option upfront. To get the best of both worlds, this may entail combining build and buy.
