Digital Transformation Training: Identifying the Skills to Succeed

Published On March 12, 2018

Strategic planning is a critical part of information governance, and the ability to understand the technical skills that an organization needs to succeed in the future is a vital component of any strategic plan.

Every organization is looking to fortify its digital transformation training in order to take advantage of big data and business intelligence. However, most organizations can’t buy their way out of their deficiencies and must build these resources internally — particularly because many of these technical skills are relatively new to the market and difficult to find.

We are once again dealing with a change management situation, and this one is even larger than ever before. It is no secret that the world is becoming more automated. In the future, it’s likely that there will be very few jobs available that do not require some interaction with technology. It is important to think of how your organization is going to meet this new reality. Here’s a hint; training your existing staff is easier than hiring a new, younger one.

You begin this effort much like any other. Management must create a strategy on how to best leverage big data, business intelligence, artificial intelligence and the internet of things into the organization. Once that strategy is in place, you can begin to identify the skills needed for digital transformation training to support it. These skills can range from training the staff to operate a new invoice processing system to linking data streams and creating queries fed to dynamic dashboards displaying daily management production reports. These are just two examples of the myriad of tasks needed to manage business in the future, and they are here now.

In many organizations, the main impediment to achieving digital transformation training isn’t that staff cannot meet the challenge of learning a new technology — it is the culture of the organization that has created functional silos that are very resistant to change. These must be eliminated to create a new mindset, one that encourages cross-functional cooperation and innovation. People represent the most versatile asset in any digital transformation initiative because most individuals can be taught to manage any task that is required of them, particularly with technology that is more intuitive and user-friendly now being developed.

There is a major push among many organizations to hire data scientists. While this need is critical for organizations with very mature digital transformation programs, it is not a true need for everyone. There are plenty of quick, easy wins (in terms of value) to be had just by allowing the current staff to utilize the power of a new business intelligence platform. Running “what if” scenarios is a critical activity for an organization that is looking to expand its business presence into other markets or find undetected efficiencies — but these queries can take time to develop, perfect and test before you can truly realize the value.

Digital transformation with these systems allows the people that already know the business to actually visualize what the organization is doing in real time. It can result in some pretty impressive results in a shorter period of time. Getting there takes a combination of technical training and, more importantly, cooperation across the usual political lines that exist in any company.

Every organization is struggling with digital transformation training. Survival depends on how well that challenge is met. It all starts with strategic planning by management. Set a clear goal and a comprehensive training strategy to support that goal. A comprehensive training strategy addresses both the development of the cultural aspects within the organization as well as the technical skills that are required in the future. Developing the existing staff is cheaper than finding outside talent to fill these future needs, and doing so will provide them with a greater sense of purpose. It is absolutely worth the effort.