Digital Transformation may possess a different connotation for every organization and industry. But the organization need to register that in order to stay competitive, customer-centric as well as become more efficient as compared to their counterparts, firms must modernize as per the new digital age. Thus, digital transformation is a holistic approach to upgrading the IT ecosystem, operation strategies, and processes of a digital transformation company by using the latest advancement in cloud, mobility, user experience, and analytics to bring a revolutionary change in the manner they interact and work with customers. The transformation can include client-facing applications, enterprise systems, or both. The process of digital transformation is ongoing, and when executed on the basis of a detailed strategy, it can offer several benefits to an organization, including –

  • Increase coverage as well as customer reach
  • Effective and better decision-making processes
  • Enhanced customer experience
  • Better insight into the performance of your product
  • Improved operational profitability and efficiency.

Because digital transformation possesses such a vast scope, firms must consider taking a strategic approach to decide how they should start the initiative.

Selecting a Digital Transformation Partner 

Several firms, specifically in non-IT related industries, might not possess all the needed skill sets to carry out digital transformation initiatives. It is crucial that they partner with the correct transformation provider in such a scenario. Partnering with a digital transformation partner who is experienced can also aid businesses to better understand the stages concerned with such a journey.

So, how do you evaluate a partner?

There are 6 tips listed below to choose the right digital transformation partner to make sure your firm receives the correct strategic guidance, aid in carrying out digital innovation and eventually gains expected results at a lucrative return on investment.

Expertise in your industry

Amongst the most important thins if to review the service experience of a potential partner with other such clients. Does it comprehend your market and the requirements of your clients? Analyze the case studies as well as the current workload of the partner. You can also ask for a note of their top ten clients overall and in your domain for additional help while choosing the digital transformation partner.

Client/process priority

A crucial factor while selecting a digital transformation organization is to take into consideration the proposed partnership structure as well as how a partner affirms to support your business in rough times. You can consider inquiring about its ideologies when operating during time-sensitive and high-priority requirements. Whether it adheres to strict processes to solve the need of the client or if it can show examples where it went an extra mile to resolve a challenge, even though it does not align with its regular processes. Know how the teams of your partner collaborate with yours like how the responsibilities map. You must know if it will be working as a part of your firm’s team with constant communication.

Share the same goal

The alignment of work ethics, thoughts, priorities, and processes of a partner must be on the same surface as yours to make sure both parties operating in the same direction. You must know it the partner understands and believes in your firm’s digital transformation strategy and it is can articulate the goal. To determine whether it does, you can share your transformation aim as well as ask the partner to suggest an approach towards achieving your goal.

Organizational footprint

Many digital transformation organizations ranging from boutique marketing consultants to huge global IT firms crowd the digital arena. To narrow down the vast expanse, evaluate the organizational strategies, methodologies, consultants, dynamic development strategies and engagement process of each company. You may want to especially check their toolsets, capability landscape, security details, and infrastructure.

capability 

While evaluating a partner, you can consider asking if they maintain a team of dedicated technical evangelists who can visualize your digital solution. You can consider asking for details regarding their operations scalability, technology focus, working prototypes and workforce models. It is crucial to make sure that the technical expertise of the partner is a correct fir to your particular requirements. This is where choosing an agnostic consulting organization over a particular product partner makes sense.

Ability to analyze customer behavior and their preferences

More than 80% of the decision-makers consider that customer experience is steering the requirement of digital transformation currently. Therefore, it is of immense importance that the partner you are looking for it accustomed to conduct extensive research in order to analyze and understand the varying patterns and behaviors of your internal or external customers. Their in-house skill to conduct secondary and primary research is a strong starting point in locating and validating the primary factors for digital transformation. They must know what the customers want as soon as their wish arises to make the most out of it. Therefore, you must choose a partner who is fanatical about customer experiences since it is the only way to ensure that your firm runs successfully for years to come.

Agility

Businesses are usually loaded with an internal framework of a number of processes that can be a road blocker in the path of a digital makeover. And this is an important point to discuss with your firm’s prospective digital partner. Working together with a digital partner who can measure up and down according to your needs should set up the correct momentum for the transformation of your business.

Versatility

Your digital partner must be well versed in handling the flexibility and scalability to administer the emergence of more recent trends and devices. In simpler words, you must know what they are into, such as if they are using the most recent platforms and technologies, creating new innovative stuff, and more. When you have someone as your partner who can offer a complete stack of services resulting in digital transformation, then it resolves a huge problem, which is the counterproductive procedure of having separate partners for different solutions.

Conclusion

There is no set formula for choosing an ideal digital transformation partner just like there is no common way to digital transformation. However, every transformation journey has something in common and that is disrupting existing business models and breaking new grounds. Depending on your firm’s need, the digital transformation partner should be an expert in your industry, be versatile, be agile, should be able to analyze customer behavior, needs to be technically updated, and shares the same goal with your firm.

Therefore, firms looking for an ideal partner should seek the one that is breaking categories, and not fit one particular category, such as consultancy, creative, or technical organization. The partner firm should be able to look at the problem statements of digital transformation armed with unified capabilities.