Succeed With Digital Strategy Execution
Building a digital strategy is only half the battle: create a systematic roadmap of technology initiatives to execute the strategy and drive digital transformation.
- Rising customer expectations and competitive pressures have accelerated the pace at which organizations are turning to digital transformation to drive revenue or cut costs.
- Many digital strategies are not put into action, and instead sit on the shelf. A digital strategy that is not translated into specific projects and initiatives will provide no value to the organization.
- Executing a digital strategy is easier said than done: IT often lacks the necessary framework to create a roadmap, or fails to understand how new applications can enable the vision outlined in the strategy.
Our Advice
Critical Insight
- A digital strategy needs a clear roadmap to succeed. Too many digital strategies are lofty statements of objective with no clear avenue for actual execution: create a digital strategy application roadmap to avoid this pitfall.
- Understand the art of execution. Application capabilities are rapidly evolving: IT must stand ready to educate the business on how new applications can be used to pursue the digital strategy.
Impact and Result
- IT must work with the business to parse specific technology drivers from the digital strategy, distill strategic requirements, and create a prescriptive roadmap of initiatives that will close the gaps between the current state and the target state outlined in the digital strategy. Doing so well is a path to the CIO’s office.
- To better serve the organization, IT leaders must stay abreast of key application capabilities and trends. Exciting new developments such as artificial intelligence, IoT, and machine learning have opened up new avenues for process digitization, but IT leaders need to make a concerted effort to understand what modern applications bring to the table for technology enablement of the digital strategy.
- Taking an agile approach to application roadmap development will help to provide a clear path forward for tackling digital strategy execution, while also allowing for flexibility to update and iterate as the internal and external environment changes.
Member Testimonials
After each Info-Tech experience, we ask our members to quantify the real-time savings, monetary impact, and project improvements our research helped them achieve. See our top member experiences for this blueprint and what our clients have to say.
Client
Experience
Impact
$ Saved
Days Saved
Chautauqua Institution
Workshop
10/10
$34,099
65
Ben was absolutely key to the success of this workshop. His expertise and professionalism made this experience a positive and rewarding Infotech ... Read More
Workshop: Succeed With Digital Strategy Execution
Workshops offer an easy way to accelerate your project. If you are unable to do the project yourself, and a Guided Implementation isn't enough, we offer low-cost delivery of our project workshops. We take you through every phase of your project and ensure that you have a roadmap in place to complete your project successfully.
Module 1: Validate the Digital Strategy
The Purpose
- Review and validate the formal enterprise digital strategy.
Key Benefits Achieved
- Confirmation of the goals, objectives, and direction of the organization’s digital strategy.
Activities
Outputs
Review the initial digital strategy.
Determine gaps.
Refine digital strategy scope and vision.
Finalize digital strategy and validate with stakeholders.
- Validated digital strategy
Module 2: Parse Critical Technology Drivers
The Purpose
- Enumerate relevant technology drivers from the digital strategy.
Key Benefits Achieved
- List of technology drivers to pursue based on goals articulated in the digital strategy.
Activities
Outputs
Identify affected process domains.
- Affected process domains (based on APQC)
Brainstorm impacts of digital strategy on technology enablement.
Distill critical technology drivers.
- Critical technology drivers for the digital strategy
Identify KPIs for each driver.
Module 3: Map Drivers to Enabling Applications
The Purpose
- Relate your digital strategy drivers to specific, actionable application areas.
Key Benefits Achieved
- Understand the interplay between the digital strategy and impacted application domains.
Activities
Outputs
Build and review current application inventory for digital.
- Current-state application inventory
Execute fit-gap analysis between drivers and current state inventory.
- Fit-gap analysis
Pair technology drivers to specific enabling application categories.
Module 4: Understand Applications
The Purpose
- Understand how different applications support the digital strategy.
- Understand the art of the possible.
Key Benefits Achieved
- Knowledge of how applications are evolving from a features and capabilities perspective, and how this pertains to digital strategy enablement.
Activities
Outputs
Application spotlight: customer experience.
Application spotlight: content and collaboration.
Application spotlight: business intelligence.
Application spotlight: enterprise resource planning.
- Application spotlights
Module 5: Build the Digital Application Roadmap
The Purpose
- Create a concrete, actionable roadmap of application and technology initiatives to move the digital strategy forward.
Key Benefits Achieved
- Clear, concise articulation of application roadmap for supporting digital that can be communicated to the business.
Activities
Outputs
Build list of enabling projects and applications.
Create prioritization criteria.
Build the digital strategy application roadmap.
- Application roadmap for the digital strategy
Socialize the roadmap.
Delineate responsibility for roadmap execution.
- RACI chart for digital strategy roadmap execution
About Info-Tech
Info-Tech Research Group is the world’s fastest-growing information technology research and advisory company, proudly serving over 30,000 IT professionals.
We produce unbiased and highly relevant research to help CIOs and IT leaders make strategic, timely, and well-informed decisions. We partner closely with IT teams to provide everything they need, from actionable tools to analyst guidance, ensuring they deliver measurable results for their organizations.
What Is a Blueprint?
A blueprint is designed to be a roadmap, containing a methodology and the tools and templates you need to solve your IT problems.
Each blueprint can be accompanied by a Guided Implementation that provides you access to our world-class analysts to help you get through the project.
Need Extra Help?
Speak With An Analyst
Get the help you need in this 3-phase advisory process. You'll receive 6 touchpoints with our researchers, all included in your membership.
Guided Implementation 1: Parse digital strategy technology drivers
- Call 1: Review your digital strategy document: an analyst will review your existing digital strategy documentation to identify gaps or areas for improvement.
- Call 2: Discuss critical technology drivers: we’ll identify potential technology drivers and their implications from your strategy.
Guided Implementation 2: Map to enabling technologies
- Call 1: Map drivers to applications: we’ll discuss how your drivers relate to possible top-level solution categories.
- Call 2: Discuss application taxonomy: based on the categories identified in the preceding call, we’ll deep-dive into enabling applications for your digital strategy.
Guided Implementation 3: Create application roadmap for digital strategy
- Call 1: Build the roadmap: your advisor will work with you to shortlist a roadmap of key applications and/or other initiatives for your digital strategy.
- Call 2: Socialization and measurement: we’ll explore what KPIs to set for roadmap execution and how to socialize the roadmap.
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