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Highlights
- Leveraging existing technology investments or making new investments is key to a holistic business transformation program.
- The success of a transformation program is set at the beginning where the outcomes and metrics are well defined, measured, and monitored regularly.
- To bring a holistic and meaningful business transformation requires a close working relationship with the organization to understand their beliefs, strategic needs, and specific characteristics.
On this page
Beyond the buzzwords
For decades now, business transformation has become one of the most misused buzzwords leading to organizations spending time and effort without getting the desired benefits and meeting the set objectives.
It is imperative for organizations to look at business transformation, be it small or complex, holistically. This article attempts to capture the critical success elements of business transformation and how organizations can prepare for the desired changes to drive and generate sustainable growth.
An organization’s success depends on how well it creates market relevant products and solutions while delivering regular growth and profits to its stakeholders. In a highly competitive and digitally disruptive world, the pace of change and quick adoption of tech-enabled solutions matters the most.
Why business transformation?
Historically we have seen that very few organizations have succeeded in building an enterprise-wise transformation involving business processes, technology refresh, talent transformation and stakeholder value creation in a seamless manner.
Before we embark upon the key reasons of success or failure of business transformation let us look at some of the key reasons driving business transformation in any organization. They are:
- Inability to create sustainable and multi-fold value to its stakeholders
- Muted growth prospects leading to organizational needs to look at new avenues for growth
- Lack of agility and an immediate need for efficiency improvement across various departments and units
- Urgency for talent transformation triggered by business environment changes, new agile ways of working, observed employee low motivation, high attrition, and technology shifts.
We have seen that in almost all these transformation demanding themes, there is a foundation of technology or digital enablement, which requires leveraging existing technology investments or making new investments. A global insurance company that was struggling to find new avenues for growth had to take a pause and re-look at its very purpose of existence. They decided to move beyond selling insurance products and focus on becoming a wellness company. Customer wellness became their “mantra” of business transformation whereby they started gaining back their market share. Coupled with technology enablement this insurance group today is growing at industry leading CAGR levels in a much more efficient manner bring more value to its stakeholders.
Who needs business transformation?
An organization’s CEO, appointed by the Board, is the final authority to drive this initiative top-down by creating a right team (transformation office) who are experts and empowered.
CEO also needs to clearly communicate business transformation project’ need and its significance as well as find time to get closely involved in monitoring, guiding, and mentoring the teams.
The relevant business leader, Chief Technology Officer (CTO) and Chief Financial Officer (CFO) have a larger role to play in this transformation journey and they should act as chief gate keepers and orchestrators with enough and empowered decision-making authority when it comes to people, investments and change management. This empowerment needs to be cascaded to the right people below their business units to make day-to-day plans and decisions to drive the transformation initiative. Regular review of the progress jointly by CTO and CFO is a key enabler for steering and guiding the entire transformation program.
There is always one question that comes up in our interactions with various organizations — “What percentage of people in my organization need to be deeply involved in a business transformation program”? Our experience and analysis of various transformation engagements being conducted in the recent years leads to an interesting insight. In typical organizations, CEOs believe that at least 20% of the organization needs to be deeply involved to drive and execute a successful transformation program.
However, what we have seen is that a well-crafted, planned and empowered medium size transformation program can be completed with less than 5-8% of the workforce being involved. For an organization of 2000-odd people this will mean the involvement of around 100-150 people, directly or indirectly, in a largescale transformation program.
A well-crafted, planned and empowered medium size transformation program can be completed with less than 5-8% of the workforce being involved. For an organization of 2000-odd people, this will mean the involvement of around 100-150 people, directly or indirectly, in a largescale transformation program.
Outcome of transformation programs
We looked deeply into some successful business transformation programs and analyzed important factors which led their success or failure.
Distinct behaviors shown by these companies led them to be a much more valuable organization. They are:
- Creating a higher purpose by the senior executives always infuses fresh and higher energy levels in the team, which is important to eliminate any negativity in the organization during the transformation phase. The ability of an organization to simplify and explain the “why” part of transformation will give a lot of clarity to everyday activities.
- The success of a transformation program is set at the beginning where the outcomes and metrics are well defined, measured, and monitored regularly. These transformation success metrics need to be measured digitally, with no manual interventions, in a systematic manner and reported by the Transformation Office to key stakeholders.
- The transformation office’s ability to act as a lighthouse beacon for leaders to develop action-oriented meetings, guide and steer the ways when the team faces difficulty during execution as well as develop an effective change management plan will go a long way to keep the work streams on track. Integrating transformation themes and new working methods into existing business units, processes and systems is an important factor during the execution stage.
- The motivation of employees to adopt and accept new ways of working is likely coupled with what recognition and financial benefits they will get from the organization. Declaring and providing career and financial incentives linked to transformation outcomes achieved can create a high level of energy and involvement of associates in such programs.
Pitfalls and things to take care
Most of the organizations fail to deliver successful transformation programs due to various reasons.
Some of them are:
- Speed of transformation: A medium transformation program that delivers value taking more than 12 months is more likely to fail than those completed in 9-12 months. Stakeholders, employees, and decision-makers need to see visible results within a reasonable time, otherwise the energy levels of the associates will come down. In most cases, such programs end up becoming a white elephant for the organization.
- Lack of clarity: With clear ownership and accountability for driving programs, it is possible to deliver results. There must be clear communication about each other’s role in driving the action plan to implement change in an organization. Regular review mechanisms, along with pro-active guidance to the team, will also bring positive changes to the initiative.
- Refinement and course correction: A well-crafted business transformation presentation and plan will not always deliver the expected results. Instead, when these plans are deployed for action, organizations must be prepared for refinement of the techniques and change-management initiatives. Clarifying the larger goal and outcomes is important during such bottleneck situations.
We understand the strategic importance of business transformation initiatives in any organization. Our approach is not “one-size” fits all. To bring a holistic and meaningful business transformation, we have closely worked with organizations to understand their beliefs, strategic needs, and specific characteristics. The success and results of our business transformation programs are visible through our industry leadership position, repetitive business metrics and various long-standing customer relationships.
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