Living the Mandate called Digital Transformation

Change is a heterogeneous disruption, and digital transformation is no different. It is inevitable to business today as change is to life, but how companies employ it to orient technology for the larger vision of their business makes all the difference.

Change for some, especially if they are used to a particular way of doing things that have been working for them, is worth resisting. In the case of digital transformation, technology is just one enabling part. The idea is essentially about doing business in a digital age where the imperative is to re-imagine and rapidly realize innovative ways of satisfying business expectations that are already digital native. It is not adding a few tech cogs within the wheel; it is about creating an altogether new wheel itself. Big worrying change indeed, and a step that calls for a great deal of courage.

The opportunity Straive holds is huge.

By leveraging our core business and orienting it to the market’s ready needs, a lot of ground is won. However, the more significant advantage is the undeniable fact that almost everyone is transforming at the same time, the pandemic being a great leveler. Some might have begun the journey a little earlier; they too may have to re-strategize business continuity in the post-pandemic world. The other thing is, the vision for transformation - a thriving business continuity - might be the same. Still, depending on the organization's unique challenges, it may choose to chart its journey differently, employing specific tools to address its short-term and long-term goals.

In our line of business, a couple of significant simultaneous movements hastened the transformation. The open-access system made paradigm shifts in the complete line of business, publishing being a part, changing content consumption patterns within the community, and vice versa. The second, of course, is the pandemic. Straive aligned its business and operating models to a new digital business strategy to feed its existing markets, target new ones, address new-age customer needs, and leverage technology to automate operations.

Technology, which was so far being perceived as a vital complement to our business, has now been made strategic to it.

Business processes across Marketing, Sales, Finance, and HR have been streamlined with one global process protocol. This translates into various advantages, from totally transparent Vendor Management in real-time, budgeting, and planning through cloud solutions to advanced analytics for overarching business operations, growth, and expansion. Finance is already using data visualization metrics to monitor project profitability reporting while employing smart applications to generate the reporting decks, both a rather heavy burden on time and productivity earlier. Predictive analytics in smart resource planning tools are greatly aiding improved negotiations and material management. Marketing is already showing the benefits of scale and the simultaneous activation of multiple campaigns to meet varied customer demands. A single view of the customer, programmed workflow enabled with skill sets that range from the simplistic to the intuitive, has added efficiencies to Sales, making it smarter and more cost-effective. Not to mention, simplifying pathways to personalized scientific content across platforms while making content discovery a constant, intuitive experience for the customer across resources is an ongoing focus.

There is no debate that digital transformation is a strategic mandate for every industry, for that matter. Implementing it is the easy part, for it’s mostly about getting the machinery right. There are experts to rely on when it comes to the selection of the best-in-class tools.

The real challenge lies in the honest answers to two questions:

Does Straive live the transformation? Does Straive believe in the purpose of it?

The internal capacity for transformation is what will ultimately orient the mission to the vision. The vision may be noble, but even change, let alone transformation, in the journey towards it may not always be a win-win situation for everyone involved. Honest conversations internally around the acceptance of the larger goal are essential.

Digital transformation is evolving from the way companies think and meet business challenges. We are looking at a DNA change in its identity and thinking. When companies refuse to do this, the inherent mission, values, and culture conflict with the new business strategy. The focus of getting the business to a specific goal shouldn’t be so all-consuming that companies forget to embed this transformation within and give it time to settle. Business agility and adaptability must become part of corporate values.

Pursuing impact, maturing digital operations, defined leadership thinking, and a clear vision can make all the difference between a successful transformation and one that struggles to justify its existence. To see a butterfly emerge, transformation must be meaningful for all, internally and externally.

It’s simple. Straive goes to extraordinary lengths for causes it believes in; the commitment is iron-clad. When that happens, everything else, including the all-important ROI, just falls into place.