How to beat the odds in tech transformation

If you’re undergoing a tech transformation, especially within a large organization, you may already be feeling what research confirms: namely, the odds are stacked against you. 

In fact, a McKinsey study found while 90% of large companies have embarked on “a technology transformation journey,” only one-third are reaping their projected benefits. Another study, as reported in the MIT Technology Review, painted an even bleaker picture: Only one quarter of companies realize the value they planned on. 

However, as I’ve discovered in my role as chief technology, data and analytics officer at TransUnion, there are ways to significantly boost your odds of success. 

As our journey progresses, here are several important insights on how to shape the technology, process and people essential to delivering the ROI transformation promises. 

Know your need

Allow me to first give some context to my experience-driven conclusions. In recent years, TransUnion has launched a broad technology transformation initiative that has been aimed at simplifying our sprawling infrastructure. We have grown considerably, including through acquisitions that deepened the expansion of our business footprint beyond credit and into fraud prevention and marketing. These businesses all relied on the data analytics value chain in similar ways, but in many different flavors –– and all working in silos with different tech stacks. 

We saw both the need and opportunity to unify these capabilities, which all have consumer identity at their center. Setting out to leverage their commonalities in a more efficient and scalable way, we created a multifaceted solution enablement platform. 

When I say, “we saw,” it wasn’t that we had a sudden epiphany. Like any disciplined organization, we constantly analyze our business basics. Due to the expanding importance of technology, one advantage we have is that our tech strategy is now integral to our business strategy. We include tech leaders at the business strategy table, ensuring technology helps drive our business forward. But we’re hardly the only leading company to do this. 

If you’ve been following trends in the industry, it’s apparent companies recognize the rising importance of technology expertise in strategic planning –– a trend every company would be wise to follow. 

 
In other words, to get a robust picture of your needs within a tech transformation, assemble a well-rounded, strategic team; one that crosses silos, challenges traditional assumptions and aligns leadership for the journey ahead. 

Be bold in vision and practical in value creation

Creating an enterprise-wide technology solution requires defining a scope that’s ambitious and quickly actionable and has an underlying objective to keep your customers and organization on board throughout the project. 

For us, that’s meant building a platform capable of unifying all the functions of our core business areas. Bringing the functions together results in measurably enhancing data integration and analytics and opening an impressive pipeline for innovation. 

Embrace the positive impacts of trickle-down benefits

While the excitement in any such transformation inevitably revolves around new products and capabilities, success rests first on smoothly migrating existing solutions and customers to the new platform. In our case, this is accomplished by running old and new systems in parallel to validate our new solutions with specific customer use cases. This approach minimizes customer disruption during migration while also quickly increasing the value delivered. 

We’ve already been able to deliver new solutions for customers, including one in the fraud prevention space that leverages machine learning models based on newly integrated data from our various acquisitions. The solution delivers higher fraud catch rates with significantly less noise. 

Of course, for small to mid-size organizations, building a platform may be both impractical and unnecessary. Off-the-shelf solutions abound, including many low-code or no-code tools and SaaS platforms.
 

Whatever the size of the organization, those that are successful do two things well:

1. Have a bold vision
2. Be quick to test it out

And when you encounter the unexpected, learn from it and be adaptable enough to change –– whether that means a relatively minor modification to use case validation or a major shift from building your own platform to buying a ready-made solution. 

Transform your people along with your technology

Technology may seem even more autonomous, but tech transformations are not. They depend on the full engagement and alignment of people across your organization, starting with leadership. 

First, senior leaders need to be educated so they clearly understand not just the features of the new technology but more so the business benefits. This will motivate them to champion engagement and adoption throughout the organization. 

Then, all your human resources need widespread change management to ensure they know how to effectively collaborate and pull in the same direction. This means more than simply technical upskilling. They must also fully understand the reasons for the transformation, as well as the benefits –– to them and the organization –– of the new technology. 

We have an ongoing program of associate training and support for our 6,000-strong tech workforce. As a result, the percentage of our people who can articulate how our tech transformation creates value has increased in the last year from 69% to 82%. This percentage has been steadily rising due largely to our dedicated change management practices. 

Embrace the unexpected

Even the best-planned journeys to new frontiers will run into unexpected challenges. For instance, while we had extensively planned for customer migration during our tech transformation, the effort required to make it go as quickly and smoothly as possible was greater than expected. After all, we provide mission-critical solutions, so customers didn’t simply want to know we had validated a new product. They wanted reassurance we had validated their specific use cases. In response, we doubled down on resources to give them enhanced confidence. 

As mentioned, we introduced a protocol of parallel systems, running the old and new simultaneously. That lets us proactively walk customers through what’s changing, how much we test and how we parallel run. It also helps us not only boost their confidence but also reduce how much they must change during migration. 

The lesson was clear: Embracing the unexpected leads to better immediate outcomes and helps develop a playbook for future success. 

Take a customer zero approach

For those whose tech transformation will impact both internal and external users, there’s no more convincing approach than stepping into the role of customer zero –– using your products and platforms internally to get real-world experience with your own creations. 

By taking a customer zero approach, enterprises can expand on future AI capabilities. At my company, this means our future AI capabilities will enable autonomous decision-making, adaptive learning and proactive execution. We expect these advancements will support use cases, such as audience segmentation, predictive scoring and identity resolution. 

This early use empowers you to freely innovate, thoroughly test, create more effective AI models and gather vital, user-centric feedback internally –– all before releasing new solutions publicly. I encourage anyone in my position to adopt the mantle of customer zero. 

Communicate your early wins

As you start to show positive results pursuing your transformation, communication will build momentum and excitement, internally and externally. This will help sustain the energy and commitment required for multi-year initiatives. 

You can enhance transparency and foster two-way communication by investing in team newsletters, special recognition for people and “ask me anything” leadership sessions. However you choose to communicate, start moving the message from the broad outlines of your bold vision to the impressive specifics of your actual outcomes (we call these proof of progress).

Make no small plans

With a bold enough vision, the transformation of your people as well as your technology, and a commitment to the continual demonstration of value, you too can beat the odds. 

This article is published as part of the Foundry Expert Contributor Network.
Want to join?