Aligning your business model with your strategy is the key to the success of your offices digital transformation.

More and more design companies realize the value of undergoing a digital transformation. Leaders, planning for the future incorporate ways in which their architecture and design business can develop digitally.

A review of transformations across industries reveals a common theme: successful transformations realign the organization to a singular vision, whiles failed endeavors typically do not.

Companies who decide to implement changes into their digital presence have a better chance at success when taking into the consideration aligning their operating model (how the company creates value) to its digital strategy.

What this means, is that value generation seems to be a crucial success determinant. When deciding to undergo digital transformation it is important to re-evaluate and revise your offices operating model and integrate its top values into your digital strategy.

Given economic changes driven by events such as a global pandemic, leaders and executives may struggle to determine where to place bets, what to invest their resources to, and when to execute adequate steps. When paralyzed in decision making, and waiting too long it is likely to see market value quickly erode. Facing a crash crunch or investor backlash is also a thread with inefficient and ineffective investments.

Design businesses born before the digital era had a more-sophisticated ability to understand a value of transforming to agile, adaptive and responsive enterprises considering they had: strong brand presence, established sales, partners in forms of suppliers, distributors and supportive technology.

A well designed operating model can help your company balance growth with risk and overcome barriers. Learn more about building a business that will overcome barriers by joining my Facebook group for architectural entrepreneurs.

So what is it that you have to think about when undergoing a digital transformation in your own business?

Target Operating Model

Operating model transformations are related to budget and organizational management.

Think of your model as a unique set of capacities aligned to your strategy.

When implementing steps into a digital transformation you need to think of aligning peoples skills with tasks needed to get done. Include both existing capabilities of your team with new ones (depending on what is needed) and address front-, mid- and back- office functions across product lines.

When you develop a product, which you will be selling in its digital form you need to generate road maps, which step by step realize customer needs.

If you need to set up marketing campaigns to promote your product you will have to put in place strategies for campaign management today, in order to be able to launch, measure, and report on the success of your campaign tomorrow.

Skill-sets needed to execute each step along the way represent a collective strategy, which should stay aligned to your businesses operational values.

With a road map: mapping your teams skillset you will have a foundation on which you can start building your target operating model. With this you can determine skill set requirements, hire talent, set performance metrics, build teams, and identify partnership opportunities.

Sourcing capacity

When you establish your road map you than will have to focus on filling in the needed positions with skilled members. Here, you have four ways in which you can do this. You can develop, transform or mature your exiting team to enable them to execute new tasks or outsource talent through targeted hires. You can also establish partnerships with other companies who already proud themselves on the strength of assets that you may be currently seeking for. Making a decision as to weather to develop, acquire, outsource, or partner is a critical one, since each lever provides you with its unique advantages.

So, what things should you focus on when making a decision about this?

- Speed: How urgently do you need to cover this role?

- Control: How important is it for you to control the outcomes?

- Specificity: To what degree you will need to tailor this capacity to your business?

- Competitive advantage: To what extend this capacity brings advantage over a competition?

- Operational leverage: How much do you want to take on new commitments and manage them internally- within your company?

There are certain roles, which will play a key factor in the success of your digital transformation. Sales, product engineering, recruiting, branding, and corporate strategy, represent processes and skill sets which are less repeatable, and where talent is a significant driver of value. Supply-side advantages can allow your company to operate more effectively and get the most out of resources. These usually include areas in which value is related to scale, such as sales-quote capabilities, self-service, accounting, and manufacturing.

Because of all of the above you might want to decide to keep the execution of key roles within your company.

One important point to consider is how the geo-location of your team members helps to stay connected to their roles and tasks. Some things you simply cannot out-source, for example managing your social media.

Outsourcing social media specialists is one of the most common mistakes I see companies make. Your social media managers are people whose role is to report on whatever is happening within your companies ecosystem therefore it is crucial for them to be an inseparable part of it. Their emotional engagement with your business is what essentially gives base for their social media reporting.

How can you drive better outcomes?

Operating models forever evolve, so you have to stay flexible and allow learning and growing through changes. Make sure you have access for employee as well as customer feedback and that you have thought of measures to integrate their opinions into the betterment of your operations. You can augment your capacity through introducing simple cross-functional processes, hyper focused incentives, and tools to drive clarity and fast execution.

Here is what you can do to help guide a successful digital transformation:

- Nominate the leaders early

- Define clear roles and responsibilities

- Optimize resource allocation

- Communicate processes

- Cultivate and proliferate skill-sets

You have to develop a clear sense of your strategic ambition. You need to know about the business model you want to employ and who your target audience is. Here it is important to know of pricing and delivery models that best suit your customer.

Individuals trying to shortcut their way to new operating models in their digital business may find their design ineffective.

Keep in mind the importance to base your organization model on your business strategy and your specific business model. Understanding how you will map this model is crucial for an effective digital transformation.

Don’t stop here! Continue your journey of business transformation by connecting with me and other entrepreneurial architects on Facebook.