6 Ways to Make Digital Fitness Your New Year's IT Resolution

Focus on value: Businesses spend trillions of dollars on technology and yet their approach to digital transformation is often less than successful. The technology doesn’t produce the expected value. Stakeholders are unsatisfied with the ROI. The reason is too often companies build technology in isolation, then try to commercialize it. Meanwhile, technology is changing, and business needs are changing. The No. 1 shift must be learning how to perform value transfer for technology that you innovate or provide. Moving the mindset to relevance and value first will promote longevity.

Evaluate your legacy systems: In becoming more digitally fit, you need to perform a wellness check of your legacy systems. Are they flexible enough to build new technology on? Can they serve as the right foundation for a digital ecosystem? Most companies struggle with this. Often, the optimal way forward is to modernize your systems. However, most companies need to conserve spending. It’s imperative to take stock and identify what you might be able to use before adding new digital tech.

Make data work for you: Most companies talk about data, but they don’t understand what to do with data. Think of using data as a product, making sure you can create a harmonized data mesh or a data foundation across all your systems and create a single source of truth. Also ensure you can easily and securely share the data. This enables you to create an AI and machine-learning factory to serve as the data foundation for digital operations and innovation.

Let go of digital misconceptions: Digitization isn’t only about automation or hyper-automation. Start by thinking about how to deliver a better customer experience, employee experience, or vendor experience. Once you focus on the experience, automation or new application development can follow. Technology is the tool to deliver the experience, but not the endgame. To help customers become digitally fit, think first about what they need, and then think about how to solve for that need. Technology that delivers value should follow from this process.

Embrace consumerization: Think of a Sunday-style experience on a business Monday. Consumers love to “order in,” to have pizza and chips arrive after a quick touch on a delivery app. Businesses want that same experience when buying solutions or working with providers to improve their operations. Businesses that understand consumerization is the top priority will have the best chance of retaining customers.

Think customer, not project: Moving from a project-based organization to a customer-focused organization is necessary to become digitally fit and move along with the market’s changing requirements. There’s no room here for “set it and forget it” thinking. The customer and product mindset is especially important because that’s how you focus on feedback, foster engagement, and create a better experience through innovation.