Digital Transformation, Part 2 - Role of Internal Customers

Digital Transformation is to the organization as Democracy is to the Nations.

Its Transformation of the people (Culture), by the people (Internal Customers) for the people (External Customer).

In Part 1, we have discussed how Culture plays a vital role.

Business users are primary internal customers. Over time we have learned that technology driven digital transformation have not produced promising results, in fact, many a time it was counterproductive instead. Business users helps in defining the business perspectives of the transformation.

Employees on the other hand are the ones who will face the impact of transformation. Since it creates the disruption that will challenge their comfort zone.

We all have heard that famous statement. "We have been doing this since ages, and it works fine". No one wants to change the way; things have been working. Transformation will change the existing procedure, processes and brings new ones. 

Before we decide the hit the road, we must ask similar questions from our internal customers, this will not only help design the right strategy for the transformation, but also will engage the internal customers to add their perspective to get aligned. More the alignment internally better they will contribute to understand and cooperate during the change the transformation is going to bring in the business as usual. 

like we say, A Leaders is a seller of Hope. Similarly, Transformation Strategy needs to create the hope to succeed in the internal customer by defining how exactly each individual will be the beneficiary of the transformation. 

• What are the pain points of doing business as usual?
• What is "one thing" if changed or transformed will help them perform better?
• Where does the competitor demand us to be?
• What possible new revenue stream business is foreseeing 
• How can we bring the diversification (if any) to keep relevant and growing?

Back in 2004-05, Nokia was the leading market shareholder in mobile handsets, Apple disrupted the business. Smart Phones soon become the symbol of relevance in mobile handsets. The others, who left behind, did not do anything wrong, instead, they were just a little late in getting out of the comfort zone.

During my Masters, my research supervisor, Dr Irfan Hyder once gave me a piece of advice. He asked me did you read or watch Alice in the Wonder Land? The conversation between Alice and the Cat.

Asked Alice; O Cat, would you please guide me the way?

Replied the Cat, where exactly you want to go?

Said Alice; I do not know exactly!

Replied the Cat; If you do not know exactly, you will not reach anywhere

Said Alice; But if you will help me, I will walk hard and long to reach somewhere

Replied the Cat; If you will walk hard and long, you will reach somewhere but not where you should be.

These questions sum up all. This shall be the baseline. all the questions we have asked from business users and employees shall be looked in from this perspective. This will help defining and refining the Digital Strategy. This will help selection of the tools and technology. This will define which new process and procedure shall be introduced and which ones shall be modified.

Above all, the biggest factor will be the alignment and agreement of internal customers over the strategy and during the execution. They must all know what exactly they are going to achieve and what exactly is everyone’s role is.

Most of the organizations start from the Robotic Process Automation (RPA) in the Digital Transformation plan. Many have succeeded. The one who did not, have one thing in common.

They all "Focused on resource optimization instead of processes."

I would refer to the second Habit from the sever habits of highly effective people by

Stephen Covey. Start with and End in Mind

Replacing repeated work with RPAs is absolutely the right choice, but we must also need to plan it right about the alignment with internal customers. 

what will these employees be doing after automating their jobs?

what these resources will be doing once we have optimized the time to delivery their task? 

what other possible business processes they can be assigned to work upon? 

Can these employees be used to do more analytical work instead?

Layoff shall be the last option and only when the resource optimization is above 15-20% at least. 

We have been observing, that while the journey of the RPAs is going on, organizations still hiring new skills across different business functions.

Because there is always an appetite which can be consumed by re-placing these resources. Transformation Strategy shall address the need to up-skill these resources along with the development of the RPAs. the cost of up-skill will always be less than the cost we will incur on the people to learn and get adapt to the norms of the organization.

During one of the transformation projects, we engaged the Learning and Development department and asked to include some specific training in their list. So that once we will reach to roll out of the project, which will replace the existing technologies, same resources would have been enabled to delivery their job with new technology with added benefits. This helped us having the full support from these users throughout the project, since they did not have any fear of losing the Job.

I remember a dialog from Toy Story, when it was said (somewhat), "Toys love the kids when they play with the toys", not getting played with.

Means, when kids play with toys, kids’ perspective is always the same regardless they play gently or being aggressive. But if we add the Toy's perspective, playing with (gently) and getting played with (aggressively) changes the story.

We shall have similar discussion on all the Digital Transformation Strategy actions with our Internal Customer to agree " Where do we want to go Exactly"

In Part 3, we will be discussing the Redesigning, Re-branding, innovation in Products and Services for *Customer* is the customer perspective of *transformation*, Our customer must buy this.

Digital Transformation is not only changing the tools, it changing the Character of every individual in the line of business from Strategy, Execution, Delivery and Maintenance.