How to Create a Digital Transformation Strategy Roadmap€¦ · How to Create a Digital Transformation ... If you already know what digital transformation is and why you’d want

How to Create a Digital Transformation

Strategy Roadmap

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The process involves answering six fundamental questions,

each of which flows logically into the next:

1. Why do we need a digital transformation?

2. What must we achieve in order to transform?

3. What exactly do we need to transform?

4. What changes are required in order to transform?

5. What packages of change should we form to execute

the transformation?

6. How do we sequence the packages of change over a

transformation time horizon?

Without further ado, let’s dive in.

Chuen SeetCo-founder of Jibility

If you already know what digital transformation is and why you’d

want to undertake it, then the next step is to learn how.

There are plenty of articles out there with generic advice about everything you

need to consider, but much of it is common sense to the seasoned strategist.

You’ve got the bones, but no meat.

So, with the help of example company RedYabber, we’re going to delve

into the nitty-gritty and take you step-by-step through the process of

creating a digital transformation strategy roadmap.

Foreword



Our Digital Transformation Model Company: RedYabber

RedYabber is a traditional wooden toy company that sells its products through local and global retail outlets. With the advent of online markets, such as eBay, and manufacturing and supply chain automation, RedYabber has begun to struggle to rival its competitors on price, speed of delivery, reach and quality.

Its vision, as above, hasn’t changed – but the business goals have. The leadership team has decided that it’s time to embrace digital ways of working and undertake a digital transformation.

Reaching the heart of every child through imaginative play the natural way.

R e d Y a b b e r ’ s V i s i o n

They have set out with four clear goals, to be achieved in the next three years:

1. Automate manufacturing and warehousing for just-in-time delivery to reduce inventory and product cost.

2. Decision making based on data, not intuition.

3. Market and sell online – reduce dependency on traditional retailers.

4. Develop innovative wooden toys that provide children and parents with an alternative to digital devices.



Why do we need digital transformation?

Firstly, here’s a quick recap of some of the common reasons for pursuing digital transformation:

• To improve customer experience

• To improve efficiency

• To improve decision-making

• To outstrip the competition

These all sound pretty relevant to RedYabber, and most likely to your own organization too.

The starting point of a strategy roadmap for digital transformation is to articulate the

challenges faced by your organization. A clear list of challenges will keep you aligned with your

strategic vision or goals and heading in the right direction.

Keep in mind that a challenge is not just a problem; it can also be an opportunity.

When the RedYabber team sat down to lay out their challenges, they identified six core ones. Of

course, they actually have more, but for the sake of this walkthrough we’ll keep things concise.

STEP1



What must we achieve in order to transform?

For each challenge, identify at least one objective.

An objective will specify what must be achieved within the time horizon (three years for RedYabber) in order for digital transformation to be successful.

To illustrate what we mean, here are RedYabber’s nine objectives as linked to their challenges:

You may notice that some of these objectives aren’t specific to digital (e.g. ‘reduce order to dispatch time by 50%’).

There’s a simple reason for this: digital transformation, or digital, is just an enabler. The question is how digital technologies can be applied in order to achieve the objective.

STEP2



What do we need to transform?

Digital transformation is about creating capabilities, not just products and definitely not just projects. Capabilities are simply the building blocks of a business that enable it to do what it does.

With this in hand, review each capability and determine:

a) Does the capability deliver or help us to meet our objectives?

b) What level of change is required in order to meet our objectives?

c) What is the priority for implementing the change?

Remember to consider each capability from people, process and physical perspectives, i.e. what changes would be required to each of these aspects of the business. In the case of digital transformation, ‘physical’ is often replaced with ‘technology’.

You should then develop the visual to communicate the answers to these questions.

This means using colour coding and simple labelling systems to indicate the relationship of the capabilities to each other and to the digital transformation objectives (see our RedYabber example on the next page).

STEP3

As the word ‘map’ suggests, this is a visual that displays all of the capability building blocks that make up the business (or an area of it).

To understand what capabilities are needed for digital transformation, start by creating a capability map.



RedYabber have applied a heatmapping

technique as per the above legend to indicate

the current states of their capabilities and sub-

capabilities.

RedYabber have also ensured

clear linkage between

capabilities and objectives by

adding the number of the

objective (assigned in the

previous step) to the relevant

capability. For example, the

‘Digital Leadership’ capability is

linked to the Objective 1: ‘Appoint

a Digital Transformation Lead

within the next three months.’

Lastly, green stars have been

assigned to those capabilities

considered a priority, indicating

whether the priority is high,

medium or low. For example, the

‘Digital Leadership’ capability is

a high priority for RedYabber.

1

CNTD.STEP3

Legend



What changes are required to transform?

Once you’ve established the current state of your capabilities and the required future state, you need to plan how to get from one to the other.

For each capability, list the actions which must be completed in order to meet the linked objective. Your focus should of course be on the capabilities that are a priority, meet objectives and require change.

Here’s a sample of the courses of action required for six of RedYabber’s capabilities:

STEP4

Courses of action should consider the people, process and physical (or technological) changes

required to a capability.

The people, cog and spanner icons against each course of action in the RedYabber example indicate whether the action primarily relates to people, process or technology respectively.



What packages of change should we form to execute the transformation?

You’ll end up with quite a large number of courses of action, so the next step is to group them

into logical packages, which we’ll refer to as initiatives.

Depending on the level of granularity defined, an initiative can be a project or a program.

Here’s a sample of six initiatives from RedYabber:

STEP5



How do we sequence the packages of change over a transformation time horizon?

Your list of initiatives feeds directly into a roadmap for the digital transformation strategy.

For RedYabber, the initiatives must be sequenced across the three-year time horizon that they have set themselves for digital transformation. In their roadmap, the columns signify five time-boxed stages to ensure that everything is spread logically and attainably over the three years.

The rows split up strategic themes, e.g. the initiatives relating to marketing are positioned within one row. This makes sense since initiatives that are similar may be reliant on each other or may be natural progressions of each other.

STEP6



Summarizing and communicating your roadmap

After completing the six steps, you have the answers to the why, what and how of digital transformation.

The style and order in which you present this content can vary. Some organizations are formal and prefer their strategy roadmap in a Word® document; others are informal and prefer theirs in PowerPoint®. We like to keep things concise and visual by printing it on an A3 page for easy sharing.

The back page of this guide features RedYabber’s strategy roadmap, complete with the top five challenges, top seven objectives and top ten capabilities.

How Jibility can helpRedYabber’s diagrams in this document were created using Jibility, an app dedicated to building strategy roadmaps.

Jibility gives you access to pre-defined building blocks, developed by business and IT consulting experts, so that you can build your strategy roadmap for a fraction of the time, cost and effort.

Starting your free trial with Jibility (no credit card required) also provides you with access to the actual strategy roadmaps for RedYabber and another sample company, InsureNorth. To further help you get on your way, we provide live chat support in the app, or you can simply email us directly at [email protected].

Sign up at www.jibility.com


mailto:[email protected]

http://bit.ly/jibility-sign-up

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How to Create a Digital Transformation Strategy Roadmap€¦ · How to Create a Digital Transformation ... If you already know what digital transformation is and why you’d want