5 Ways to Accelerate Your Digital Success in the Automotive Industry
We measured the digital maturity of hundreds of organisations, and scrutinising tens of thousands of data points : Here 5 key ways to accelerate your digital success!
The automotive industry needs digital transformation and fast.
The industry is in turmoil!
Attacked from all sides, confusion reigns amongst even the most experienced.
The major causes of this disruption?
- Electrification of vehicles.
- Advanced technologies turning the car into an entertainment hub – so much so that some drivers don’t even want to do the driving bit anymore!
- Not only are some people turning away from even wanting to drive, but new business models are shifting people away from ownership too. Car ownership is turning into mobility as a service.
- Add COVID-19, Brexit, and climate change into the mix and you’ve got a perfect storm of complexity!
Staying relevant and remaining competitive means the use of digital technologies is mandatory. There’s no getting around it – you need to embrace digital transformation.
It’s not the fastest nor the strongest who are guaranteed to survive. It’s the ones most able to adapt. But where to start?
How to accelerate your digital transformation?
In measuring the digital maturity of hundreds of organisations, and scrutinising tens of thousands of data points, I’ve learned 5 key ways to accelerate digital transformation, as follows:
1. Play to your strengths
Every organisation has strengths and weaknesses. Don’t waste time developing your weaknesses – instead, play to your strengths. Focus on improving those areas of expertise. Harness them to gain a competitive advantage.
Digital capabilities should be among them too. Utilise digital to enable integration, optimisation, and simplification to become more competitive and better integrated with your business partners.
A simple model I like to use to identify strengths and weakness is a 2×2 matrix, as below:
Once you identify and assess your strengths, ask the “why?” and question the “truly?”. Your aim is to reduce the list to the most important 3 core strengths.
These make up your secret sauce! The very thing that enables you to outperform the competition. They must be protected, cherished, and improved.
2. Less is more
Many people think that working on lots of change projects concurrently is a good thing. The reality is that you risk missing the wood for the trees. Both research and my own experience show that the contrary is true.
Another simple 2×2 matrix that I like to use here is The Eisenhower Matrix. It provides a way to assess projects against the two factors of Urgency and Importance.
By focusing on the most important AND the most urgent projects, you are more likely to achieve your business objectives sooner, and achieve a faster return on investment. Period.
Here’s what the Eisenhower Matrix looks like:
3. Let technology do the heavy lifting
Do you find that you’re lacking ideas on what technologies will be most suited to support your value chain end-to-end?
Do you fear missing out on how to realise the best ‘use cases’ to capture maximum business benefits?
I know of lot of the clients that I’ve worked have these concerns. There’s a fear of missing out on key opportunities. Of falling behind your competitors. You probably already have an inkling that applying digital technologies to your value chain processes will benefit your business. Whether it’s through automation or integration, or more.
4. Speed up decision making
A lot of time and energy is lost while waiting and preparing for board meetings. In fact, one of the most obvious yet often hidden factors that can stall digital transformation is slow top-down decision-making.
Why have a team if you don’t empower them to make decisions? Craft your digital transformation roadmap, then empower your leaders so that they can accelerate progress.
Among teams there are always natural leaders. You’ll instinctively know who these people are. They have the skills to not only lead the charge, but to bring people on the journey with them.
In my experience, the more power is devolved to the team, the faster the digital transformation happens.
A simple model to use to help with delegating authority, and therefore accelerating your digital transformation, is a RACI Matrix. The concept of a RACI is to define Responsibility, Accountability, who is Consulted, and who is Informed.
Here’s a good article CIO.com that describes a RACI matrix in more detail.
5. You manage what you measure
Since the tracking of EBITDA, companies have become more profitable.
Since the measuring of NPS, companies have become more customer-centric. And since the reporting of the global CO2 footprint, companies have understood their climate impact.
At Digitopia, we help organisations to measure their digital maturity. Using 6 core dimensions, organisations get a scored assessment to determine their current level of maturity, as well as their target maturity. We call this the DMI score – Digital Maturity Index.
In knowing your DMI score, you have the knowledge at hand to identify where and how to accelerate your digital transformation.
“Digitopia determined our digital maturity. They made clear recommendations that enabled us to map and align our digital transformation with the corporate strategy.”
CIO in the automotive industry
“In going through the DMI assessment we were able to determine if we were prioritising the right things!”
CDO in the automotive industry
Conclusion
Going through a digital transformation is crucial to overcome the automotive industry challenges. Yet it’s no easy feat. There are many twists and turns in the road ahead. Risks to identify, and issues to overcome.
Acceleration of your digital transformation is paramount.
To recap, the 5 key ways to accelerate your journey are:
- Play to your strengths – identify your secret sauce – offload the rest
- Less is more – eat the elephant one bite at a time
- Let technology do the heavy lifting – use the Industry 4.0 Value Chain Framework
- Speed up decision making – hire good people and get out of their way!
- You manage what you measure – assess your current status, determine your future destination, and ensure that you take the right bites in the right order!
Wherever you are in your digital journey, if you’d like to independently evaluate your progress, or simply have a quick chat with an expert for ideas to accelerate your transformation, then click here to schedule a free consultation.
