It seems like all ICT vendors say that they do business transformation – even Vincit is in this game. But even I feel like all this buzz around business transformation is a bit overblown and definitely lacking something tangible. What does it mean, what do our customers get from it, and what should you know about it? In this post, we’ll look more closely at these topics and my top four truths I’ve learned about business transformation.
First, we should start by defining what business transformation even means. When you look at business transformation without the buzz, it’s a series of decisions and actions that are aimed to make the business more efficient and profitable. It can also be bigger than this by completely re-designing the entire business with the help of technology and people.
Why selling business transformation can be difficult
Based on my personal experience, trying to sell a business transformation as a part of an implementation project can be quite difficult. This is probably due to the fact that the value promise feels vague, or unattached to the project scope.
Time constraints and technical migrations also tend to make achieving business transformation more difficult. Luckily it seems like things are already changing a bit as organizations are more and more aware of business process optimization and operational efficiency – also in the context of various implementation projects or programs.
Working on business process optimization and operational efficiency requires supporting elements like data maturity, data quality, and data governance and ownership in addition to the data itself. One main driver is to gain better insights from data and thus increase its impact on decision making. With recent breakthroughs in AI, namely with the flourishing of generative AI in 2023, we now have even more tools to drive business transformation. Typically AI is about saving human time, for example by harnessing unstructured data. Or it could be implemented as part of your customer service operations to improve efficiency and service quality.
My top 4 truths about business transformation
What follows are four key observations about business transformation based on my 20+ years of experience with various data solutions in enterprise architectures with several organizations on different maturity levels:
1. All projects are about business transformation
First off, all projects are related to business transformation. Of course, some projects have a greater impact than others, but there is always something that we are trying to achieve in each project to improve the business with the help of some digital solution or by other means. This also means that directly, or indirectly, all projects will have an impact on the business. If this isn’t the case, then you should definitely ask why the project even exists in the first place.
2. Your company started doing business transformation the same day that your company was established
This ties back to the first point that all projects, and hence all actions in the business, are related to transformation. Optimally, such business transformation decisions and actions are planned, meaning that there is a company-level vision and strategy behind the actions – ensuring that the related investments are driving the business transformation toward a pre-decided direction.
3. Business transformation is not something that can be bought separately
Continuing on points 1 and 2, I feel it’s safe to say that business transformation is something that cannot be bought separately. First of all, it’s already built into every project. Secondly, trying to buy it separately would likely fail due to the ‘vagueness factor.’ Business transformation needs to be put into the context of something concrete – a project – to be meaningful.
4. Successful business transformation is about doing purposeful work
This is related to something that we can maybe call a ‘business transformation mindset.’ When you understand the context of the project and what value it brings to the customer and how that value can be measured, then you’re not only doing a technical implementation anymore.
The project team needs to understand why something is being developed, to what broader context it relates to, and how will it benefit the customer. This helps everyone to understand the purpose of their own work and also brings them closer to understanding the customer's business.
According to my own experience, customers are more than willing to help the development teams to understand what business problem the project is solving and what are the benefits. And why wouldn’t they – better understanding brings better innovations, and better innovations bring better solutions, right?
Final thoughts
Business transformation is definitely not something that was invented in the 2020s – it’s been here for a while. With the help of a partner who knows how to harness technology and data, you can solve even more and more complex problems to improve the business while implementing concrete projects. And with the help of AI, we now possess new tools to accelerate business transformation even further.
Do you want to innovate, transform, and grow your business together with us? We do.
Contact us to discuss more.
Sam Holmström,
Business Development Director
