Transform
Building a Business Transformation Roadmap – 6 Step Process
These days, more than ever, it is true to say that we are living in a constantly changing business environment – one where previously little thought of external factors are having a major influence on the way we are managing our businesses in order to meet changing customer needs and constraints being put on the way we have previously operated.
Business planning and Blue-Sky thinking sessions can help identify the opportunities for revenue growth, and the strategies needed to achieve this in the short, medium and long term.
If you are looking to deliver a fundamental shift over time in your business, a business transformation roadmap is a useful tool to help mobilise your stakeholders around a common vision, and to track your progress towards the achievement of your medium to long term goals.
So how do you go about creating one?
Here is a simple 6 step process:
- Set out where you are now and where you want to be. Visualise your business of the future and document the high-level scope of the desired transformation.
- Share with your leadership team and gain alignment and common understanding
- Document the key critical tasks that need to be achieved to get you from Today to your Future Organisation. Set out any constraints in respect of the order these need to be delivered.
- Set out your best estimate of the timeline for moving from Today to your Future Organisation. Consider and set realistic and achievable milestones along your timeline so that you are able to track progress towards achieving your ultimate goal. These milestones can also be used as Tollgates to check environmental factors which may affect your plan and cause you to rethink, reset priorities or change the direction of travel.
- Chunk your transformation journey into Phases – and set out the key critical tasks which are to be delivered in order that the Phase is deemed to have been successfully completed.
- Consider the resources you will use to deliver your transformation programme. Do you have the capability and the bandwidth internally, or will you need to consider bringing in external resource? It may be that you have internal capability and resource but that due to business sensitivities you may choose to limit resource to the Leadership Team and external resources.
Once you have a clear roadmap which is consistently understood and supported by your leadership team, you are in a position to Build your Business Transformation Team(s) and Kick Off the various projects which make up your transformation programme.
Remember that your Roadmap is a living, breathing document, which rather than being filed away once created, should be used to review your progress towards the end game. It may well need to be flexed and changed over time and re-aligned either against shifting business priorities – and these could be driven by a combination of internal or external factors.
Build regular reviews of your transformation roadmap into your overall project’s governance structure and in this way, you can gauge your progress towards attaining your long term vision and transformation goals.
A business transformation roadmap will help keep you and your business focused on where you are going, how you plan to get there and demonstrate your progress on your journey.
Contact me today on 01702 879548 or drop me an email enquiries@harley-west.com.
