In our blog, “What is Digital Transformation?” we mentioned that despite there being no concrete rules for transforming your organization, there are distinctive phases to help you successfully navigate the process.
Let’s dive into what the four phases of financial digital transformation entail and how you can successfully implement them to drive better outcomes.
- Automate the Process
The first step down the path to digital transformation is to automate processes. The key is to explore and identify the areas in your organization that require individuals to work on manual efforts that are time intensive. These are prime areas for automation using AI applications. For example, one of the common starting points we see among finance teams is automating travel & expense monitoring.
- Visualize your Data
Next, it’s time to gather and visualize your data. This is all about getting the data that is vital to your business out of silos and into a format that is easily analyzed and consumed. Different solutions are available to help you accomplish this without too much of a headache.
- Automate the Analysis
This phase is something that many organizations overlook – they automate the gathering but leave the analysis entirely to humans.
Automating your analysis and conclusions with AI is vital because it’s difficult for humans to identify all issues and detect patterns due to the sheer volume of data presented. By leveraging technology to analyze your data and recommend the actions to be taken, you eliminate bias and human error from the equation.
- Embed your Findings
Now that you have your data-driven actions, it’s time to bring it all home. Create models and dashboards that present the relevant data and actions. Then, proactively push your discoveries out to those in the organization who are able to benefit from the information and start creating impact.
Measuring Success
How do you know if you’re doing well throughout this entire process? Here are three quick areas to evaluate whether you’re heading in the right direction:
- Technology: Have you adopted solutions that are truly meeting your needs?
- Process: Have you moved beyond focusing only on automating current processes? Or, have you put the right processes in place with the future in mind?
- People: Are you attempting to replace individuals with machines? Or, are you implementing AI solutions with the goal of making your employees work more effective?
The Bottom Line
Remember that these phases are an iterative process -- not a one and done. You must continually push the financial digital transformation of your company to ensure you are staying ahead of the digital curve.
