Digital Strategy - A Checklist

If you're a small or medium-sized business here's a useful checklist for accelerating your digital future. You're almost certainly doing a lot of this already but it's always useful to have another take on digital strategy.

Assess the current state of the business: people and processes
Set a vision for the digital enterprise: how can digital make that relevant, differentiated and sustainable for your customers and employees
Define the digital goals: is it to optimise or to transform?
Commit to digital through all the business: the benefits of digital come when it is comprehensively adopted
Create and support a digital champion: chose someone with energy, enthusiasm and authority
Put the right people in the right places: allow those that can make a difference to be where a difference needs to be made
Choose a trusted advisor: technology vendors can be very helpful but look for independent advice that can point out the hurdles and the pitfalls
Develop the roadmap: the individual next steps and forward momentum
Involve all stakeholders early: the last to arrive are often those that object the strongest
Address change management consequences: recognise that not everyone will see the benefits immediately and not everyone will be flexible and ready to change
Set up an agile governance mindset: decentralise decision making so individuals and teams are empowered and have the autonomy to make decisions based on their expertise and their needs
Design the optimal solution and choose the right technologies: it goes without saying that there is not one solution that suits all businesses
Develop a business-led data-driven culture: insights enable a business informed decisions and drive meaningful business outcomes and digital allows better collection, analysis and interpretation of data
Monitor progress