More from the Digital Transformation Conference spring edition

At this year’s Digital Transformation Conference, we heard from Nicola Wadham of the Financial Ombudsman Service about how everyone’s in digital transformation – whether they know it, or like it, or not.

We followed that by joining a fireside chat with Lara Burns, chief digital officer for the Scouts, who drew attention to the challenge of convincing people of how critical digital transformation is. Working for the Scouts, she says, it’s been great working in an organization that believes in what she’s doing – that doesn’t ask “Digital? Why are you doing that?”

Leading change can be a lonely, even scary, position to be in, “particularly if you’re really passionate about digital, passionate about change,” said Lara. In fact, looking back at what she’s learnt, very little of it is about technology.

Instead, Lara shared insights about something we might overlook in the world of tech: people. It’s really important to establish good channels of communication, talking to people at every step of the transformation process to find out what works for them.

You also need to maintain your own motivation. Burnout is one of the greatest barriers that a leader can face, so it’s crucial to remember why you’re in this position. For Lara this is easy because, working for the Scouts, the ultimate mission is for change in young people’s lives. Keep bringing yourself back to your core purpose, she told the group.

“You can’t be a good leader if you don’t know why you’re doing it.”

Connect with Lara Burns on LinkedIn.

Critical keys to EDA

We were also lucky to hear from Jamil Ahmed, Chief Engineer at Solace. When it comes to digitization, the customer experience and digital experience are synonymous.  As part of the API family, event driven architecture (EDA) must be optimized to provide a seamless user experience.

Jamil shared an EDA success story. The Daimler Mercedes Me app took a few stages of development. The app is a digital solution, and when it comes to transformation, that’s going to be in competition with its analogue comparison – in this case, a traditional car key.

In order to compete, the digital version needs to be, at the very least, as real-time as its analogue rival. Critically, EDA must be responsive and joined-up so that it eases an experience for the user. If you’re looking to utilize EDA, identifying the right event to build around is also key. For Jamil, a compelling event is a habit; how can day-to-day events be streamlined by digitization?

Read more use cases for Solace here.

The implementation journey

One of the benefits of attending an event like the Digital Transformation Conference is being privy to conversations between industry leaders. At a talk entitled “Implementing a digital strategy: people, tech, and progress,” five experts shared their experience in the sector.

Their topics included diversity and inclusivity in tech, using data collection to become an insight-driven organization, and top-down/bottom-up approaches. We also heard about the importance of aligning success metrics with problem statements.

The discussion took place between Nicola Wadham and Thomas Harris (whose keynote talks are covered in our first article on the event), as well as Tariq Maonah, SVP Tech & Digital Strategy at Citi, and Romi Arya, Director Technology & Products for the Walgreens Boots Alliance.

Both Romi and Tariq agreed that it’s important to start with the “why,” acknowledging that digital transformation requires a cultural shift, so businesses need to be prepared to “educate and repeat” throughout the process.

Problems arise when employees are resistant to change because of fear. Foster collective individual change, and you should be able to bring everyone along on the digital transformation journey.

If you wish you’d been there to hear the details, why not get a super early bird ticket for the autumn edition of the Digital Transformation Conference?

You can connect with Romi Arya and Tariq Maonaha on LinkedIn.

Finally, don’t forget to come back for the third and final part of our event coverage – there’s much more to see!