How Digital Transformation Impacts Your Company Culture

The key to making your business more competitive in the demanding and continuously changing market is corporate digitalization. It will change how your business operates and deliver more value to your clients.

The successful implementation of digital transformation in the enterprise depends largely on the willingness of the corporate culture to change. This represents a big challenge because digitalization means changing the habits, values, experiences, and beliefs that define the spirit of your entire workforce.

Corporate culture represents how employees act, think and feel. It is your organization's psychological and social environment and the symbol of your company's unique personality. If you have a strong organizational culture, you attract more candidates. It is also the motivation that pushes employees to perform well.

But digital transformation is inevitable, as it is the driving force for survival in the highly competitive business arena. And more organizations are investing in services and technologies to enable digital transformation.

According to an IDC forecast, the global spending on digital transformation will be about $2.1 trillion in 2022 and escalate to $6.8 trillion by 2023. The World Economic Forum, however, predicts that the spending on digital transformation will be higher, according to their projection made in 2016. They expect that in 2025, global spending will be over $100 trillion.

Why do you need digital transformation now?

Digital transformation or DX integrates digital technologies in all aspects of a business. DX provides different ways to do business, all geared to driving business growth in existing and new markets. It improves the current operation and creates new processes to deliver more value to your customers.

But before you start your digital transformation, it is vital to have a deep understanding of its concepts. The term can have disparate meanings to different organizations, as each one is unique. Your company must have a clear perception and purpose of digital transformation to serve your employees, partners, and customers.

When the economy is down, it is important not to feel down as well. It is more important to assess your business and use tools, technologies, and innovations to ensure that your business remains steadfast.

Competition is still fierce, even if the market has its ups and downs. Changing the methods in conducting business is a way to create new awareness and ensure that your customers are satisfied.

Digital transformation will give your business new opportunities to grow, as it will provide you with more benefits:

• DX will enhance customer experience, one of the aspects that most businesses are striving to increase and retain customers.
• Any business needs to understand its customers better. This aspect is essential in developing business strategies, making decisions, and striving to achieve a higher ROI. With DX, you can track metrics and analyze available data to give you more insights into your performance and target market.
• DX offers more chances to improve unity within your organization, improving collaboration between departments, and making your workforce more agile. When everyone is on the same page, every employee is aligned to a common purpose, leading to a seamless transition to go digital.

Digital transformation is not always a smooth process. Most of the challenges in DX implementation concerns issues on strategy, communication, talent, and culture. But you can achieve success if your business strategy is clear to everyone and the management is committed to carrying out the initiative.

Culture – the most difficult part of digital transformation

Organizational culture is one of the prime barriers to digital transformation in a company. Digital culture deficiencies include difficulty in forming and acting on the single view of the customer, fear of taking risks, and departmental and functional silos. Surprisingly, these deficiencies are also commonplace in technology-based companies and departments.

Organizational culture is often difficult to hurdle, and it can affect the implementation of digital transformation. Here are some of the main reasons.

1. Lack of commitment to the DX strategy. If the leaders fail to share the plan with the rest of the organization, the workforce will not be receptive to the idea.
2. Lack of leadership and vision. If no leader will push for the change in mentality and values, your company's attempt to go digital is bound to fail.
3. Lack of digital skills. Although the employees use computers, tablets, laptops, and other tech devices, they may lack the skills to master the technologies included in the transformation.
4. Fear of change. Along with the lack of digital skills, most employees fear change because they are afraid of leaving their comfort zone and trying something new.
5. Inadequate communication. When there is a lack of dialog within the company and sharing information, it can prevent important messages from reaching everyone in the organization.
6. Absence of collaborative spaces. Most companies have limited space. If there is no place for team members to come together and collaborate, the adoption of your DX initiative will be quite slow.

Overcoming barriers to DX implementation

Organizations should realize that upgrading technology does not automatically mean that digital transformation is established. In reality, DX is about organizational adaptability. Therefore the key to the success of any digital strategy is to ensure the acceptance of your organization's culture.

Do not look at office culture as a liability. Your success depends on recognizing your employees' value and their part in achieving the success of your DX strategy. You can gain cooperation from your employees by sharing your vision with the entire organization. They should understand what you want to achieve and why. Ensure that you communicate with your employees consistently.

It's important to empower your employees because rapid change is needed when you implement digital transformation. There will be policy changes and updates in processes and procedures. It is vital to include your employees in decision-making, such as allowing them to provide feedback. You create a culture of trust and empowerment when they help you make decisions.

Remove the silos across technology and teams by reminding your employees that each one has an important role in ensuring the success of your DX and in providing the best customer experience.

Summary

Your success in implementing digital transformation lies in changing the corporate culture. Changes mean getting the entire organization to share the vision and purpose of your DX initiative. You have to create a new culture with value in everyone's contribution and use the organizational culture to drive the initiative to succeed.