Digital transformation results must be measureable
Digital transformation benefits are for sale by the truckload from consultants, software vendors and analysts to content management and marketing teams. But tread carefully. The tab for remaking processes and the concomitant ripping and replacing of IT platforms and legacy applications can cripple a company when big projects fail.
For content management teams, digital transformation can mean digitizing paper workflows -- yes, that's still happening -- and bringing together data sets from multiple platforms that don't play well together in the IT sandbox. They can bring new analytics insights, faster customer service and even economies of scale. Yet they're also labor-intensive to install, often requiring a new process design, new hardware, new software or cloud migrations, much training for front-line employees and, of course, monitoring and measurement.
It's becoming increasingly clear that content-oriented digital transformation benefits must be clearly measurable and achievable before an enterprise IT team inks a contract. Due diligence in realistic goal-setting, baseline measurements and accountability from vendors and consultants for promises that certain savings or performance efficiencies will be achieved can help insulate companies from being sold the wrong tech.
So, perhaps start small and don't go too big at first. Don't be sold a vague vision of future cutting-edge digital transformation benefits when updating your content and documentation processes. Instead, the best idea might be to completely dismiss the phrase digital transformation and get down to answering real-world questions such as: What is the project? What is the upside? How do we measure it? And what risk will the consultant or tech vendor assume if this project doesn't live up to the bill of goods we're being sold?
This handbook provides a platform for insiders to examine not only the benefits of digital transformation, but also how information governance and change management come into play.
