8 top tips to help you turbocharge your Digital Transformation journey

With large numbers of employees working from home, many businesses have had to swiftly pivot from their normal on-premises modes of operation.  Some have found it easier than expected to establish a remote working infrastructure using the tools their businesses already own: many have found this can’t be done successfully in a piecemeal manner – especially when issues such as cyber security and regulatory compliance are at stake.

With any digital transformation project, the systems and processes your business has acquired and grown over the years are suddenly thrown under a microscope, and you need to ascertain whether their use in an increasingly digitally-driven world will propel your business forward, or potentially hold it back. Here are our top tips for those contemplating the next stages of their digital journey.

→ REVIEW YOUR LICENSING

Most products are now pay per seat per month. Ensure you are reviewing this at least once a quarter, monthly if possible. You may be paying for unused licensing for employees who have left the business or do not need the software anymore. More about optimising licensing

→ STREAMLINE YOUR SYSTEMS

Going digital is a driver of change, sometimes at the expense of long-standing inefficiencies. Are departments within your business working in silo? We often find that different departments use different tools to achieve the same job. Why do you need 5 different photo editing suites within your business? Standardise and share where possible.

→ ENSURE DIGITAL MEDIA IS CENTRALLY MANAGED AND OWNED BY THE BUSINESS

Are you confident that all your web domains are owned by the business and that you could easily access them if ‘Steve from marketing’ left the company? It is common to find that different departments setup domain names for various purposes, and they could be registered in an employee’s personal account.

Thinking about your digital action plan?

Download The Essential 9-point Digital Transformation Checklist

→ VIDEOCONFERENCING

This has now commonplace, but in ‘normal’ times it is often over-looked in favour of a face to face meeting. The pandemic has however proved that less can be more! Do 5 different people need to drive or even fly to an office board room to have an effective meeting? Occasionally the answer may be yes, but many times the answer is no. Taking an hour out for an online meeting means exactly that. Whereas the same 1-hour meeting in a physical location can easily take 2 or 3 hours out of someone’s day. When current restrictions are lifted, it makes sense to ensure your teams have the business-class tools they need to save meeting time and to do other productive tasks during the day.

→ COULD YOU DO THAT DIFFERENTLY?

People like the familiar. But is this costing your business money. Cloud based services are updated regularly with new features that could save you many manhours hours each week. Check and make sure that the old Excel formula you have all been using for the past 5 years is still relevant and has not been superseded by a more efficient ‘click of a button’ way of doing it. If 100 users each save 5 minutes per day, that really adds up!

→ COMMUNICATE

Ensure your users know what software and services are available to them, and how they should be using these assets. For example, how should staff communicate with the finance team? Email? Online messaging? Carrier pigeon? Find out what the departments prefer and standardise and streamline this where possible.

→ REPORTING

How much useful information do you glean from your end of month reports? Does it show everything you want in one clear view? Can you drill down into the detail at the click of a button? Reporting often gets forgotten, but, of course, it is one of the most ways to communicate with management or the board and helps your company to make good business decisions. Business Intelligence tools are available in many cloud suites and should be utilised to get the best out of your systems.

→ IDENTITY MANAGEMENT

Do you find that remembering passwords is getting harder and harder? Is it necessary to have a different password for every system, and does every system need that password to be complex and secure? How do you remember it all? Writing them all in a word document and saving them to your desktop is not recommended! With most modern systems, you have the option to create a ‘single sign on’ username and password across multiple systems. If this is coupled with multi-factor authentication for security, it is a much easier way to spare users the pain (and wasted time) of having to remember 10 different passwords.

For more top tips from our resident experts, please get in touch with your digital transformation query.

How can you future-proof your IT?

Epoq-IT’s Springboard Service is designed to help your business weather the worst and bounce back strongly, locking in your digital efficiency gains to date and building long-term resilience. Find out more…

Epoq-IT’s Springboard Service is designed to help your business weather the worst and bounce back strongly, locking in your digital efficiency gains to date and building long-term resilience.

{{cta(‘a7a38591-59f9-44b5-848a-aa7566d853a8’)}}