Every business transformation needs to start with a clear understanding of your organisation’s:

• Vision – What do you want to become in the future?
• Mission / Purpose:  Why is your vision important?
• Values:  What will guide you on your journey?

These are not just “buzzword” concepts, but will actually be used to build the strategy, prioritise activity and execute your transformation.

Define the objectives that will deliver your vision in line with your values.  Transformation programs rarely involve just one change, but rather a combination of initiatives which are greater than the sum of their parts.   We work with our clients to define alternatives, and set a clear framework for prioritising the activities which will deliver the optimal value outcome.

Build out the complete network of internal and external stakeholders that will be impacted, will execute, will influence or make decisions on the various aspects of your transformation journey.  Understand their level of awareness, desire, knowledge, and ability to make the change, and their readiness to implement and reinforce it.   Define how decisions will be made to allow the transformation to be executed and for the benefits to be realised.

People are everything.   Understand the roles which will be impacted by your tranformation, and ensure that the right capability exists or can be accessed to design, implement and sustain the change into the future.

Business processes cannot be designed in isolation.  To maximise your investment, organisations must design their business processes to fit their value chain and operating model… then enable people to deliver using the right technology to support them.   The Process dimension comprises so much more that the stale world of policies, standards, procedures, work instructions – but really defines the “wiring” of how your business works.   We work with clients to understand the current state of process definition and documentation, and build a clear vision for how future state processes will be documented and communicated to your human and robotic workforce.

We often encounter clients who found a piece of software that sounded like it would do what they needed.   They went to the time and trouble to install, configure and deploy it, only to discover that it wasn’t all that was advertised – and it became a beast that the organisation needed to feed.

At ProjectAI, we firmly believe in the power of technology to solve many business challenges – but technology alone will not solve the problem.  We work with our clients to understand the data their people and processes require, define the functions applications must perform, evaluate the capabilities of existing applications on the market, assess the feasibility / economics of custom development, and help our customers select, configure, implement and support the technology-led aspects of their transformation.

We are NOT software resellers – and always take a data-centric and application-agnostic approach to delivering the best business outcomes for our clients.

If the other dimensions (People, Process, Technology and Culture) always worked as intended, then there would be no need for governance processes at all. But the world is imperfect, projects are uncertain, and people are human.  Governance must start with a discussion around business, project and operational risk.  We work with our clients to understand the risks and opportunities along their transformation journey, so they can make the right decisions to deliver a successful outcome.

Effective governance should not be about shaming teams into compliance, but teaching people about the importance of staying aligned with the company’s values and strategic objectives. Governance should always be a means of demonstrating and reinforcing the culture you want to see.

Cultural change involves holding up the mirror to an organization and really looking at how things work, and then having the courage to imagine how things could be different.

Culture is defined both by what is said and what is unsaid, what is done and what is not done. But there is one thing that is universally true, culture comes straight from the top.   Many business transformations fail because of “initiative fatigue” – where leadership says one thing, but does another – so the front line workforce doesn’t take the change initiative seriously.

Embarking on any program of organizational change needs to consider the culture that’s in place. Are you willing to do what is necessary to change the culture? Or change what is necessary to adapt to it?

Developing an integrated plan for business transformation involves bringing all of the dimensions together, and building a program of projects to deliver.   This involves articulating clear scopes of work, building achievable schedules, resource plans, risk registers, decision points, cost estimates, and expected benefits profiles.