How Do We Organize for Business Transformation?
By Betsy Burton
How Do We Organize for Business Transformation?
I’ve been talking with a lot of organizations recently about supporting business or digital transformation. And one of the common questions that I’ve been getting from people is how do you organize your people and resources to support it?
I think the most important issue we need to think about is that business transformation is everybody’s opportunity and responsibility. Yes, you might have some transformation champions or leads, but it is a significant business, people, process, information and technology change that requires cooperation and collaboration across the organization.
Let’s look at how the best organizations that I’ve worked with support business transformation.
Business Transformation Champion Not Owner
I think one of the most important things I’ve learned is that it’s important that organizations have a business transformation leader or champion, not a business transformation owner. In other words, a champion is responsible for helping the organization understand the need for transformation, identify the strategy, and guide transformation execution throughout the organization.
A business transformation champion is not responsible for “doing everything”, but rather ensuring that people and teams across the organization are able to contribute and execute the transformation. A champion might have a small team working with them of business strategy planners, architects, change managers, and relationship managers, not an entire organization.
The problem with supporting an owner, team or business unit is that they end up owning and doing most of the work which ends up leaving the rest of the organization out of the engagement. In fact, in many cases, transformation owners feel that they are responsible for doing everything and may end up alienating other needed contributors.
Supporting transformation requires that everyone in the organization understand that they have a role and responsibility for supporting it.
Business Transformation Collaboration
One of the best practices that I’ve seen many organizations put in place is creating teams of people to help enable business transformation. It’s important that these teams are not just IT leaders or business leaders but rather technology leaders and business leaders working together.
I’ve seen organizations create scrum teams of people to work together to go after a specific part of business transformation. For example, a team of business and technology leaders might work together to define new models for enabling richer customer experience using chatbots or AI assistants.
What is important about these teams is that they start with the business opportunity that is then enabled by technology. By supporting business and technology leaders working together, organizations increase the likelihood of having a more integrated solution.
Business Transformation Support
In addition to having a champion and creating teams, it is critical that organizations proactively communicate, and collaborate across the organization on their plans, benefits and opportunities.
Everyone within the organization or the business unit being the most affected should feel that they have a role and responsibility in the transformation efforts, even if that is just to support and communicate the plans.
Bottom Line
As we have mentioned in many previous blogs, business transformation is defined as a significant support for new business models which may be enabled by new technologies, business processes, information, organizational structure, and roles. These efforts will fail if people across the organization feel like it’s “owned by Mike” or “not my responsibility.”
Business transformation requires that everyone in the business unit or business affected by the transformation are engaged and contributing to the efforts. It represents a significant change in how the business operates which means everyone must be engaged for it to be effective.
tPaaS- the market that can help drive your digital business transformation!
Sign up for FREE for our LIVE webinar with Betsy!
Digital business transformation is critically needed by many organizations to effectively compete in this digital world. However, traditional iPaaS services lack the business strategy and architecture tools and advisory services required to transform their business models, and operations.
In this webinar, we highlight what it means to support business transformation, explore our market definition for the Transformation Platform as a Service (tPaaS) market, and identify a cross-section of vendors that are focused on delivering services to support this market. If your organization is looking to enable digital business transformation or seeking the next level of iPaaS support, this webinar is a must attend.
- Why are the needs of business transformation so specific that organizations need a new market of service providers?
- What are the critical capabilities of the tPaaS market?
- Which providers are the leading and lagging providers of tPaaS services?
Follow the rest of the blog series by Aragon Research’s VP of Research, Betsy Burton.
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