“Means justifies the end” in Digital Transformation
Overcoming the ‘Achilles heel’ of Digital Transformation
The CEO had flown down from US to Bangalore and was reviewing various initiatives of the organization. The office was buzzing with activities all around. He was walking the floor, meeting people, sharing his views and listening from them. Over years he had been aggressively driving the vision of digital transformation. 2017 was a year of change for many reasons. Spending capacitiesacross customers were changing with the impact of digital. There was gloom across traditional IT sector in India with many retrenched across organizations.
During the visit, he was discussing with the CIO on the digital transformation of Brillians. CIOpresented the OnTheGO digital app, its features, its ease of use and highlighted how the app has a “soul” that they brought lifestyle thinking into a corporate app. Seldom he expected the sharp questions that made him uncomfortable “How many as a % of employees use it?”, “How much impact has it brought?” Thud came the command, “If you cannot commit an impact, stop the initiative”.
However, shortly after this event, the CEO unveiled his commitment to the digital program as part of his goal sheet “five key processes have to be mobile first”. What went without saying is that the app must be a delight to use and this should be our testimony of creating delightful moments to our customers. Also, digital solution should be of “Apple” quality – intelligent, easy to use and reliable.
This demanded one key shift – “Master few and not be jack of many” i.e., take few features and go deeper to see that 100% would delightfully adopt. Two aspects stood out as we researched what’s out there. First, there should either exist a crying need or we should be able to create a demand. Team came up with ideas to create a demand by integrating with other systems and made this the only channel. Second, new product must break real world barriers to create “moments of delight” and habitual usage. Team designed the app with intelligence to create moments of delight.
App fills the weekly time for the employee based on projects involved and leaves/holiday availed during the week. If a person doesn’t come to office, app auto-fills the leave information and presents to the employee. All basic organizational activities are fueled by intelligence to be completed in less than 10 seconds compared to 15 minutesfor web. Also, the app socially integrates users in nudging employees to celebrate birthdays and work anniversaries of colleagues. Adoption of the app has been tremendous, and it has won many external awards.
Today OnTheGO has become a testimony for Brillio, a delight for Brillians, a brand in the market place, a pride of Brillio’s Systems team.
Takeaway
1. Digital transformation is about adoption and impact, not about the idea
2. For long lasting change, theremust be a crying need or must instill a need
3. For deeper impact, break real world barriers and create moments of delight
4. Executing with vision in mind is important
Lessons Learned