How to go about digitally transforming your business post Covid-19
So you’ve managed to come out to this lockdown relatively unscathed, but what next?
If in six months to a year you were stuck in another lockdown what would you like to be doing differently compared to your current situation? Do you have a vision or roadmap for this change? With hindsight it is very easy to make decisions, but I would like to help you go through a process of understanding how to digitally transform your business, and get your business disruption proof, or at least as flexible as possible to deal with change.
I want to take you through our metora Mercuri process, a process that has been built to guide you through your businesses digital transformation journey.
We start with the possibility engine. It is a process we use to help businesses develop the framework for their digital transformation. Digital transformation is not just about technology, it is getting the culture and strategy of the business aligned for future growth AND the future of business. Many businesses understand that they are on the cusp of change and they can either be the survivors in this process or the losers. So how can you ensure that your business will be future ready in the next 12 months?
Our PossibilityEngine takes businesses through how data science is disrupting and changing business around the world and how it could impact or benefit you. We look at case studies, best practice and what does ‘success’ look like. We look at industry specific use cases that could be suitable for your business. But not only industry use cases but how do different departments optimise their effectiveness by using data science?
A fundamental part of this process is how do you integrate business units that are fundamentally different to each other and have fundamentally different data needs?
We deal with this by starting with the executive team delivering a digital transformation or data science strategy for the business. Once the vision of the business has been set we now go to the next management level where the strategy for the individual departments is set. Once the departmentally strategy is clarified we work with functional teams to develop minimum viable products based on digital transformation that will support and improve their work outputs. This is where the hard work starts. Each department will have its own digital transformation needs and understand how processes can be automated, what data will be needed to assist with automation, and how will digital transformation in general support their deliverables. We also don’t believe that this is a case of business as usual. We are not looking at an incremental improvement in output, we are looking at transforming business and it starts by having each department working with us to create and ideate new ways to deliver value.
How do you explain to a non-technical or non-data savvy team how digital transformation will improve their work output? Well with our DataOdyssey.
The metora DataOdyssey is a process we take businesses through to understand how to create value out of their data. This journey helps you to understand the data in your business, how it is created, how it is stored, and how the end user accesses and uses that data for your business advantage.
Think of it as a customer journey for your data. We look at the efficiency of data usage and flow, what data is missing, irrelevant, where we can improve processes and how to increase the value of data generated in the business.
Most businesses have a flawed understanding of how data moves throughout the organisation. Many departments never see data that is in other departments, the common silo experience. There are also cases of duplication of data, irrelevant data blended with the relevant. We also find that data storage and extraction is typically based on legacy systems. This is similar to old cities where buildings are built on crooked streets and ageing foundations, many businesses have data processes that have been built in ways that are no longer efficient or fixable for that matter. At times like this it is often impossible to fix the foundations, one may have to start from scratch. But this is not a worst case scenario, with technology changing at a rapid rate, there are new technologies that help businesses share and utilise the data at their disposal in the more effective ways, giving them the opportunity to leapfrog intermediate systems that are costly and frankly irrelevant.
Next steps
To close off, we want to take your business through a process that makes you think about the future of business and get you ready to succeed in your industry. We will look at the potential impediments to growth, potential opportunities to consider and what technology we believe is going to impact your business. We also consider your staff and how to retool them to stay relevant in an age where automation has just started to make its presence felt.
Metora is a platform agnostic business, we look at the entire digital landscape and select the best in class that may suit your particular use case. Our team of data scientists are continually increasing and improving their knowledge of the data science industry, and we use subject matter experts to supplement our knowledge when necessary.
We would like to partner with you to digitally transform your business and make it ready to withstand the vagaries of the business world, because as we have seen during COVID-19, there are Black Swan events that are going to emerge and we want you to be ready and agile enough to survive tough yet opportunity rich situations.
Nicholas is CEO of Metora, a Data Science company in Kuala Lumpur dealing with big data challenges.
