Digital transformation has become a crucial aspect of modern business, enabling companies to optimize processes, enhance customer experiences, and stay competitive in areas like innovation. Many companies still believe digital transformation is about technology. It’s not. It’s about reinventing the business to drive sustainable growth, agility, and resilience.

Within Helix Executives we have been driving both larger global Business & Digital Transformations, as well as smaller & quick wins initiatives.

Business Transformation: Beyond Tools, Toward Business Outcomes

Business transformation is a journey, not a destination. It involves a holistic approach, often driven by things like technological advancements, customer centricity, or disruptive market forces.

Whether it's adopting new digital tools, streamlining workflows, fostering a more agile culture, or even redefining the core business model, the goal is to achieve significant improvements in efficiency, innovation, and ultimately, competitive advantage.

Therefore, Business transformation often will change the way an organization works and capabilities needed, enabled by changes in areas like strategy, operating model, technology, and finally operations, example is what we described in a previous article about GBS & GCC (www.linkedin.com/pulse/from-shared-services-strategic-capability-value-global-hans-fr%C3%B6lich-ramhf/). Here are a few common goals what to achieve in a Business Transformation:

• Improve efficiency
• Enhance customer experiences
• Enable new business models
• Drive growth and innovation

Enable Business Transformation With Digital Transformation

Both Hans Frölich and Mohittin Milen Kourtev , have led Digital transformation in several corporations in roles like GBS, Digital Services, IT, Innovation etc. A full-fledged digital transformation could include changes of the whole Digital / IT landscape, like replacing to new ERP systems and redesigning the processes, which would enable a new Operating Model to be deployed. This could be very rewarding, but also disruptive to the current business. Another approach is to work through your new strategy, target operating model, and service & process catalogue, and then start in a smaller scale but clear on the final outcome. Example how to start small is focus on a functional area like salesforce with ecommerce / CRM, or establish internal support with a chatbot / digital assistant, or improve the master data management with improved analytics framework and solutions, the opportunities are many. When you consider what to start with, if you have some “quick wins”, these are prime candidates to be selected.

So, there are several approaches “Big bang” or “Incremental steps”.

Our Lessons From The Field: Key Areas That Drive Real Outcomes

1. Strategy & Vision

• Align transformation with clear business goals.
• Define a future vision (e.g. data & AI-first, customer-centric, scalable, streamlined, agile).

2. Customer Experience

• Redesign digital touchpoints (web, mobile, self-service).
• Improve personalization through analytics and AI.
• Streamline customer journeys across all channels and processes.

3. Operating Model & Processes

• Operating model based on Customer, Process, Data & Technology
• Automate manual processes using RPA and AI.
• Break down silos and redesign cross-functional workflows.
• Adopt agile methodologies and data-driven decision-making.

4. Technology & Architecture

• Ensure to have a clear enterprise IT & Data architecture
• Modernize legacy systems (e.g., move to cloud platforms).
• Introduce scalable platforms (examples ERP, CRM, HRS, API frameworks).
• Ensure cybersecurity and data compliance from the ground up.

5. People & Culture

• Upskill teams in AI & digital tools, with an agile way of working.
• Foster a culture of innovation, experimentation, and learning.
• Rethink leadership styles to support continuous change.

6. Data & Insights

• Establish data governance and architecture.
• Enable real-time insights and predictive analytics.

With all above in mind, your company needs to put a lot of focus and momentum for Business & Digital Transformation to be successful. A transformation doesn’t happen by itself, and just because you want it, you need the right capabilities and resources to be successful in implementing the new model.

Before you really start, learn from others, and here Helix Executives can help to infuse some ideas how to bring value based on our knowledge and experience.

A Few Steps And Areas Based On Our Experience

As mentioned, if you are in for a step wise approach, you should still start with what is your “future” business strategy, target operating model, high level plan, high level business case, engage key stakeholders etc. Helix Executives can support you by facilitating an inspirational day, and with our unique prebuilt templates we can help you to quickly identify key areas for improvements and quick wins, to generate faster results. Example could be improving your workflows, automate some processes, establish a chatbot, implement a service portal etc. This is not a full “Digital Transformation”, but helps you to learn new technologies, get some quick benefits and help to define your future journey.

If you go with a full Digital & Business Transformation, here is our high-level approach:

Before you start building your overall plan, make sure you first learn from others like Helix Executives inspirational day what we call “INSPIRE & ENERGIZE”, and then do a quick analyse to identify opportunities, gaps, risks, quick wins within areas like back office operation, innovation, R&D and so on, which we call “ASSESS & PRIORITIZE”, with our unique prebuilt tools and templates you get  quicker results.

1. PLAN & DECIDE: A roadmap from vision to execution. There are many things to prepare before going live with the full program. A few examples are to ensure the program goals are aligned with the business strategy, how a future operating model should look like and how does it compare to current state, how should the program operate and what resources are needed, establish a business case to ensure the Digital Transformation brings the value you want, establish a high level plan, what are the tools / systems to implement by having a clear IT architecture and many many more things.

2. EXECUTE & VALIDATE: It is too short to cover in one paragraph. Too often, companies underestimate the execution phase - it’s where strategy must turn into measurable results, by doing hands-on deployment (where the robber hits the road). If you have done your preparation well (PLAN & DECIDE) and have a clear Digital & IT architecture landscape, a lot of the program will be focused around reviewing the future state processes and setting up the system to support it. If you do a large transformation you might need to divide the rollout into phases / functions / business units / geographies, there are many dimensions. Other things on the “system side” is make sure data cleansing & load is prepared, interfaces are built, access controls are setup correctly, security is reviewed and implemented among many things. One thing to highlight, don’t forget to put time in your plan for testing and time to correct issues / improvements. On the “soft side” ensure you put enough time on training, and don’t underestimate the impact and alignment needed by stakeholders, cultural aspects and so on. Therefore, put a lot of effort into communication and change management. The last thing of course is to have a Go/No-Go toll gate, and once the cutover is done ensure you have some backup plan if something goes wrong, and how you will handle the legacy systems.

3. OPERATE & EVOLVE: Congratulation everything went live successfully! But the work is not over yet, even if your operation has gone live. Now the important phase to ensure that the change stick over time and become part of the culture. During the transformation it is important you have engaged with your customers and partners, and now it is time to get their feedback, how to evolve the services. It is also very common that there some things you have put as “additional functionality” or do later, some of these you will implement now, and to be honest it is not uncommon that there are a few bugs or errors in the processes to fix. Once the transformation is completed and most of the Digital tools and capabilities are in place, the Continuous Improvement methodology kicks in with Plan-Do-Check-Act, LEAN, Six Sigma, KPI’s... but this is for another article.

Key Dimensions To Get Right For Business & Digital Transformation

Digital Transformation (or any larger change) is big commitment for any company, therefore ensure you take time to review and incorporate all aspects before starting your transformation.

• Operational blueprint & Execution framework: Strategy + Target Operating Model + Organization + Governance
• Operation pillars & Key enablers: People + Technology + Processes + Data
• Network & Key relationships: Customers + Stakeholders + Partners
• Workforce & Human capital: Culture + Leadership + Capabilities

Final Thoughts

Digital transformation is not just about implementing new systems — it’s about reinventing the business. It requires bold leadership, cultural change, and a relentless focus on outcomes. Organizations that succeed are those who see transformation not as a project, but as a permanent state of evolution.

If you’re looking for more than a PowerPoint promise — and want to make your transformation deliver real business outcomes — we’d love to share how we can help

Reach out to Hans Frölich or Mohittin Milen Kourtev to stay in touch, or send us an email.

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