If you push beyond digital, what happens next?
January 2020
Welcome to the Top 13 tips: Digital Transformation & Cultural Transformation. Sam Johnston CMO at BookingLive offers 13 top Public Sector tips for creating a successful digital transformation project as well as instigating cultural transformation.
Below we have outlined the overview of each tip. We will then go into detail for each tip, giving you insight into how a smart city project, can become a digital transformation success.
Savvy IT leaders no longer see security for instance just as a cost item, they bake it deeply into their value chains and use it as a differentiator against their less-secure rivals.
Rather than focusing on gaining efficiencies and contributing savings to the bottom-line, the focus lies more on building, enabling, and implementing new digital use cases that lead to top-line revenue growth.
The new reality is that hierarchical thinking no longer works in today’s disruptive world. Successful IT leaders create work cultures where employees feel encouraged to try to solve small problems with iterative experiments. Employees’ willingness to experiment and improve is part of the broader phenomenon of ‘humble leadership, which is needed to provide continually developing and innovating smart cities.
Maintaining agility is key when it comes to keeping up with the rate of adoption and meeting increasing customer demands. Smart IT leaders, therefore, implement and champion agile methodologies such as DevOps, continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD), and simplified governance.”
As we have already discussed today, this simple on paper when being implemented by a team that is used to hard targets, and stagnant environments, the role of the leader here too is foster confidence and be an example in the change that needs to occur.
It usually means there was something wrong with the Request For Proposal; tear it up and start over.
In other words, don’t over-specify what you want to buy, instead explain the problem you are trying to solve; let the experts present their solution or alternatives. With technology changing so fast, there may be a Next Best Thing out there you’ve never considered.
If your purchase involves a supply of resource – This creates partnerships, where swings in the price or fuel or other energy-related costs or resources can be adjusted at specified intervals.
It’s not uncommon to see aggregate prices for a road project (for instance) or development resource pricing be quite different across multiple bids, when the price of aggregate or development, for example, is not that elastic.
A great standard line in an RFP is, “In the case of a similar or tie bid, what differentiator could you add that would make your submission more attractive for our community to consider?”
Consider a Best and Final Offer (BAFO) strategy.
There is an old adage in the world of sales and procurement; if you don’t ask, you’ll never get. Be bold! You (the customer) are in the driver’s seat and the bidders want your business. Use that to your advantage.
Especially during second and further stages where inhouse pitches and presentations are made, this is the time for well-trained negotiation.
You don’t have to own everything. Consider “make vs. buy” comparisons. If you can find a product or service on the open market which will allow you to deliver the service without jeopardizing quality, use this as a productivity gain to help offset the problem you will be facing in the future as you experience staff attrition.
Always build detailed bid comparisons to easily see key elements of a bid, and consider using a weighted Decision Analysis tool (PUGH) to quantify the value proposition.