CORNERSTONES FOR SUCCESS IN DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION
Author: Shane Stanley
Date: 05-Oct-2023
In this blog we will explore the key cornerstones for success in digital transformation. The cornerstones I will focus on here are the ones I believe are likely the most relevant and important with an eye on healthcare and life sciences but can easily be applied to any complex organisation or highly regulated industry.
1. Having a common or shared view of the future:
This is particularly important among the senior leaders within the organisation because it is them who will need to own and drive digital transformation forward. With this common view as a backdrop it is important to define a clear vision which is credible, realistic and motivating. Let’s zoom out and look at the key trends that are shaping the future of the healthcare industry:
Consumers are increasingly embracing new digital tools & technologies like wearables, smart watches and many others. This empowers them to take more control of their health and they are increasingly becoming key decision makers in their health journey. More data with greater connectivity and operability is being generated for populations but also at an individual level and on-demand. This will unlock the possibility for more personalized interventions catering for the individual needs of consumers across many diseases.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is reshaping the entire life sciences value chain. As an example, just think about how AI is already accelerating drug discovery and development. The increasing pace of innovation that this will result in will likely also increase competitive pressure.
Consumers are increasingly accepting remote treatment methods like telemedicine and e-consultations which we saw take off and scale significantly during the Covid-19 pandemic is resulting to increase access to care in many countries. This is a trend that will likely gain even more momentum in the future.
Non-traditional players are entering the health care space. In the last few years numerous start-ups began exploring opportunities in the healthcare industry as well as big technology players who bring new capabilities, for example, their ability to process large amounts of data and their closer proximity to consumers as a competitive advantage.
When considering these trends and their impact on health care spending you could come to the conclusion that there will likely be an increasing shift from ‘Healthcare’ more to ‘Health’ and ‘Staying healthy’. How value is generated and rewarded will likely shift away from the traditional focus of care and treatment to being more focused on well-being and prevention in the future.
In a recent assessment performed by Deloitte they predict that over the next two decades as much as two thirds of healthcare spending will shift towards early disease detection and well-being. They also predict that the amount of investment in care and treatment will likely not grow. Putting all of this together it’s clear that this would have a profound impact on life sciences as an industry and it generates a number of key questions that life science organisations need to consider in shaping their future vision, for example:
How to enhance value offerings in the existing treatment focused value pools and how to rethink the current value chain to be future ready.
How to leverage and build on existing capabilities to be able to participate in emerging faster growing new value pools.
Where should the focus be first.
A good place to start could be to fast forward into your common view of the future and to think about the opportunities that would exist across the entire consumer health journey and then to prioritize them based on existing capabilities or capabilities that you would be able to build. Another useful framework to help identify future opportunities could be to consider future business archetypes like the following example which proposes three potential categories of archetypes:
· Data and Platforms
· Wellbeing and Care Delivery
· Care Enablement
In summary, healthcare trends are pointing towards a radical transformation of healthcare over the next decades and leaders in life science organisations need to re-imagine where and how to generate value in the future. Having clear priorities and a focused approach on how to tap into new value in the future will be critical.
2. Embracing new ways of working across all levels of the organisation:
When looking at the two words ‘digital transformation’ we often get stuck on the first word ‘digital’ and don’t place sufficient emphasis on the second word ‘transformation’ which is all about people and their ways of working. Digital transformation is much more than just technology implementation and it demands profoundly different ways of working across all levels of the organization. It is people who need to understand and implement digital technologies and move organizations towards digital maturity. To do this people need to adopt different ways of working.
With a lens on healthcare and life sciences and having experience of the implementing major digital transformation programs in the pharma sector I would like to explore six considerations which I believe are key when building a digital DNA within an organization.
Know where your organisation is in terms of digital maturity and setting an ambition of where you would like to move to. People should understand how this links to the strategic vision and how you plan to create value in the future. When defining actions to move towards the defined ambition, it needs to be tangible, practical, small achievable changes which can be consistently and easily implemented. Some call these minimum viable shift.
Clear communication of the ‘Why’ as well as the ambition is essential and here ambassadors can play an important role and can be very impactful on generating and sustaining momentum. They can do this in a number of ways e.g. role modelling, sharing learnings through story telling etc.
Building digital skills of both leaders and employees is essential. Leaders need to learn how to effectively lead digital teams and support their employees to build the necessary knowledge they need to stay in pace with technology changes. Since the technology changes are constant this needs to be a dynamic process and not just a phase or a ‘one and done’.
Empowerment of teams – this is often not very well understood in organisations and in many cases and in many cases leaders and employees will have different understandings of what this means. Leaders need to focus on removing roadblocks and allow decision making to take place at the right level in the organization in a practice we call ‘Servant Leadership’. In highly regulated industries like life sciences it is very tempting for leaders to act as the experts and this should be a constant ‘watch out’.
Build an innovation culture and adopt agile ways of working in teams. Life science organizations are still very immature when it comes to broadly adopting agile ways of working in our teams. They are still learning to focus on the patient as the ultimate customer and they are still learning when it comes to being iterative, experimenting, accepting failure as a normal part of the business.
Break down silos and actively encourage intentional collaboration. This needs continuous effort particularly in life science where there are so many specialized functions required to generate value.
3. Building a strong and sustainable talent pool:
Building a strong talent pool is critical to success in digital transformation and this should not be achieved though acquiring new talent but also by placing emphasis on growing existing talent within the organisation. People are at the core of digital transformation and embracing new ways of working is a key factor for success.
Technologies will be evolving and relatively easier to exchange but having a talent pool who understand and know how to operate them is more challenging and requires strong focus.
Digital talent have shifting priorities and it underlines the importance on not only focusing on external talent acquisition, but also to focus on developing and retaining internal talent. A recent survey from Boston Consulting Group suggests that digital talent are more mobile, comfortable with remote working, demanding flexibility and work life balance remains a key priority for them.
How can Onesto support you and your organisation to achieve the maximum value from your digital transformation?
We have the experience and expertise to guide you through each phase of the transformation process using our 4-stage framework.
Diagnose > We will work with you and your teams to perform an initial diagnosis of the challenges facing your organisation. We facilitate the creation of the vision to ensure clarity on the future state that can be shared across all stakeholder groups.
Design > Together we will start to design the future state. Our mantra at Onesto is “don’t fall in love with solution, fall in love with the problem” and this has allowed us to design sustainable solutions for our customers.
Treat > The implementation phase can involve the deployment of new technologies but more importantly the introduction of new ways of working to ensure these technologies are successfully deployed. A capability assessment exercise is also performed to assess the skills gap within the organisation and a plan is created to ensure adequate skills are acquired or grown internally through structured development programs.
Maintain > The overall digital transformation project may be considered a success at the end of the ‘Treat’ phase, however, without the right structures in place to maintain the new technologies and refine and optimise the new ways of working then the long term value will not be realised