How To Structure a Successful Digital Transformation Strategy

As our world becomes increasingly digital, businesses everywhere feel the push to adopt new technologies. This is no longer a demand specific to the technology sector. Rather, all industries are required to improve and transform their business models. Businesses everywhere and of every size find benefits to embarking on digital transformation, from giving them a competitive edge in a cutthroat market to a wealth of data from the customer journey. But digital transformation comes with risk - a poorly implemented plan can prove detrimental to your business. How can you be sure to start off on the right foot? Read on to learn how to structure your digital transformation and stay successful.

Constructing Your Roadmap

Any major decision must start with a plan. Digital transformation is no exception. Some businesses make the mistake of adding the latest digital technologies without a clear understanding of what those technologies can do or how they can help the business. Imagine trying to implement artificial intelligence or automation without understanding how to use it effectively. You'll find your business processes are in fact more complicated as you try to accommodate the new technology. This is a recipe for disaster.

For your digital transformation to be successful, you must first establish where your business is now and decide on the direction you want it to go. This will be different for every business. You’ll want to be more specific here than having a general desire to expand on digital capabilities. Are you a small business looking to dip into e-commerce? Or do you want to streamline your workflows? Having a goal in mind will help you find out which emerging technology will help you get there, making your strategy more focused and in the process assist in getting the structure of a digital transformation right.

Here’s a list of questions to help you draw up a strategy that suits you best:

• What is my business’ current technology level? What are our limitations? Our weaknesses?
• What are my business goals for the next year? Five years? Ten?
• What needs to change in our technology level to make these goals happen?
• What technology is out there now that will help with these specific goals?
• How would I incorporate this into my team’s workflows? Will our workflows need to change?

Rethink Your Organizational Structure

Businesses can no longer rely on IT to do all the decision-making. (This is good news for businesses who may not have an IT department or a chief digital officer.) If you’re looking toward digital transformation, you'll need all stakeholders to get on board, from the CIO and other business leaders to your marketers.

Digital transformation relies on a shift from traditional department silos to a cross-functional effort. This can be harder than it seems at first. Some stakeholders may be set in old ways and see no reason to change. Sometimes new technology can be intimidating. But as scary and complex as digital transformation can be, the benefits of a successful implementation inevitably pay off.

Your API Foundation

As you add new technology, you’ll need to integrate them effectively. An API is where you lay the foundation for doing this. API integration is critical for the efficient use of new technologies in your existing IT infrastructure. Whilst it may not come immediately to mind, how your organization integrates it's systems and applications can be positively influenced by effective API development and management.

Here's why API is important. Competition between tech companies does wonders for advancement, but it also creates compatibility issues between tech from rival developers. Advancement also leaves legacy systems in the dust as we develop new ways of programming. Different operating systems and programming languages lead to communication breakdowns and complicated workarounds. This lack of efficiency is precisely what your digital transformation aims to avoid.

The API will acts as your interpreter here, providing a unified standard of communication across varied systems and services. No code, no problem. DreamFactory has low-code and no-code options to help you build an API in minutes. If you have an outdated SOAP web service, now's the perfect time to convert it to a simpler, more flexible REST API. Transforming these legacy web services can therefore be an effective method of enabling a sound structure to your digital transformation.

Even if you’re not a coding wizard, you can create a full-featured and secure API. DreamFactory can show you how. Sign up for our FREE 14-day trial and we’ll walk you through each step.

Course Correct

Your digital transformation isn’t done when your new technology goes live. Now that your strategy is in motion, it’s time to monitor your progress and see what’s working and what isn’t. You may find that clients aren’t interacting with new services in ways you anticipated. Perhaps your customer experience hasn't improved, or your new workflows aren’t as intuitive as you thought. You may even notice new tech products hitting the market that can help you more and you want to integrate.

Fortunately, one benefit of digital transformation is access to new, improved, and measurable data in real-time. Gathering this can be simple: just take a look at your social media. Use these newfound metrics to gauge your progress and find out where in your digital transformation efforts you’re falling short and what you can do about it.

How Dreamfactory Can Help

DreamFactory is a full-service SaaS API management platform that can help you build an API from scratch or convert legacy web services into something more modern. We have low-code and no-code options, making digital innovation possible for business processes outside of the technology sector. Dreamfactory is an ideal solution to help you define the structure of your digital transformation and transform the capabilities your business needs to remain competitive.

If you’re still feeling lost, we include a guided tour to take you through each step of the API creation process. It’s all part of our free 14-day trial. Sign up for DreamFactory today!