1. Break down silos

Often in large businesses ‘digital’ is fragmented between IT, marketing and operational divisions, making it difficult to align technology strategies that serve internal and external demands. Before embarking on an enterprise digital transformation agenda – consider an organizational structure, backed by all sides of the business, that brings these disciplines together to drive through decisions that support both the company and the consumer.

2. Engage the boardroom

For many enterprise businesses, technology sits in the remit of legacy IT departments and is seen as a support function. This is reflected in budget planning, team structures and processes, and can result in technology strategy trailing after the business rather than driving it forward. Top performing players in the enterprise digital transformation game carefully consider how technology is represented in the boardroom and ensure a Chief Technology Officer has a seat at the table in an executive or steering committee.

3. Get the architecture right

Architecture can sometimes be overlooked as a somewhat grandiose term to describe the combination of platforms, systems and data solutions your company puts in place. However it’s these decisions on enterprise architecture that successful digital transformation relies on. Increasingly cloud-based solutions and tools have been playing a significant role here, allowing the flexibility and scalability a modern enterprise needs while driving efficiency and supporting governance. Successful enterprise architecture will underpin the entire vision for the digital transformation program and will facilitate its implementation throughout the business. It should be viewed as a long term investment and involve consultation with all stakeholders to create strong foundations for the future.

4. Align many platforms with one strategy

In today’s multiplatform world, the channels and touchpoints that businesses reach audiences on are ever expanding. No longer can long-term marketing and distribution plans for enterprise digital transformation be built around traditional media, with consumers taking up new channels and devices faster than marketers can update their plans. In order to keep track of this growing network of channels, you need a robust behind-the-scenes data strategy that can scale up and transcend software to help you understand your digital audience and track their journeys and conversions across a disjointed landscape. Consider how to leverage or create APIs to push and extract data between these shifting channels and a single data management platform (DMP) as part of a future ready architecture.

5. Take risks

Recent research carried out by McKinsey & Co revealed that those most successful in enterprise digital transformation are those that follow through with bold and disruptive strategies. This includes taking chances on new technologies, trialling alternative business models, encouraging a test-and-learn culture and the launch of change programs for innovation transformation.

So it goes that ‘excessive caution’ and aversion to risk taking were identified as a major setback in enterprise transformation, with the report stating: “In today’s environment, making incremental changes is like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.”

6. Go faster

The rate at which market changes take place is faster and faster by the day, so companies can’t chance taking it slow when it comes to digital innovation. Automating systems have become the primary strategy to speeding up time-consuming processes, allowing employees to focus on driving business practices and technologies forward.

This is where cloud-based software such as Templafy comes in. Templafy assists enterprise digital transformation by integrating a company’s various template and digital asset management systems to simplify outdated and lengthy incumbent processes. Through the use of best-practice templates, centralized asset libraries and brand and compliance checkers, our easy to use platform can reduce time spent on document creation, increase employee productivity, ensure brand compliance and shift the workflow from over-employed, costly IT departments to a firm’s brand managers.