According to Harvard Business Review, although 95% of businesses rank digital transformation as a priority, only 1 in 5 leaders rate their efforts as effective.[i] This signals that the significant technology investments many businesses made throughout the pandemic are not creating the transformational change expected. When it comes to investments in cloud, technology alone is not enough to achieve results. Effective digital transformation occurs when organizations can measure the impacts of their investment on key business outcomes. But how can organizations ensure that their cloud investments will drive long lasting, powerful change?
OpenText™ has recently launched a new subscription-based service designed to guide OpenText Cloud customers toward achieving their essential business outcomes. As part of our approach, we have identified a 7-step process to achieve real business value – beyond simply ensuring a successful technical implementation.
1. Define your value
Recent Gartner® research found that “three out of four Gartner client organizations don’t have a fit-for-purpose cloud strategy that aligns with business value”[ii]. This means most organizations are embarking upon cloud implementations without first understanding the desired business impact of these changes. To achieve value realization, you first need to define it. At OpenText, we define value realization as the measurable changes to business outcomes that you achieve through digital transformation. Taking the time to define desired outcomes speeds time to value by streamlining your efforts and guiding financial investment.
2. Build the right team
The second step toward value realization is building your team. This begins with securing executive buy-in. If project objectives are supported from the top down, it will be easier to drive participation from all other stakeholders. Identifying and involving the right people from the beginning will speed time to value by ensuring all are aligned.
3. Implement a governance framework
The next step is to establish a governance framework. This is a tool that your stakeholders can leverage throughout the digital transformation journey to ensure clear and effective decision-making. Harvard Business Review found that organizations who succeed in their transformation efforts prioritize culture change first, followed by process change, and finally technology change. In contrast, organizations that struggle to achieve their digital transformation goals take the inverse approach, making technology their leading priority[iii].
4. Measure your success
It’s impossible to measure change without a baseline, so it’s essential to establish benchmarks before embarking upon your digital transformation. We recommend benchmarking based on the Key Performance Indicators that your business tracks today. This will allow you to track improvements and opportunities for further refinement.
5. Engage your users
The role of user adoption in ensuring the success of digital transformation efforts cannot be discounted. Gartner advises organizations to “implement a Cloud Adoption Framework to optimize business costs and risks.”[iv] If adoption is neglected, your new solution will likely not deliver the expected impact. Ultimately, the faster a solution is widely adopted, the faster it can drive results.
6. Map your future
This step is focused on planning for the future, beyond your current business objectives. On your path to becoming a transformation leader, engaging with a wider community of product and industry peers will continue to drive digital innovation. Planning ahead will ensure that current investments will help create successful business outcomes both now and in the future.
7. Leverage OpenText expertise
Recent Gartner research examining how to leverage cloud for business innovation and transformation advises organizations to “create a business-aligned cloud strategy.”[v] Customer Success Services offers a structured and supportive approach to doing just that. Customer Success Managers guide you through the steps outlined above using a well-defined methodology to help you achieve faster time to value, getting you up and running with maximum efficiency and expert support from across OpenText. Customers also maximize the value of their OpenText investment – far beyond simply ensuring a successful technical implementation.
Learn more about OpenText Customer Success Services or get in touch. Look for the second and third blogs in this series, exploring how the 7 steps to value realization outlined here can help you maximize both adoption and business growth.
[i] Harvard Business Review, Rethinking Digital Transformation: New Data Examines the Culture and Process Change Imperative in 2020, 2020.
[ii] Gartner, Leverage Cloud for Business Innovation and Transformation, Milink Govekar, Ross Winder, Tiny Haynes, 7 July 2021.
[iii] Harvard Business Review, Rethinking Digital Transformation: New Data Examines the Culture and Process Change Imperative in 2020, 2020.
[iv] Gartner, Leverage Cloud for Business Innovation and Transformation, Milink Govekar, Ross Winder, Tiny Haynes, 7 July 2021.
[v] Gartner, Leverage Cloud for Business Innovation and Transformation, Milink Govekar, Ross Winder, Tiny Haynes, 7 July 2021.
GARTNER is a registered trademark and service mark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally and is used herein with permission. All rights reserved.
