Common Types of Business Transformations

 

Regardless of its type, no business can essentially stand the test of time without adapting to change. Business transformation involves the act of rolling out strategic growth or change plans across an organization. Earlier, Anand Jayapalan had spoken about how changes involved in a business transformation process have to be significant, and not just simple tweaks. Business transformation can take place as a result of an internal change like suboptimal company culture, or an external change like shifts in the marketplace. This transformation process may take months or years to complete. With the advanced rate of development prevalent today, time is often of the essence in business transformation.

Here are a few common types of business transformation:

·         Organizational transformation: This type of business transformation puts emphasis on the most valuable asset of an enterprise, its people. Organizational transformation is majorly concerned with assessing the way teams throughout a company operates, and identifying what is working, what is not working, as well as opportunities for improvements. This may involve breaking down a hierarchical structure in favour of a flatter organization. Organizational transformations can even include hiring new members into a company, upskilling its staff, encouraging greater collaboration between teams or going for ‘restructuring’.

·         Business process transformation: Much like its name suggests, this transformation method is meant to hone how the business runs day by day. While some business process transformations involve completely overhauling the methods, processes, and working styles of a company, it should also be a continuous process. The biggest mistake business leaders can make is to cling to the mindset of "But it has always been done this way." Business process transformation encourages organizations to critically evaluate where efforts are being spent and the value gained in return. Tasks that are effort-intensive, repetitive, or yield minimal rewards should be redesigned or eliminated if possible. Therefore, business process transformation often requires agile thinking.

·         Management transformation: Management transformations ideally focus on developing a leadership structure that makes it easy for companies to seamlessly reach their potential. It may, for instance, take months for a decision to be agreed upon between stakeholders, or there is a good deal of bureaucracy and red tape for innovations to overcome. In order to grow and adapt to necessary changes, the leadership of a business must facilitate quick decision making. Management transformations can empower team members to make decisions for themselves, without requiring a senior sign-off. This transformation process may even involve investing in clearer communication channels, for the purpose of speeding up the decision-making process up.

·         Information, data, or digital transformation: The manner in which business organizations operate has been changed fundamentally by technology, starting from social media and e-commerce to CRM and digital communication. Information, data, or digital transformations are intended to leverage what is readily available to a business, in order to help it grow.  Modern companies are prone to gathering expansive amounts of data and what they choose to do with it can either improve their customer relationships or damage them beyond repair. Acceleration of customer data collection can therefore be a good example of IT, data, or digital transformations.

Earlier, Anand Jayapalan had discussed how a business transformation must always be a step in the right direction for any enterprise. As such, such an organizational change can be sought with the aim of adding commercial value to the business, maximizing human capital, capturing a new segment of the market or improving production efficiencies.