ClickCease

WHY DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION FOR SALES AND MARKETING?

You transform your business process to be more digital to meet or exceed your client’s needs. You might also want to take advantage of technology to lower your costs or grow your business. All reasons are good, for going digital.

Optimizing your digital transformation project hangs on understanding your client, their needs, and desires as it pertains to your services and products. It also hinges on your knowledge of where your sales and marketing teams are now, their weaknesses and finally your future desires. So where to begin…

Step 1 Take the time to Audit your sales and marketing processes

The answer in my experience is understanding your marketing and sales processes today. What is missing for example leads or opportunities or your sales cycle is too long. Delve into this using an audit. Ask questions and look for all the issues you can find. Prioritize them and look for the issues that, if improved, would give you the most bang for your buck.

Begin with an audit of your pains and needs. You can try our free audits for Marketing and Sales on our website.

Step 2 Audit your processes and write them down.

You should identify and model your processes as they are today. Name the Who (actor), the What (Artifact), the Where (System), the When (Event) and the Why (Goal) of each process. The model you will create will visually represent your processes. Find what is human driven and what is machine driven. Show the movement of data and what process is automated today or can be tomorrow. Too often we look to improve our processes by making them complicated and heavy. The hope is to simplify the processes. Use automation to drive data between systems removing the chance of human error. Modeling your processes can be time consuming and painful. You may find issues that exist and can fixed right away while others may require more thought. Paper and pen or a whiteboard is  useful however I can suggest Discovery Accelerator as a tool to discover your existing processes. This software is designed by Trisotech allows you to identify all the actors, systems and  . They have a wonderful software that will allow you to discover your existing processes and once finished and verified you can generate a BPMN workflow model. It is a terrific way to start your process discovery.

 Step 3 Develop your processes in a standards-based workflow software.

I suggest you use standards-based software to lower your costs and remove your reliance on your software vendors. Workflow software will allow you to build process workflows, but you should try to find standards-based software that meets the threshold of compliance. I suggest you use BPMN, it stands for Business Process Model and Notation. This standard is supported by the Object Modeling Group (OMG). This will limit the need to stay with software vendors as you build your solutions. Find a tool set to allow you to develop your as-is processes models. Use this software to discover your processes and model them visually.

Step 4 You need to identify your business rules

All your processes live on business rules. These rules tell your team when to accept a request, how to invoice or ship. These rules are focused on your business dynamics. Tied to software and people these rules run your business. I suggest that Decision Model and Notation is a new standard that you should use to develop your business rules. These decisions can be embedded in your workflows (BPMN) seamlessly. The standard uses (FEEL) Friendly Enough Expression Language, to allow you to right the business rules in String. A simple easy to read language that non-coders can read and understand. The software allows you to create decision tables that will make understanding why a decision is taken simple to understand. Select a software that is standards compliant. Have a look at Trisotech, DMN modeler in their Digital Modeling Suite, as an example. The goal is to models your processes and the decisions your team will take throughout the business process.

Step 5 Develop your future processes

Using the BPMN and DMN software you can develop models that will visually represent your business of the future. Focused on your client, their journey and how they want to be served by you.

I suggest these basic tenants:

  • Focus on your client, their needs, and desires,
  • Maximize the value of your data throughout the process,
  • Set metrics for success,
  • Identify where you can automate the processes when every possible,
  • Keep the process as simple as possible,
  • Lesson the bureaucracy, and
  • Consult your team members.

These basic tenants will allow you to guide your changes. Companies may be more refined and mature others are just trying to stop things from starting on fire. All will find value in digital transformation!

Thanks for reading!

Jack