The epidemic, in a way, has forced every organisation to adopt digital technologies to carry on the business. Now companies are embarking on digital transformation initiatives to understand customers better, gain a competitive advantage and interconnect various disparate functions.
But to succeed they must ensure that the digital systems in use across the organisation are interoperable, connect smoothly without any friction. Companies must avoid short term solutions that may prove expensive to sustain later on.
During the epidemic, companies may have chosen digital systems or software in a hurry with no long term planning. This may cause enormous compatibility issues when the information is to be shared across the functions. This could very well slow down the information exchange between various divisions which has a direct effect on how the organisations respond to their customers.
A subtle creeping issue
The incompatibility between various systems can grow in these simple steps.
- First, as businesses grow, teams increasingly opt for new, specialised ones to help them in their business. This may not be a problem when the business was small, but as the company grows as companies set up specialised functions or divisions, data sharing becomes difficult. for example, the definition of the customer means distinctly different things to different departments. This makes it difficult for various departments to work together for common good.
- Second, the different software has customised databases, data models to capture information about the students. This leads to different, department-level databases that do not communicate with each other. One result is that the organisation does not get the information on how many customers they have.
- Third, individual departments accommodate different data sets and deploy various workarounds to get their work done.
This will continue till the organisation decides on a common minimum information requirement that would help in harmonising all the disparate systems.
A common system.
The only way to resolve this issue is to have a common language. Every department would have different unique terms that are relevant to their work and trying to bring them down to a common language may prove to be a herculean task.
Start with a few, common sets of concepts that make these disparities manageable. The secret to resolving this is to decide on clarifying a few underlying concepts.
- Treat prospects as a role played by a set of individuals or organisations.
- Define a lead as a person of interest to the organisation.
- Assign many roles to the lead as required by the business.
By this, a single unified database, anyone across the organisations and departments who deals with leads or prospects can be accommodated. Separating the group into prospects and leads would meet the requirements of all departments and also create a unified database that every department can utilise.
The effort required.
The common architecture that satisfies every department provides a common language and data model which can be used for further development. However, getting all the departments to agree on this architecture requires tremendous work and requires committed leadership with diverse skills.
The senior leadership must assemble a diverse team to get the work done. it should include
- Concept thinkers who can uncover key concepts
- Expert writers who can explain the concepts in a simple language.
- Change agents who can convince others of the benefits of the new system.
- Expert technicians who can quickly translate the concepts into systems.
A well thought out, well-deployed common language would be a sound investment. It would help build an enterprise wise transaction system, build enterprise data to support analytics capabilities.
It is easy to get distracted by the new technologies. the goal is to do more with the existing data to take advantage of the existing information and build on it to gain a competitive advantage and market share.
Effective Digital Transformation Depends on a Shared Language
by David C. Hay, Thomas C. Redman, C. Lwanga Yonke, and John A. Zachman
HBR 2021/12
R2G 