Five tips for digital success

Energy transition is rooted in digital transformation, so it is critical for organisations to reinvent and restructure their business as catalysts for innovation. However, going digital is not easy. Indeed, various reports have revealed that although companies want to transform digitally, 70% of digital transformation initiatives do not reach their goals. Here are five ways to improve the odds of success.

Five steps to help drive a successful digital transformation

1. Align your technology and business strategies

It is paramount that you have the right technology strategy aligned with your business strategy when starting your digital journey as market preferences, technological capabilities, and regulations change frequently. Successful businesses anticipate that they will go through cycles of maturation that demand systematic transition. The company’s vision and business strategy need to be adaptable to fit with market demands, and your digital strategy needs to be flexible to evolve with market conditions.

2. Set up scalable, modular innovation platforms

A modular, fit for purpose, reusable, API-driven, scalable and secure technology platform is fundamental for success in your digital transformation journey. As technology evolves rapidly, the platform should support evolving business requirements and emerging technologies. The innovation platform should incorporate APIs (application programming interfaces), microservices and have serverless features that can ramp up and down and have the flexibility to add or remove features based on rapid changes in market demand and evolving technology ecosystem.

3. Invest in talent and capability

Promote a self-leadership and connector manager to help the team access resources to fulfil skill gaps and realise interdependencies of work, especially in larger organisations.

The manager’s role is to create and cultivate a digital culture – a purpose-driven, open and transparent environment for team development. People are the biggest asset of an organisation. Invest in talent so your organisation can survive and thrive in these rapidly changing environments.

4. Create a digital culture with committed senior leadership

Successful digital transformation thrives on committed, empathetic leadership. A digital-savvy leader drives innovation by empowering cross-functional teams. They support collaboration, create channels for ideation with good business understanding, and provide platforms to experiment.

Agility is the backbone of a digital culture. In its true sense, agility is not just a process. It is a way to quickly try new ideas in a rapidly changing technological ecosystem – fail fast, learn from the failure, and use the experience and feedback to improve and continue the innovation cycle until it is successful.

5. Embed cybersecurity into your technology strategy

The transition to digital creates huge innovation opportunities. However, it also creates a high risk of malicious attack from external elements. Digital assets, including data, must be secured with proper application and a data security strategy. Organisations need to enhance their customer experience as they digitise their business by finding the balance between the customer convenience and cybersecurity risks.

Integrating digital security is a fundamental part of the digital journey; as you accelerate digital, ensure the proper security measures are in place – right from the start of building an innovation platform.   

The transition to digital creates huge innovation opportunities. However, it also creates a high risk of malicious attack from external elements. Digital assets, including data, must be secured with proper application and a data security strategy. Organisations need to enhance their customer experience as they digitise their business by finding the balance between the customer convenience and cybersecurity risks.

This year’s EIC Survive & Thrive report reveals that only 31% of participating companies deployed innovation as a growth strategy in 2021. Previously the most-used growth strategy by companies, this represents a considerable drop from the 73% of companies that turned to innovation in 2017. And while most businesses appreciate the importance of digital agility, progress remains incredibly slow. So, why are companies innovating less, and why do digital strategies fail? The financing challenges for deploying new clean technology are significant, says Ian Cogswell, member of Financing Technology to Net Zero UK, in his article on breaking down investment barriers on page 29. Here, Noorddin Taj, Strategy Architecture and Digital Innovation leader at bp, shares his five steps to digital success.