Optimizing your workflow with Digital Business Transformation can help increase productivity and deliver a much better experience for your clients.
If you brought up the concept of working from home to your company in 2019, you’d be met with disapproving nods and disheartened “maybe”s. Fast forward to now, and you have just about everyone trying to make it work. It’s stopped being a question of “Is it possible?” and more of a question of “How can we make it possible?”
And with a sizable percentage of the workforce shifting their operations offsite, you can expect down streaming your workflow to be a big challenge. It’s enough to slow down many in their tracks.
Today we’ll be discussing the possible ways to help defeat these challenges and streamline yourself in the modern workplace. We’ll be highlighting this using digital marketing strategies and digital marketing tools that businesses have used to attain their success.
The Crux of the Modern Workplace
If you’re caught up in the crosswinds of current events, you’ll be well aware of how many workplaces and businesses have started, either out of necessity or opportunity, operating remotely. And it is no big surprise given the rapidly changing situation that leaves the future of many industries uncertain.
In 2018, no fewer than 70% of the global population admitted to having worked remotely at least once in their employment. Today, we expect to see that number skyrocket due to the current situation.
But it’s the lack of time and preparation that has left many scrambling to position themselves in these tough times. The biggest challenge that you may face is optimizing your online collaboration effectively.
The lack of an office environment creates problems of its own. Just imagine, you’re going from having to depend on technology in your workplace to having technology BE your workplace. All that without that trusty IT guy holding your hand.
If it’s not the unfamiliarity with the tech, then it’s a lack of instant feedback from an in-person meeting. Finding your footing in these times is far from easy. With so many newcomers in the digital sphere, it’s only natural to get a sense of disorientation.
All around the world, workplaces have one question on their mind. Just how do you move an entire workplace into cyberspace that’s never operated from there before?
Why You Need to Consider Digital Business Transformation
Many workforces choose to implement strategies and processes that work well for them. It’s a balancing act of making sure the benefits outweigh the drawbacks. If it makes the line on the graph go where they want it to, then it’s all good.
The stopping point comes when those benefits entertain a certain risk that the business can’t afford. When tech gets involved, it’s a classic case of either adopting it with an added risk or two or letting your competitor leave you in the dust. But here’s where Digital Transformation can help save the day.
It Helps You Keep up With the Pace of Change
Technology is advancing at a rapid, growing pace. High-end businesses can recognize this and adapt it to advance their operational processes further. But that leaves out a huge gap in the market for the ones that can’t.
The current events only serve to highlight just how unprepared everyone in the industry is to keep pace with new technology developments around the world. It harkens back to the fact that everyone thinks they know how to use tech until they exclusively have to use it.
It’s not just about making the most of available tech either. Sometimes the optimizing benefits alone help make the productivity of employees skyrocket. Enough to even fill the roles of a lot of existing employees completely.
Digital Business Transformation helps tackle this problem at its core. Not only does it allow businesses and workplaces a chance at adapting to new technology, but it helps them scale it up to fit their organizational capacity.
It also allows businesses to see where they have significant gaps in staffing coverage and where they have unintended duplication of roles. Once the office environment is taken away it quickly becomes abundantly clear who is necessary to get the job done and who, perhaps, even though harsh, isn’t.
Seeing this duplication allows you to create new positions for new necessities or the opportunity to streamline your operation to more effectively serve your customers.
It Fits in With Your Customer/Client Demands
If anything has a more rapid pace than developing technologies for a business, then it’s the demands of their customers and clients. Expectations of quality, value, and streamlined results only grow with the increase in supposed progress that tech grants.
Everyone on the outside looking in expects business to just use the newest tech to make things work. If Amazon can buy a bunch of warehouse robots and jets to make one day shipping a reality, then people expect others to be at the top of their game too.
Being able to deliver the kind of value that a customer hopes for hinges on how someone at the top of the chain decides to get the ball rolling. Adapting to increased customer demands is what businesses will need to tackle if they want a chance at moving ahead.
Digital Transformation provides a valuable way for businesses to invest themselves deeply in fulfilling the customer’s demands. Being able to do this without dedicated resources is an even more enticing prospect.
It Helps Build a Solid Strategy for Scaling up Digitally
In many professional circles, automating or otherwise digitally transforming aspects of a business is almost treated as an afterthought. Many are content with carrying on business as usual if it results in little to no drawbacks in the short run.
But as any forward-facing business person will tell you, it’s always about thinking in the long term. Nothing kills a competitive market entity quite like thinking about the short-term gains, especially when market standards are changing fast.
Digitally transforming even a fraction of the way you operate and function serves as an essential primer for future growth. It not only streamlines your core functions but helps open the door for them to be semi or fully automated in the near future.
You will be in a much better position to adapt to coming changes if you’ve put your foot in through the door, at the very least.
It Will Give Immediate Access to Better Alternative Solutions
The current situation is a good reminder of what happens when a business is forced to abandon an established method and go down a different path.
Now on the surface, it doesn’t seem fair to criticize a business for not being able to adapt to an emergency situation. But it does when you factor in the fact that the same adaptability is needed to adopt emerging solutions that provide immense potential benefits.
So it’s true that no one will point the blame at you if your business starts to decline because of an expected event. But if other businesses manage to pull themselves together during those events and you can’t. Well…you only have yourself to blame.
Rapid adaptability is the name of the game in the cutthroat world of doing business. You need something that can prepare you for what lies ahead, and having a digital transformation in place helps you achieve it.
It Helps You Make Better Use of Data and Analytics
An enterprising entity has the ability to gain an invaluable amount of growth with data at its fingertips. Useful analytics and available data help shape modern business and gives them the valuable insight they need to make an informed decision.
At the end of the day, all a business has is being organized and having figures at the ready. It’s what separates them from your typical mom-and-pop.
Digital transformation leads the race as the focus shifts towards utilizing more and more data-driven results. It also helps in utilizing the power of AI for both better workplace automation and as a powerful tool for predicting trends to empower the overall decision-making process.
Understanding the Digital Business Framework
Taking an entire business or network of employees and moving them on to digital technologies is a far harder task than most will admit. Often, the key to success lies in having a deep workable understanding of the digital business framework before it can be implemented.
So, what does it look like in the average workplace to have a Digital Business Framework in place?
It Starts from the Top Down
Interestingly, it’s much larger than just a simple drag and drop of your operational avenues. Think of it as a systemic rebuilding of your office structure from the inside out. It needs to encompass everything the workplace stands for.
That’s why it’s important to avoid fragmentation. There’s no advantage of transporting that kind of framework elsewhere if it results in a few pieces crumbling in the process. You need the support of your leadership and upper management all the way down to your desk employees.
It’s 50% Technology, 50% Culture
Something like Digital Business Transformation may sound like a typical corporate buzzword for installing more computers in the office. And while there is an important element for digitization in there, that’s not all it is.
See, DBT is about adding prospects of technology into the workplace but also the culture that comes with it. If we were all sitting down at our cubicles hearing about this through internally circulated docs. But now that we’re using it in our work from home, you might have seen just what that means.
For example, you might have seen more communication from your team leaders and coworkers. You also might have seen yourself being handed more flexible tasks that can be reasonably handled. Unity might also have gone up between core teams on an interpersonal level.
All this isn’t just a result of temporary circumstances. Rather, they’re an embodiment of the digital transformation approach. And that’s what we can expect when you properly dial in the fundamentals. It’s not just a lopsided transfer into a new medium; it’s a transformation. One that sticks.
There are already talks about how the current events have changed the approach for workplaces. Whether or not it manages to be sustainable is something only time can tell. But once that door opens, it’s hard to close it back up without imagining the possibilities.
It’s About Mindset
I’m sure many companies out there would want nothing more than to have digital transformation explained to them. If they predict it will affect their bottom line or make a percentage jump up, it’s reason enough to try it out.
But cognizant digital transformation is not about applying a cookie-cutter method. It’s not one size fits all solution to a problem. Rather, it’s many solutions that all stem from a single mentality. It’s about taking the idea behind it and repurposing it to fit every possible avenue where it can provide benefits.
It’s a clear flowchart of workable steps that can achieve the needed outcome. That’s what a digital transformation company needs to be. It’s an organization that can think and act digitally above all. That’s where it starts to be the most effective.
Above All, It’s Introspective
Most corporations out there look to preformulated ways of doing things to improve upon their operational procedures.
Want something to work, right? Follow the procedure. Need to fix something that isn’t working? Follow the procedure. Need a better way of doing something? Follow the procedure.
You get the picture.
The very concept that there are standard ways of doing things in a business is outdated. Sure, those methods might work. But are they the most effective? Probably not.
Industry leaders understand this. They know that they have to constantly evolve with the market if they want to keep ahead. That’s why they’re successful. They stop to think at every turn about how a certain component is impacting them and how they can change it.
And luckily, this is the biggest advantage of having digital transformation solutions in place. It teaches you to adapt your business to the current offerings available. It shows you how you can keep your clients happy. It prepares you to use practical data and analytics to advance the business forward.
Digital Business Transformation is the idea of bracing yourself for the future. It frames rapid growth as the concept of looking internally to learn from the past, tackle the present, and empower the future. It’s not connected to any outside successes or failures but your own. Where conventional business models fail, Digital Business Transformation succeeds.
How to Prepare Yourself for the Switch to Digital
Making the jump to Digital Business Transformation isn’t like pressing a button or turning a dial. It’s something that requires you to undertake careful analysis and planning to execute your transformation.
Being able to parse the key to a successful transformation is keeping several factors in mind before you make the switch. Here are some things to brace yourself with.
Know the Risks
Digital Business Transformation can obviously benefit you in a lot of meaningful ways. But it can also end up affecting your bottom line negatively if you’re not careful. As with most businesses or personal ventures, the cardinal rule will always be to weigh your risks before you take them.
In an ideal world, trying to go digital would never fail. But this is hardly the case. The slightest changes in a business can easily upset the balance. Ask yourself, what does your business have to lose if it all goes south.
Some aspects of your business may need to change to fit the transformation. Doing this can also have a significant effect on things. You need to be sure that you’re making the right decisions without short changing yourself. And possible entertaining risks early is the first step to it.
Do Some Impact Analysis
While it’s a good idea to know your risks on a basic level, taking it a step further with impact analysis is even more valuable. You should be briefed over the kind of changes you can expect in the form of disruptions or possible hurdles that you may face.
Taking your business to a digitally transformed state will help provide a lot of benefits. But it can have impacts on things other than the ones you want them to. Sometimes even going so far as to set you back.
Luckily, if you have the means to mitigate or even curb most of the possible setbacks, you can take some initiatives to invest in industry-standard impact analysis that can be applied to your business or the way you carry out your work.
Learn Which Roles Are Most Affected
Digital Transformation doesn’t just affect the part of the business or how it functions; it also affects the organizational structure, the employees, and the roles that they may have. You can expect your workforce to get shuffled around as the needs and duties of your business change with the transformation.
Some roles in your organization may become obsolete due to automation tools that you decide to implement. Others will simply get replaced or updated as you see fit. Having the flexibility to allow these changes to take place will determine your chances for success.
The key will be to anticipate the changing or removal of roles well in advance. This way, you will be able to make the necessary decisions in time without having an undesirable effect on your workforce.
Potential Roadblocks with Digital
Going digital is not without its hurdles. There’s a lot to be said about the possible stopping points that you might encounter while trying to transform your business or company.
Not Everyone is Ready for It
Switching to digital may seem like a no brainer if you stand to gain something from it. And everyone has at least something they can gain from it. But that doesn’t mean that they’re ready for it.
You can face this problem from both sides. It can either exist on your end with your employees or team leaders. Or it can exist at the end of your client or customer. No matter where it comes from, you can end up getting stuck in the crossfire.
It’s also possible that your organization just isn’t equipped to handle the change at the time. They may not have the resources or the wherewithal to carry such a change forward. It sucks to see it, but it’s more common than you think.
It’s Not Easy to Pull Off
There’s a reason it’s called Digital Business Transformation and not Digital Business Conversion. A lot of effort has to go into making a business or workplace go digital. You can’t just relocate it; the framework has to be designed to accommodate the structure of your organization and vice versa.
Part of the process is knowing what your needs are and what kind of tools you will need to get the job done. If you aren’t using the right tools or automate the things that you need to, it won’t end up being as effective. You’ll just be burdening yourself where you shouldn’t.
Planning and execution take the mantle as the things you will need to succeed in to pull off your transformation. Even then, it’s not a move that will give you a surefire outcome. But learning where the pieces fall and the processes meet end to end is a good enough starting point to get the ball rolling.
The Internet is Essential
You may have seen the inclusion of IoT (Internet of Things) in with a Digital Business Transformation ruleset. Everything from setting up networks for your business to gathering and deploying data will have to use the internet at some point. Whether that’s used to communicate, automate, or otherwise connect across different networks.
Familiarizing yourself with tech and the internet, in general, is a crucial step to this whole process. I can see there being contention with this as those more familiar with the traditional processes will prefer that as their de facto way of doing things. But trust me, if you want to succeed in getting things set upright, then you’re going to need the internet.
It’s not only a matter of data transmission and application but also how it all ties into the culture. The moment you stop looking at your networks as a collection of computers and nodes is the moment where things start to fit into the puzzle. That broader look of considering your networks as a collection of people, functions, and usable data is what will be the determining factor in any business.
Case Studies of the Digital Transformation Model You Can Learn From
Understanding key concepts on paper is one thing, but seeing them being implemented is another. There’s a lot of blind faith that goes into the more nuanced business practices.
That’s why it’s hard to escape that tunnel vision until you see the light on the other end. Most of the time, you can’t tell if you’re positioned for success until you actually achieve it. And if you stick to the tried of the old, you’ll look severely outdated.
I often find that having some real-world use cases can help ground me to reality and refocus myself. You can be as pessimistic and luddite as you want. But when you have a living breathing example in front of you, it’s hard to deny the facts.
Here are some Digital Transformation lessons I learned by studying real-world implementations of it.
Netflix – Your Business Ventures can be Refitted to Serve New Purposes
Netflix is the last decade’s biggest example of how a company goes from offering novel services to become a practical household necessity. And all of it was possible because of the early Digital Business Transformation.
The company had its start as a movie rental company that would mail you DVDs for a monthly fee. After having a swelling customer base of nearly 300,000, the company honed in on a key bottleneck in their business; the logistics.
In any other situation, it would be perfectly fine to continue business as usual if your bottom line wasn’t affected. But of course, you’d be setting yourself to become outdated as soon as the technology became obsolete. And knowing the relevance of discs or physical media, it wouldn’t have been long.
The Fundamental Change
Netflix, as we know them, have been able to corner the market with their offerings. The movie rental turned digital not only had them make a place for themselves, but it also prompted others to follow suit.
They did all this by cutting out their physical distribution for a digitally focused one. This way, they not only serve their customers faster and on-demand, but they can also track their preferences better.
Thanks to their transformation, they’re able to serve the needs of their customers and themselves. They kept up with the pace of technology, rid themselves of business bottlenecks, and simplified their supply change. All this without diluting the market.
Why it Worked
Netflix’s key success can be attributed to its quick adoption of the digital framework. They primed themselves for change as early as 2007 when they launched their digital streaming company. The rapid need for futureproofing sets them up for success early.
More importantly, they managed to follow the core principles of transformation without diluting their offerings. They kept their service intact while offering a new value proposition that fits in with the changing customer demands. It’s a classic case of adapting to the system rather than letting the system adapt to you.
Uber – Your Market Reach Extends Beyond Getting Landlocked
Uber has been a major contributor to how it has shaped global transportation as a whole. They have simultaneously made themselves a key player in the market while also pushing out their competition entirely.
They did all this by radically changing the ins and outs of their business by making it go digital. This cut down on a lot of the bottlenecks, made their process a lot simpler, and removed limitations where they might have otherwise existed.
But above all, what really carried it forward was the potential outreach it offered. Uber quickly became a growing global phenomenon. And all they had to do to achieve it was digitally transforming themselves.
The Fundamental Change
It’s impossible to look at Uber and not see how digital transformation helped change it. Their basic business model revolves around connecting their drivers and customers through peer to peer services.
They track both of them using location services. They can also process the payment side of things without a need for the physical. This has enabled them to offer support remotely or collect helpful data and analytics to grow their business.
Why it Worked
Arguably the biggest proponent of Uber’s successful business model is how inline it is with a digital framework. Although the services they offer might set to a physical location, the backend can be used to import it anywhere.
They can operate in any corner of the world without having to landlock themselves to a physical location. All of the business frontend and backend can be conducted remotely. They can offer their services globally without facing any of the restrictions that a typical taxicab company faces.
Amazon – Real-World Business Models Can Work Digitally
Amazon is a business that screams digital business transformation. Their impact on the world market can never be understated. They have redefined what it means to shop online for many people. And it’s all thanks in no small part to how their digital transformation initiatives have been propped up.
But here’s where Amazon is different. They didn’t just switch over to be a digitally transformed company. They started out as one and pushed their digital transformation strategy even further.
What started out as a small marketplace for books during the dot com boom became the be all end all of the online shopping. But it didn’t happen because of some overnight wave of a magic wand. It took some dedicated planning and execution to inch closer.
The Fundamental Change
The biggest change with Amazon came when they used their digital transformation to look inwardly and learn from their possible inefficiencies well. They managed to create their own supply chain as well as handling their own logistics.
They didn’t have to do much to achieve this either. Amazon didn’t reinvent the wheel; it just made it run a bit smoother. That’s what it means to really have a digital transformation in place on a truly fundamental level and not just a conceptual one.
Why it Worked
Above all, Amazon has proven that you need to throw out your old business model for something that has a vague sense of sounding “techy.”
They take the age-old idea of trying to capitalize on your supply chain, building customer-first initiatives, and forming a defined workplace culture. But transform it using digital transformation principles to make the business flexible to changes and innovations, automating the right things, and incorporating IoT practices.
Tesla – You Can Capitalize on Changing Demands Early
Tesla is an ambassador of the brave new world of the automobile industry. An industry that has operated for longer than a century. Yet it has been able to revolutionize it inside out. In a time of dropping car sales and rinsing ride-sharing, Tesla has managed to capture a whole new customer base for itself.
It does it despite sharing the same industry with the same companies that take advantage of the traditional values associated with cars. By focusing on customer first practices, it’s lauded as the car company of the future.
And the best part? They don’t have to do anything. They don’t have to adjust to the world. The world has to adjust to them. Laws are being passed to factor in their automated driving. EV station infrastructure is being built to charge their cars. They set their sights on the future. Now we have to move with them.
The Fundamental Change
Anyone that’s paying attention will tell you how interesting Tesla seems from a transformative standpoint. Case in point, they’re one of the only car manufacturers to push out software updates for their cars.
They’re also one of the few automobile corporations that appeal to the newer generation of car owners. Rather than sticking to a loyal but old and outdated customer base, they’ve made offerings that either meet current demands or will soon appeal to demands in the future.
Why it Works
From every basic angle, Tesla is a forward-facing enterprise. They use the technology that’s available to them to innovate in areas that have desperately needed it. They’re focusing their offerings for the current world, and that’s what hits it home with a lot of people.
Whether it’s the need for self-driving cars, high levels of automation, regular updates, simplified selection of offerings, value-focused goals, or fully electric cars, it’s all sci-fi turned reality. These are demands that have existed for a long time but never been fulfilled. It’s because a traditional business model would have you believe that they were too cost-prohibitive or impractical. But not here.
See, Tesla isn’t just building itself up as a digitally transforming entity; it’s also offering that same transformation to you. With their offerings, they’re giving you a tangible slice of what it means to transform aspects of your life digitally.
This is what truly sets the company apart. Their focus for digital restructuring doesn’t stay limited to the end of the production line, it is the production line, and it is the product itself. If you can learn just one thing from a company, let it be this.
Using Lean Methodology to Shape Your Transformation
Once you’re clear on the principles of Digital Business Transformation, you can use it to help shape your processes and create a smarter workflow. There are plenty of ways to handle the transformation, but it’s always better to use a guiding principle or ruleset to make sure you don’t get lost.
Different people will have different approaches when it comes to how they want to execute the way they end up going digital. It all comes down to your needs, organizational structure, and what the scale is for what you’re trying to build.
However, if you’re looking for a one size fits all standard that all businesses end up using then it’s Lean methodology. This method was developed to not only help shape a workforce from the inside but also give enough direction to help it outwardly.
It’s a fantastic way to get things organized. I’ve personally seen it do wonders for people. Here are some ways you can sprinkle it in.
Learn the Principles
Lean management breaks the workflow down by fragmenting it into different principles. These principles can be used to not only create a step ladder based process but also helps you keep important aspects at the top of your mind.
Lean Methodology uses a set of five basic principles for its process. These principles can be assumed using the following steps:
- Identify Value
- Specify Value Stream
- Create Flow
- Empower the Workforce
- Improve the Process
It’s important to know these principles if you want to create a feasible framework for yourself. Understanding them will give you a clear indication of where your direction needs to be headed to succeed.
Create Focus by Understanding Value
To attain a certain degree of success with your transformation, the first thing you need to do is have enough focus. Just as there are different reasons to undergo a transformation, there are also different directions in which to take your transformation. If you don’t know the direction you want to take it right off the bat, it could mean trouble down the line.
The very first principle of Lean helps you attain this using Lean thinking techniques. It makes you identify your value from the get-go. This kind of method can really help center yourself and understand what you’re offering to your client or customers.
It’s an important step because understanding your value proposition helps center your basic business model as well as make you understand where your goals should lie.
Increase Efficiency by Value Mapping
Working towards a particular product or goal means embodying efficiency wherever it may lie. Being able to cut down on something that decreases it and amplifying where it can add value to your overall output.
Lean is able to guide you to produce the utmost efficiency by having you identify where your value stream lies. It has you do this by mapping out functions, processes, and agents in the workflow. It’s harder to see an issue when you’re looking at the big picture from afar. But when you start zooming in and try to map out each individual detail, things become instantly clearer.
When you have your entire workflow mapped out from A to Z, you can identify points in the process where inconsistencies or inefficiencies take place. You’ll be able to identify where the value was coming from and cut down processes that slow it down or enhance the ones that make it go forward.
Smooth Out Processes by Designing a Clear Flow
When working with clients, you don’t just want to be in a binary state of being able or unable to do the work. You also have to be able to deliver to them in a reasonable time frame as well as having little to no hitches in the system.
One of the ways that Lean methodology helps you achieve smooth out your workflow is by creating a straight and feasible flow for you to follow. This is easier to see when you’re working with teams. The success of your overall workforce dictates the large part of the workflow.
And breaking it down is a better approach to visualize it properly. You can view it as teams that work in their own corner while coming together to collaborate on larger goals. The flow is defined clearly, and you use that to your advantage to create smooth output.
Reduce Wastage by Prioritization
Your workflow consists of more than just one single process. Getting stability to enter the system means prioritizing which tasks take point over others. As the saying goes, work smarter, not harder.
You will need to prioritize which tasks based on demands and what needs to be delivered first. Otherwise, it’s easy to get a clogged system where tasks of different importance are simultaneously competing with each other. This almost never works out, and it can waste a lot of your resources in the process.
Improve by Evolving
Different teams and employees in your workflow are designated to the roles and duties that fit best with their expertise. You can take advantage of this by ironing out your workflow using their input.
Lean teaches us that the ones that can better improve upon a process are those that work closely with it. Without even knowing it, you could have a hundred different points in your workflow, where there is an immense wealth of potential.
By involving and empowering the agents that work closely with the process, you stand to gain the most. In a typical workforce, these might be employees. But it can even be applied to the tools or automation that you may use.
Set a Precedent for Future Development
Once you catch on to a specific workflow, it might be tempting to let it continue as usual. But this isn’t always the wisest. What works for you now may not, a year or two down the line. Keeping the workflow going even as your methods or technological progress is the real struggle.
It’s always important to take into account how things will be like down the line. Getting the process to work even after you’ve made changes is the first and foremost step. Identifying possible growth potential is another. And keeping the chain going is what ties it all together and sets you up for fruitful development in the future.
How Scrum Techniques Help You Help Your Clients
One of the biggest challenges faced with learning how to get transformation properly implemented and embedded in your workflow is having the right kind of methodology that you can use to drive the whole thing.
There’s nothing more damaging to your implementation than try to go in blind without a set system in mind. Not only will it provide potential stopping points, but it can also hinder things in the long run.
Luckily, there are business methodologies out there that you can use to apply to your transformation process. Techniques like Scrum have been widely used to help empower different areas for businesses. Although these techniques were developed with businesses in mind, you can just as easily extrapolate their working ideas and apply them to your work.
Understand Basic Scrum Principles
Scrum is designed to help the basic developmental procedures that businesses have to undergo. See, the default development process is called Waterfall development. It uses a trickle-down system where planning leads to building and development until you reach a final product. Kind of like a waterfall.
Now, if anything goes wrong in the process, Waterfall developments revert the development to the previous stage until a problem is fixed. The problem with this kind of development is that the entire development line is held up by the issue. The process can’t proceed to the next step and, in some cases, might lead to a possible scrap.
This is where Scrum comes in. Instead of having entire steps follow each other, Scrum deploys them in smaller steps and increments. Here, you only do a part of the work in each step enough to move it forward but not enough to complete it.
Once it reaches the end, you’ve already identified some potential issues. This finishes a small subset known as a Sprint. You can then run multiple Sprints again and again in parallel. The finished product is achieved when you manage to finish all your Sprints.
Know Your Scrum Team
The successful implementation of Scrum methodology means having the right team in place to help you execute it along the way. This means having people outside of your development team to help guide the Scrum processes.
To start off, you will need a Product Owner. This can be a key stakeholder or one of your clients that has a general product in mind that you will need to develop and will give you ideas or feedback to guide it to its finished state. In some cases, you can take up this role. That is if you’re the one shaping the end products.
Next up is the Scrum Master. This is someone that helps develop and maintain the Scrum process to keep it running smoothly. A Scrum Master is in charge of building the core team, communicating between teams, tracking progress, and ensuring final quality control. They will be regularly guiding the process by holding a Scrum meeting with the core team.
Repurpose it to Fit Your Needs
Fortunately, Scrum techniques are well suited to be used and implanted for all kinds of different purposes, including customer services and client needs. You can use the same basic principles to fit your new goals and task that you need to achieve.
One of the biggest ways to do this is to use the collaborative aspects of Scrum to help shape the way you help deliver products. The team dynamics of Scrum can optimize your development process in ways that not only manage to increase your team’s efficiency but also have your product ready in a better state of quality and delivered in a shorter time frame.
Use Sprint Backlogs to Understand Client Needs
Sprint backlogs, by design, are an important aspect of Scrum. They’re built up as a priority list of tasks and issues that you need to tackle with your current Sprint. These are designed by utilizing User Stories and client requests for what they’re looking for.
Sprint backlogs give you a tangible way to keep on top of what your client or customer wants at every stage. Even outside the context of having a workforce team, Sprint backlogs help serve up a clear picture of where your direction is headed in the developmental stage. It also helps drive the point across about the order of priorities that need to be taken care of.
Unify Work Using Sprint Planning
Scrum embodies the culture of working and collaborating to achieve a similar end goal. Although there may be different people or teams working under the same roof, they’ll be working as a collective to see that they can get to an end product.
What can you learn from this? Well, imagine you have to take on a project or client contract that requires you to work and communicate with others. Normally, you would just split your duties and complete them accordingly.
But where Scrum changes things is that it introduces the idea that different teams can take up roles outside of their sphere if it results in common success. You can use this to collaborate with your work partners in ways that wouldn’t work otherwise.
Track Progress Using Daily Scrum
When you’re working with a client, there are two things that will become necessary; time and progress. You will need to constantly keep an eye on your progress to make sure that you’re working on the track. What’s more, you might need to deliver regular progress reports to your client to ensure them that you’re not straying off schedule.
This can be done almost exclusively using Scrum. Using Daily Scrum, you will be able to sit down with your teams to constantly and track your progress across the board. As the name implies, this is a daily process that takes place at the start of the work cycle.
They’ll be able to review completed progress from the previous days or previous Sprints. Additionally, they’ll be able to discuss what they need to do in the future by identifying remaining progress and planning to have it completed in the next upcoming work cycle.
Hammer Out Issues During Sprint Review
Scrum Sprint techniques offer a lot of value in the processing and developmental stages. But it’s at the end of a project where Sprint really shines. When you get ready for delivery, you’ll need a way to ensure that your product was produced and delivered in a feasible way. Thankfully, the Scrum ideology grants you these privileges.
Using Scrum review, you’ll have the power to identify key issues and stopping points in the process that you can do away with. This way, your next iteration of Sprint will run much smoother and productive than the one preceding it.
Digital Conversion is No Longer a Choice, Now It’s Time for Action
Congratulations, you’ve made it to the end!
At this stage, you should have a clear understanding of how much value having Digital Business Transformation in place brings. It’s not only a means to optimize and empower your workflow but also deliver a consistent experience that your clients can be satisfied with.
Moving forward, your next step should be to layout your own transformation outline. Start with a basic plan that shows your needs, resources, and possible goals. When you’re done with that, you can start to focus on the operational procedures that you will be used to achieving. Once you’ve conceptualized everything, it’ll be time to focus on the execution.
Last but not least, you’ll need some key tools on hand to help make it all possible. Which tools you get will depend a lot on your needs. Personally speaking, I prefer SEMrush, Google drive, stripe, QuickBooks intuit online, PayPal, Shopify, WordPress, Hubstaff. I also love Zapier and Twilio.
For more information on what tools to use to help automate your workflow and fill your pipeline with highly interested prospects, schedule a call with me here. Or sign up for a free personal dashboard where I will sync you up with all my tools, do a deep dive, and then talk.
We are even setting up a remote call center system for my team to be able to answer questions and solve problems 24/7.
We know you are going through a transitional period, and our aim is to help be there for you.
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