What is digital transformation consulting?

Digital Transformation Consultancy Defined

Digital transformation consultinghelps businesses create a more competitive organization by guiding the adoption of digital products, platforms, and processes.

The best way to understand digital transformation is to not think of it as a separate phenomenon or discipline from the core business models, services, operations, or strategies. It’s simply a phrase used by the industry to define a typical organization’s efforts to adapt to rapidly changing digital technologies.

Seeking a digital transformation consultancy is driven by two primary business instincts – fear of being obsolete and the desire to outcompete. Digital transformation consulting can help C-Suite professionals like CEOs, COOs, and CTOs unlock massive value by advising and implementing them on incorporating technological change to meet their current and future business needs.

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What Are the Four Areas of Digital Transformation Consulting?

1. Digital Process Transformation

Process transformation means creating fundamental and radical changes in an organization’s internal processes in order to help them produce more efficient and innovative outcomes. It often requires a switch from manual to digital and automated processes.

One of the most common examples of process transformation is automating routine workflows with project management tools. At Modus Create, we use Jira to align our departments to yearly OKRs.

2. Digital Business Model Transformation

Business model transformation means changing a part of a business by digitizing a product or a service, or otherwise implementing digital technology to help achieve the company’s goals. For example, digitizing a product might look like creating a mobile app for direct engagement. Similarly, transitioning from in-person workshops to webinars is an example of digitizing a service. Whereas process transformation focuses on tasks and workflows, business model transformation is broader and focuses on delivering value to customers.

3. Digital Domain Transformation

Domain transformation is a type of digital transformation consulting that helps businesses transform their industries or sectors from one to another by leveraging digital technologies. Sometimes this results in leveraging new technologies to redefine products and services and can even blur boundaries between whole industries. For example, pharmaceutical companies like Pfizer are increasingly creating digital apps that promote preventive care for better healthcare outcomes.

Domain transformation can unlock enormous value for companies. It can help them redefine their competitive positioning within and between industries and create opportunities for innovative new strategies and positioning.

4. Digital Culture / Organizational Transformation

Digital transformation consulting can help embed digital into a company’s cultural DNA by changing constituent behavior and implementing technological change in the broader company culture. By taking a whole-of-organization approach and emphasizing a digital-first attitude, cultural transformation can help radically improve ROI. A great example of cultural transformation is the growing popularity of the open source mindset among organizations.

What Do Digital Transformation Consultants Do?

Now that we know the four main areas of digital transformation consulting, what does an actual consulting engagement look like? What do digital transformation consultants do, and what are some of their best practices?

Audit

Most engagements start with an audit. The consultants will carry out an assessment to understand where your organization is, what it wishes to achieve, and how to do so.

For example, if an organization wants to upgrade its security infrastructure, the consultants would first investigate the state of the existing systems and then share recommendations in a report.

Strategy and Vision

After completing the audit, a digital transformation consultant can help you define your strategy and vision for change. This involves creating a compelling statement of what you want to achieve through digital and what strategies you will employ to get there.

It is important to make sure you align your digital transformation goals, objectives, and metrics with the broader strategic objectives, mission, culture, and core values of the organization. Once you have mapped out this vision and your strategy for achieving it, communicate that vision to all stakeholders, including management, key employees, third-party vendors, and possibly even investors.Finally, they will help develop a roadmap to implement the strategy. The tactics outlined may include timelines, assigned responsibilities, resources, and necessary tasks for executing the strategy.

Implementation

The next stage of your consulting engagement is where digital transformation consultants differ from traditional consultants.

While most traditional consulting engagements end with recommendations, effective digital transformation consultants possess the expertise to execute the recommendations. Digital consulting firms are not just analysts and consultants, but also:

• designers
• marketers
• engineers
• project managers
• writers

They are experts at rapidly deploying and scaling digital solutions for their clients.