By: Arup Maity, QuickReach CEO
Richard Branson is only one among the many successful leaders who preach the importance of placing employees over customers. Decades of research in management science have helped credibly establish the fact that if you take care of your employees well, they would automatically take care of your business in return and, eventually, it’s the organization that benefits the most. Like adept customer service, digital transformation, when performed well, is about making customers feel great in availing products and/or services from us. However, like customer service, you just cannot make your customer feel the love and care if you don’t start giving some loving and caring to your employees first; like they say, ‘charity begins at home’.
Interestingly, the best place to kickstart digital transformation initiatives is from WITHIN. Companies often grapple with the ‘how's’ of undertaking the painfully long and arduous digital transformation journey. They are often faced with numerous challenges – lack of skilled resources, budget, bureaucratic and cultural challenges; but most important of them all- where to begin and how to gain quick wins through easy ‘low hanging fruits’ to reassure the board and the management team of the potential gains through the digital transformation journey. Focusing on addressing the digital needs of your customers is important, but equally important is optimizing processes and reducing inefficiencies and costs.
A lot has been said and written about the different key ingredients of going digital, how the four key elements, namely Design and Technology led effectively by People and Business bring about the transformation that’s setting companies on the winning path. However, a careful look at ‘people’ and ‘process’ reveals the importance of culture in the digital transformation journey. If you are looking to improve digital culture, one has got to start from within, even if it means taking small steps to the digital destination.
We had an opportunity to visit the office of a leading utility company in the country. The company has been investing heavily in technology and has astute leaders taking significant progressive leaps in terms of digital transformation, too. Yet, what caught our attention was this huge rack full of paper forms, neatly organized for the employees, for so many of their daily needs. And just like at a branch of a bank, people came, picked up their required forms, filled them up while waiting in a digital queuing system and submitted requests for things such as Leaves, Reimbursements, Travel Approvals, etc.
Digital Transformation, as stated in various research observations, always needs to start at the top, setting the vision and readiness to risk and experiment. However, no matter how much one is willing to automate, people in the organization have to be comfortable with the technology, not only with using it but thinking and bridging every big and small aspect of interaction through it. While processes are being studied and people are being trained, they need to be an active user of technology for their own needs which quite simply is the starting point for undertaking digital transformation.
Going digital in any organization has to start with creating a digital culture where fear of technology has been removed from their mind and one that fosters awareness of the responsiveness and responsible use of technology. In our opinion, a good place to start with is the automation and digitization of internal forms, workflows, and processes using mobile and chat to effectively streamline majority of the mundane tasks that take time and effort.
With this in mind, we have been developing QuickReach, an automation solution suite that helps with digitizing internal processes and eliminating inefficiencies in the organization. Reach out to one of our members for a demo or sign up for the QuickReach Closed Beta today and get the chance to use the pre-commercial version of QuickReach for free.
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