In today’s business world, a good strategy is needed from the top down to succeed with digital transformations. Without it, meeting business goals can be hit or miss. It’s often not enough to execute well on tactics. Taking a step back and having a plan first is critical.
Strategy and tactics may seem the same, but there are marked differences , particularly when it comes to digital adoption. While strategy is the long-term, big picture of what a company is trying to accomplish, tactics are those smaller actions that make a bigger strategy work.
With digital transformation, strategy should be backed and prioritized by organizational leaders. The moving parts of digital transformation and adoption need to be agreed upon before execution. This includes aligning all departments around changes, creating training that can keep pace with the rapid speed of digital change, and creating partners on the front line to help a company achieve desired digital transformation outcomes.
All of these pieces need to align and stay in agreement with one another for any digital adoption strategy to work. The good news is that the right digital adoption and enablement software can help company leaders develop tactics that will make any digital adoption plan far more likely to succeed.
All good strategies begin at the top
Achieving a state of full technology adoption, and therefore transformation can be a difficult task without a solid strategy in place. Only about one in seven businesses succeeds at this venture.
For a strategy to work for an entire company, the decision to go ahead with digital transformation will need to come from the highest levels of a company or organization. Here, goals are made by business leaders, and they can range anywhere from improved policy compliance to an improved customer experience.
The reason for this is that when digital adoption and enablement come from the top of an organization, a company can align every department and its employees to transformation goals. Sounds simple. But in practice, it’s hard to do. Aligning everyone is vital to using new digital tools to their fullest extent. Several effective tactics exist that can make this happen.
In practice, any sound strategy for digital transformation and adoption will involve changes at some point, and it is vital for everyone to know about these changes at the right time. The right technology can aid greatly with keeping a whole company aligned with the same goals and at the right time.
An obvious key component in digital transformation is training for employees, and frequently training at that. Company leaders can create internal partners and teams for adoption and enablement who not only manage digital training but are able to use the right tools to empower themselves and plan the right type of training for each team.
Leaders can also directly involve managers from a variety of departments. These department heads can quickly learn how to train employees with the right lightweight tools. Better yet, department heads can contribute to the training itself and delegate the creation of training topics to key employees that are keepers of “tribal knowledge.”
When this happens, successful digital transformation is far more likely, and everyone can benefit. Digital transformation as a whole can carry a company to new heights and help it to meet its goals.
Creating and empowering frontline teams
With any good digital transformation strategy, execution teams that carry out adoption and enablement initiatives are a must. These teams can bring change to the rest of a company and are an important part of any well-laid plan. Creating these teams to manage change is also a good long-term strategy to increase agility within a company.
Part of the charter for these teams should be managing departmental training. These frontline teams in charge of training are usually made up of trainers and managers, who tend to be early adopters when it comes to new digital processes, policies, and technology. Early adopters have a vital role in overcoming employee resistance to change.
This makes such frontline teams a very important part of any digital transformation strategy. Empowering them with the right tools and tactics can make or break any plan.
The good news is that lightweight, contextual learning software can help with this. It’s flexible enough to let each team plan the right training content for each department. Instead of using generic training and wikis, frontline teams can insert training directly in-app. They can use a variety of formats to train, including text, video, and audio. They can even insert training into goal-oriented software such as Salesforce .
This type of training can be made specific to a department and its processes, all by using flexible editing tools. Front line teams can also use such lightweight training to take employees on walkthroughs of new technology and processes. Because such training offers constant reinforcement and help to employees, these tactics can help ease the majority of a company into real digital adoption in a short amount of time.
The power to create the right training, fast
Because change and digital transformation are only speeding up in the digital era, another good strategy for embracing change is having the ability to train an entire workforce as change is occurring. Real-time learning is a must, particularly when rolling out ongoing or continual changes that help a company keep pace with its competitors.
This often includes training employees in new, goal-oriented business software which can have a steep learning curve. It is important for business leaders to keep the employee experience in mind when creating training. Will employees engage with the new training and tools without much resistance? Or will they waste time and deal with frustration while looking up answers? Worse yet, do they depend on other employees for answers, dragging down the productivity of an entire team?
A great tactic is to give managers the ability to create and alter team training. This can make frequent training more efficient. Lightweight learning software that is contextual allows managers and trainers to create new training topics for employees extremely quickly. Trainers have the ability to insert training right where it’s needed for real-time learning and reinforcement, without learning complex software or knowing how to code.
This type of lightweight learning solution integrates with a variety of programs that company departments use daily and will allow managers to train even remote employees and onboard new hires in a short amount of time. Regardless of where people are working, trainers and company leaders can point everyone in the same direction.
Pointing all teams in the same direction
When it comes to any digital transformation strategy, the need to communicate changes across an entire company is always there. All teams need to align in the same direction during the adoption process. Otherwise, it will be difficult for any business to meet its goals.
Aligning all teams is one of the most important long-term strategies for any digital transformation. This means having the ability to streamline and communicate important changes across an entire company at once. All teams need to receive this information at the same time, and at the right time.
One tactic that can make this happen is discovery meetings that bring departments together. These types of meetings go into depth about what is required for making major changes. These changes can relate to new sales enablement , new policies, or to improving the customer experience.
Challenges come up for discussion and next steps usually do as well. Typically, these next steps involve training employees in the use of new technology and processes.
Lightweight training software can meet many of the challenges brought up in meetings like this, such as employee resistance to change and the time needed to complete training for an entire organization. The use of this software can lead to those important next steps and help an entire company to come up with, and align around, a plan to make digital transformation successful.
Again, being able to communicate changes to a whole organization at once is an effective tactic made possible by lightweight learning functionality. Such software functionality helps company leaders to communicate changes to every involved department at once.
Such communications, instead of happening through in-person meetings that require time and planning in advance, appear directly in-app while employees are working. These alerts can minimize the need to schedule long meetings and allow company leaders to bring all critical personnel up to speed at once.
Creating an innovative digital transformation strategy today
It may seem overwhelming to come up with a digital transformation strategy that has a good chance of success. However, it can be done. The key to success is aligning all departments to the same goals, having the ability to create effective training quickly, and empowering training and management teams with the right tools.
Digital adoption and enablement software, which includes lightweight learning capabilities, can give a company the ability to do all of these things easily. It can also make any current strategy or plan be more effective. Chat with us today to discuss your plans.
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