Traci Hughes, Â鶹ԭ´´â€™s Global Head of People Success Services and a female leader with an African-American background, opened with an authentic and moving keynote. She explained the difference between equality – each individual is given the same resources or opportunities – and equity, which recognizes that each person has different circumstances and allocates the exact resources and opportunities needed to reach an equal outcome. Traci thanked the diverse audience for taking an interest in the topic, helping to build the bridges for those who are yet to come – like we are benefiting from those who succeeded before us. She also stated that if perfect equity had been reached, everyone would have a sense of belonging. “If we see people that look like us in leadership positions, it will encourage others to follow. We must never underestimate how much power our presence has.â€� She underlined the importance of listening and learning from each other, to overcome diversity-related perceptions through dialogue.

Genevieve Koolen, HR Director Â鶹ԭ´´ Africa and executive sponsor of BWN Africa, then moderated the inspiring panel discussion with a strong all female speaker line-up: Ruwayda Redfearn, CEO Deloitte Africa, as well as Monique Naidoo, Executive Procurement South Africa at BCX (an Â鶹ԭ´´ customer), and Kholiwe Makhohliso, the newly appointed MD for Â鶹ԭ´´ Southern Africa. In fact, Kholiwe was a speaker at last year’s Women’s Month panel, when she was still with her previous employer!

It was refreshing to listen to a new generation of strong, female leaders who know how to drive the business but also bring in qualities like empathy and kindness. “The CEO does not have to be the loudest in the room,� said Ruwayda and encouraged the audience to challenge traditional requirements for leaders. Diversity leads to better decisions and higher performance. “Things are moving in the right direction, but slowly. We need a greater sense of urgency�. She also remembered the role models of her youth – mothers, aunts, grandmothers who had powerful conversations whilst cooking and understood the importance of getting their kids into higher education.

Monique sees positive changes as well, like the existence of equity committees, policies, advocacy and mentorship. “We need more women having a seat at the table though, and it should be more than two women per table so that they uplift each other and don’t compete�. “Women are nurturers and drivers� but also “I have worked with great men�. Her recipe for success is to strive for more, but in a sustainable way balancing different priorities like job and family, even if it means not to have the biggest house during certain life phases.

Sacrifice, tenacity, and resilience are required to pursue a career, according to Kholiwe, who also remembers strong women in her family showing her that “nothing is impossibleâ€�. She encourages women to be curious and learn from others’ successes and failures. “Leadership requirements have changed … and women can drive change, not just look to the men to do itâ€�. Kholiwe called on us to “raise your voiceâ€� and stated that passion put into work needs to be recognized. Also, “we need to put leaders up the stream that don’t look like the stereotypeâ€�.

Moderator Genevieve’s last question was if there is a price to pay when women are investing in their careers. There was consensus amongst the panelists that time with kids and family suffers, and this causes “mommy guilt�, even if their kids never complained about it and became quite independent. A benefit is also that children experience that women can be in top positions, which might have a positive impact on their own lives. However, there is a need for a strong support system, ideally within the family. What often falls short is me-time or time for hobbies – like hiking and biking in Kholiwe’s case. One needs to be very intentional to make time for these things, on top of a demanding job. She says it is important to understand that there are no superwomen or superhumans, we can only keep asking ourselves: “what is the best I can do today?�.

The session ended with a question from the audience, on how to approach a career once a goal has been defined. Ruwayda gave some clear and practical tips, based on her own experience: Become aware of which role you want, ask for support to get there, find mentors and allies to learn from, get involved and take on the complex clients and difficult tasks, take responsibility for your own career and challenge the norm.

The key take-away of the session is, that it will be more attractive for women to pursue a career in tech, if we continue to break traditional patterns of leadership traits. Promoting qualities like empathy and kindness will also lead to higher performance and better employee satisfaction.

The event also featured video messages from Manos Raptopoulos, Â鶹ԭ´´ Regional President EMEA South, and Tjaart Malan, Cloud Success Services Director Africa and BWN Executive Sponsor​, who sent greetings from his birthday vacation. Both promoted male allyship and underlined the importance of driving equity in the workplace which benefits all – women and men.

After this successful event, the Women’s Month program of BWN Africa will continue with three #IamRemarkable workshops where employees can learn about personal branding based on facts.

The post BWN Africa Flagship Event: Equality vs. Equity – How Do We Create Fair Opportunities in the Workplace? appeared first on Â鶹ԭ´´ Africa News Center.

For many organisations, the last few years have been the most disruptive in living memory. Organisations and their IT teams have had to accommodate huge changes to the way people work and deploy new technology tools to support their teams while unlocking new capabilities to meet changing customer demands.

Since the start of the pandemic, organisations have had to enable remote and hybrid work environments, digitise their supply chains to better deal with disruptions, and utilise technology to develop new business processes and revenue streams, all the while delivering an exceptional customer experience.

Despite the worst of the global pandemic seemingly over, spending on digital transformation continues apace. Global investment into digital transformation is expected to reach $1.8-trillion in 2022, . By 2024, it is expected that direct digital transformation investments .

Understanding poor digital transformation

Despite this abundance of digital transformation initiatives, few companies achieve the outcomes they seek. found that only 14% of companies that have begun digital transformation projects have seen sustained performance enhancements as a result.

For technology companies and their partners, this poses a serious challenge. Every digital transformation project that falls short of expectations is a wasted opportunity for innovation, not to mention the sunk costs and time.

The customer expectations of what their digital transformation should achieve have also changed. Common expectations for modern business transformation initiatives include clear, positive business outcomes, an exceptional customer experience, and a high level of engagement velocity to ensure the project runs smoothly and can achieve its milestones according to strict timelines.

The reasons for failure can vary. Typically, digital transformation projects fail because of a lack of clear goals, poor leadership support, ineffective change management which may lead to internal resistance, lack of suitable skills, and poor understanding of the current state of the business and how the digital transformation is meant to enable new capabilities.

Four solutions to common transformation challenges

However, common digital transformation challenges can be overcome. In our experience working with organisations across the continent and the world, the following four methods can greatly improve the chances at digital transformation success:

1 Understand your digital transformation maturity

One of the biggest obstacles to a successful digital transformation initiative is a lack of clarity over what the transformation is meant to achieve. Is the business seeking efficiency gains in high-priority business processes? Does the business need new capabilities for managing its workforce, or is it a matter of meeting changing customer expectations?

Without a solid business case, digital transformation initiatives will fail to illustrate value since there’s no clear way to measure progress.

Technology companies and their implementation partners have well-developed tools and processes to help organisations measure their present level of digital transformation maturity, identify clear areas for improvement, and then provide input on a transformation plan that aims to deliver gains in the priority areas.

2 Focus on continuous value generation

One of the biggest changes in how organisations adopt and consume new technologies and associated capabilities is in the concept of continuous value generation. Digital transformation projects are no longer only measured by the immediate outcomes, but also in how the organisation can continuously generate greater or different forms of value from their investment.

For example, a retailer that invested in a new customer loyalty system may want to use the data from that system to deliver hyper-personalised offers, or even launch new products and services tailored to customer preferences. Rather than start an entire transformation project from scratch, the retailer would benefit from simply building on what has been done to date, ably supported by expert partners that can guide the project to a successful outcome.

Technology companies and implementation partners therefore need to look beyond just one successful project and take an approach of continuous value generation. It’s less a case of knock-and-drop and more a case of partnering for the long term.

3 Ensure a steady mix of relevant skills

A lack of appropriate skills can undermine the success of any digital transformation initiative. The IDC estimates that IT skills shortages will affect 90% of organisations by 2025, at a cost of over $6.5-trillion.

Without access to the correct skills, organisations will fail to successfully complete digital transformation initiatives, and will not generate the desired value through new digital capabilities.

In response, organisations should invest in programmes and partnerships that can ensure a steady mix of relevant skills. This can be done through internal skills development initiatives, collaboration with partners that have the correct skills mix, or through other skills development programmes.

Initiatives such as Â鶹ԭ´´ Skills for Africa, for example, provides African organisations an opportunity to secure Â鶹ԭ´´-trained graduates that have gone through a months-long work readiness and skills development program and can make an immediate impact on digital transformation efforts.

4 Don’t neglect change management

No digital transformation initiative can succeed when end-users don’t adopt the new capabilities to drive the desired outcomes. In fact, a poor change management program can undermine the entire project’s success at the last mile, scuppering months of work and leaving the organisation with lower levels of competitiveness.

However, the opposite is also true. From internal resistance to change to poor adoption of new capabilities, several common challenges with successful transformation initiatives can be addressed through an effective change management program.

And yet, only 34% of change management initiatives are a clear success, .

Here, technology partners can play a vital supporting role. By providing insight into common obstacles and best-practices from similar projects elsewhere, technology partners can help organisations identify high-impact areas for effective change management and ensure business users are supported and enabled all along the way.

This can drive greater adoption of the new capabilities that resulted from the digital transformation project, and help the business drive positive outcomes that can boost competitiveness, unlock new revenue streams, drive innovation and achieve efficiency gains in the project’s priority areas.

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Since the start of the pandemic, digital transformation has become a core objective and top priority for nearly every business in the world.

From enabling remote and hybrid work environments to shifting customer-facing operations to digital channels and implementing data and analytics to better understand a volatile and highly unpredictable business environment, digital transformation has featured prominently in boardrooms over the past two years.

Even as the world races to a return to some form of normalcy, companies continue to invest heavily in digital technologies. A recent IDC report predicts that .

Clear business imperative to transform

While the immediate task of adapting to disruptions and changes caused by the pandemic and a host of other factors remain the focus, all indications are that new digital technologies will feature prominently in future transformation initiatives.

For example, the same IDC report found that 90% of organisations worldwide are expected to prioritise investment in digital tools that augment physical spaces with digital experiences.

And considering the urgency of the fight against climate change, it’s no surprise that more than 90% of companies will use digital transformation to reduce their carbon footprints by 2023.

Even prior to the pandemic, studies found that , grow 9% faster and have market valuations 12% higher than their less transformed peers.

However, despite the enormous benefits of digital transformation, the majority of digital transformation projects fail, with McKinsey data estimating that .

Every failed project costs the business money, resources, time, and opportunity. A failed digital transformation project undermines faith and confidence in future initiatives and increases organisational resistance toward further digital transformation efforts.

So, why is digital transformation success so important to building successful modern businesses?

The ‘why’ of digital transformation

For most companies, a digital transformation initiative will be rooted in either growth objectives or to protect the business against disruption.

A growth-based digital transformation may see the organisation adopt new technologies such as IoT to bring greater transparency to core business assets, for example sensors based in delivery vehicles tracking e-commerce fulfilment.

By integrating the data produced by sensors to a powerful analytics and business intelligence platform – and matching those insights to third-party data such as traffic and weather data – organisations could identify ways to optimise the delivery process and improve the customer experience.

A growth-based digital transformation initiative could also involve a re-engineering of customer experience processes, for example a retailer developing omni-channel customer experiences that deliver personalised offers at scale through a variety of digital and physical channels.

For companies wishing to utilise digital transformation to protect against disruption or risk, the use cases will be slightly different. For example, in light of ongoing supply chain issues, many organisations are seeking to digitally transform their supply chain processes to achieve greater transparency and predictability over such processes.

Building safe, accessible, and collaborative hybrid work models protects the organisation against the disruption of lockdowns and helps to future-proof their workforce engagement strategies by enabling much-needed flexibility.

A blueprint for successful digital transformation

Every digital transformation effort has three core elements: People, Processes, and Technology. Each of these elements need to be aligned to a clear, strategic vision and defined business objectives to ensure the digital transformation project delivers to actual business and customer needs.

found that companies believe their digital transformation initiatives were a success mainly when they improve performance and equip the organisation to sustain improvements over time.

What are the key ingredients to implementing a successful, value-generating digital transformation initiative?

Firstly, organisations need a sense of urgency about the transformation, driven from senior management throughout every layer of the organisation. Many of the most impactful digital transformation projects show quick time-to-value, which helps secure further support and buy-in for the project from the broader organisation.

Digital transformation projects should focus on simplification by means of standardisation and the use of templates. In most cases, the biggest cost of an implementation stems from the organisation’s nee to adapt systems to meet unique requirements. Leveraging a global services provider that can bring international best practices to a digital transformation initiative can significantly cut down on the project timeline and reduce associated costs.

Prioritisation is also essential. Digital transformation initiatives are meant to shape the future of the organisation. Companies should therefore commit their top talent and skills to seeing the project to a successful outcome.

This does raise the challenge of how to keep the business running optimally when some of the best teams and people are focused on the new initiative. Companies need to be clear on their current capacity and not take on too much, avoiding in particular large-scale once-off transformation initiatives. Finding the correct balance is key to a successful transformation project.

A sometimes-neglected but always critical element to any successful transformation initiative is the change management needed to embed new systems and processes within the organisation.

Digital transformation initiatives promise a new end-state for the organisation, one that features new and enhanced capabilities. But the implementation itself puts the organisation in an interim state between what was and what could be. Companies should be ready to navigate users through this interim phase and give the correct level of consideration to technical and change management elements, over and above successfully deploying the technology.

Once companies have established a suitably powerful technology platform, they can innovate across a broad range of business areas. Digital transformation is not about finding new tech to perform old functions better or faster: it’s about shifting mindsets to unlock greater innovation capacity that can help drive the organisation’s success for years to come.

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Tjaart Malan, head of digital business services at Â鶹ԭ´´ Africa, told ITWeb that with many of its customers being in financial services, manufacturing and other essential services, the company had to put in place processes and procedures to be able to respond to the level of service required by customers during the lockdown.

Key initiatives such as Â鶹ԭ´´ Ariba Discovery, which enables buyers and sellers to connect quickly and resolve procurement-related issues, and the Qualtrics Remote Work Pulse, which allows organisations to understand problems faced by employees while working remotely, have helped Â鶹ԭ´´ continue to stay relevant for businesses and governments alike in a shrinking but competitive market.

ITWeb: How have you organised operations during the national lockdown?

Malan: For us, it’s been largely ‘business as usual’ during the lockdown period as we haven’t faced a massive challenge in our way of working. While we have a team that’s used to remote working as well as a lot of travel, during normal circumstances, the only thing that’s changed for us is that we’ve introduced more regular checkpoints and updates in our workflows.

There’s been more of a day-to-day impact on our support staff, like our finance and commercial departments, who are used to coming into the office every day.

On a tactical and strategic level, our executive leadership team meets virtually twice a week for what we call the War Room – this is where we discuss and troubleshoot everything from the impact of the pandemic on our customers, to operational issues, HR, risk and security concerns, and try to pro-actively plan ahead for the things we can see coming at us down the road.

ITWeb: What technical considerations did you have to get right?

Malan: We have a very mobile workforce, and one of the great things about working for Â鶹ԭ´´ is the flexibility the company offers its employees. This played to our advantage when the lockdown began, as we already had remote working technologies and protocols in place, and didn’t have to scramble to get network access, security or other measures set up.

The only challenges we encountered were around physical equipment; for example, problems with hardware, or around setting up new hires with all the tools they needed at short notice. Employees are generally given access to all the tools they need to work for us, from laptops, to screens, tablets, mobile phones, etc. One adjustment we did make to enable employees who don’t have fibre on tap at home, was to make an across-the-board increase of the company-sponsored data allowance to all employees.

ITWeb: What HR issues did you have to consider? How many of your staff are now working from home? Have any staff been put on leave?

Malan: All our employees, without exception, are working normal days from home. We haven’t implemented any forced leave, although employees may use their annual leave as normal, for example, over the recent Easter break and school holidays.

Our HR team was really sensitive to the concerns of employees around medical cover, emotional and mental health issues and so on, and have placed a lot of resources and support around employees. We have access to a lot of offerings like online medical advice, counselling services, etc.

ITWeb: Which platform are you using for virtual meetings?

Malan: Our main platform for collaboration is Microsoft Teams, which we use for pretty much everything, internal and external. We also have Skype for Business capability and we use Sharepoint extensively – a Web-based collaborative platform that integrates with Microsoft Office.

Â鶹ԭ´´â€™s own collaboration app, , is also popular and we’ve made it available at no charge to users.

ITWeb: What other tools are you using to keep track of projects / teams / monitor employees’ work?

Malan: The Â鶹ԭ´´ project methodology (Activate) fully supports remote delivery. It helps us and our customers to apply the rigor that is required to deliver successful projects.

±õ°Õ°Â±ð²ú:ÌýHow have your clients adapted to the new normal?

Malan: We’ve had really positive feedback and interaction with customers. In the services area, there has not been one project that’s been cancelled or completely stopped. At most, some have been paused or extended.

Customers are committed to their business and technology journeys. We’ve also found they like and take comfort from the increased frequency of contact and communication, which is great. We’ve done a lot of work coming up with the tools and methods to help our customers work.

In reality, I think one aspect of the new normal we’ve all had to adapt to and accept, is the fact that things may take a little longer. For example, in the analysis phase of a project, we can’t do full-day workshops anymore because people just can’t sit at a computer for the whole day.

±õ°Õ°Â±ð²ú:ÌýWhat have you learned since the lockdown began?

Malan: In a recent call, our global head of services made the comment that the good thing about lockdown is that you get to spend a lot of time with your family. The bad thing about lockdown is … that you get to spend a lot of time with your family! I think we shouldn’t under-estimate the pressures people have been put under – suddenly and without much time or notice to prepare.

They have pressure from work, pressure from their children who are now at home, pressure from partners and spouses, and there’s no separation between these different pressures anymore.

The business pressures are very real – we need to keep selling and delivering.

This article first appeared on .

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