How to Create a

Digital Transformation
Strategy Roadmap

www.jibility.com © Jibility Pty Ltd 2018

Foreword

If you already know what digital transformation is and why you’d

want to undertake it, then the next step is to learn how.

There are plenty of articles out there with generic advice about everything you
need to consider, but much of it is common sense to the seasoned strategist.
You’ve got the bones, but no meat.

So, with the help of example company RedYabber, we’re going to delve
into the nitty-gritty and take you step-by-step through the process of
creating a digital transformation strategy roadmap.

The process involves answering six fundamental questions,

each of which flows logically into the next:

1. Why do we need a digital transformation?

2. What must we achieve in order to transform?

3. What exactly do we need to transform?

4. What changes are required in order to transform?

5. What packages of change should we form to execute

the transformation?

6. How do we sequence the packages of change over a

transformation time horizon?

Without further ado, let’s dive in.

Chuen Seet
Co-founder of Jibility

www.jibility.com © Jibility Pty Ltd 2018

Our Digital Transformation Model Company:
RedYabber

RedYabber’s Vision

Reaching the heart of every child through

imaginative play the natural way.

RedYabber is a traditional wooden toy company that sells its

products through local and global retail outlets. With the advent
of online markets, such as eBay, and manufacturing and supply
chain automation, RedYabber has begun to struggle to rival its
competitors on price, speed of delivery, reach and quality.

Its vision, as above, hasn’t changed – but the business goals

have. The leadership team has decided that it’s time to embrace
digital ways of working and undertake a digital transformation.

They have set out with four clear goals, to be achieved in the
next three years:

1. Automate manufacturing and warehousing for just-in-

time delivery to reduce inventory and product cost.

2. Decision making based on data, not intuition.

3. Market and sell online – reduce dependency on

traditional retailers.

4. Develop innovative wooden toys that provide children

and parents with an alternative to digital devices.

www.jibility.com © Jibility Pty Ltd 2018

STEP 1
Why do we need digital transformation?
Firstly, here’s a quick recap of some of the common reasons for pursuing digital transformation:

• To improve customer experience

• To improve efficiency
• To improve decision-making
• To outstrip the competition

These all sound pretty relevant to RedYabber, and most likely to your own organization too.

The starting point of a strategy roadmap for digital transformation is to articulate the
challenges faced by your organization. A clear list of challenges will keep you aligned with your
strategic vision or goals and heading in the right direction.

Keep in mind that a challenge is not just a problem;

it can also be an opportunity.

When the RedYabber team sat down to lay out their challenges, they identified six core ones. Of
course, they actually have more, but for the sake of this walkthrough we’ll keep things concise.

www.jibility.com © Jibility Pty Ltd 2018

STEP 2
What must we achieve in order to transform?
For each challenge, identify at least one objective.

An objective will specify what must be achieved within the time horizon (three years for
RedYabber) in order for digital transformation to be successful.

To illustrate what we mean, here are RedYabber’s nine objectives as linked to their challenges:

You may notice that some of these objectives aren’t specific to digital (e.g. ‘reduce order to
dispatch time by 50%’).

There’s a simple reason for this: digital transformation, or digital, is just an enabler. The
question is how digital technologies can be applied in order to achieve the objective.

www.jibility.com © Jibility Pty Ltd 2018

STEP 3
What do we need to transform?
Digital transformation is about creating capabilities, not just products and definitely not just
projects. Capabilities are simply the building blocks of a business that enable it to do what it
does.

To understand what capabilities are needed for digital

transformation, start by creating a capability map.

As the word ‘map’ suggests, this is a visual that displays all of the capability building blocks that
make up the business (or an area of it).

With this in hand, review each capability and determine:

a) Does the capability deliver or help us to meet our objectives?

b) What level of change is required in order to meet our objectives?

c) What is the priority for implementing the change?

Remember to consider each capability from people, process and physical perspectives, i.e. what
changes would be required to each of these aspects of the business. In the case of digital
transformation, ‘physical’ is often replaced with ‘technology’.

You should then develop the visual to communicate the answers to these questions.

This means using colour coding and simple labelling systems to indicate the relationship of the
capabilities to each other and to the digital transformation objectives (see our RedYabber
example on the next page).

www.jibility.com © Jibility Pty Ltd 2018

STEP 3 CNTD.

Legend

RedYabber have also ensured

1 clear linkage between
capabilities and objectives by
adding the number of the
objective (assigned in the
previous step) to the relevant
capability. For example, the
‘Digital Leadership’ capability is
linked to the Objective 1: ‘Appoint
a Digital Transformation Lead
within the next three months.’

Lastly, green stars have been

assigned to those capabilities
RedYabber have applied a heatmapping considered a priority, indicating
technique as per the above legend to indicate whether the priority is high,
the current states of their capabilities and sub- medium or low. For example, the
capabilities. ‘Digital Leadership’ capability is
a high priority for RedYabber.

www.jibility.com © Jibility Pty Ltd 2018

STEP 4
What changes are required to transform?
Once you’ve established the current state of your capabilities and the required future state, you
need to plan how to get from one to the other.

For each capability, list the actions which must be completed in order to meet the linked
objective. Your focus should of course be on the capabilities that are a priority, meet objectives
and require change.

Here’s a sample of the courses of action required for six of RedYabber’s capabilities:

Courses of action should consider the people,

process and physical (or technological) changes
required to a capability.

The people, cog and spanner icons against each course of action in the RedYabber example
indicate whether the action primarily relates to people, process or technology respectively.

www.jibility.com © Jibility Pty Ltd 2018

STEP 5
What packages of change should we form to
execute the transformation?
You’ll end up with quite a large number of courses of action, so the next step is to group them
into logical packages, which we’ll refer to as initiatives.

Depending on the level of granularity defined, an initiative can be a project or a program.

Here’s a sample of six initiatives from RedYabber:

www.jibility.com © Jibility Pty Ltd 2018

STEP 6
How do we sequence the packages of change
over a transformation time horizon?
Your list of initiatives feeds directly into a roadmap for the digital transformation strategy.

For RedYabber, the initiatives must be sequenced across the three-year time horizon that they
have set themselves for digital transformation. In their roadmap, the columns signify five time-
boxed stages to ensure that everything is spread logically and attainably over the three years.

The rows split up strategic themes, e.g. the initiatives relating to marketing are positioned
within one row. This makes sense since initiatives that are similar may be reliant on each other
or may be natural progressions of each other.

www.jibility.com © Jibility Pty Ltd 2018

Summarizing and communicating your
roadmap
After completing the six steps, you have the answers to the why, what and how of digital
transformation.

The style and order in which you present this content can vary. Some organizations are formal
and prefer their strategy roadmap in a Word® document; others are informal and prefer theirs
in PowerPoint®. We like to keep things concise and visual by printing it on an A3 page for easy
sharing.

The back page of this guide features RedYabber’s strategy roadmap, complete with the top five
challenges, top seven objectives and top ten capabilities.

How Jibility can help

RedYabber’s diagrams in this document were created using Jibility, an app dedicated to building
strategy roadmaps.

Jibility gives you access to pre-defined building blocks, developed by business and IT consulting
experts, so that you can build your strategy roadmap for a fraction of the time, cost and effort.

Starting your free trial with Jibility (no credit card required) also provides you with access to the
actual strategy roadmaps for RedYabber and another sample company, InsureNorth. To further
help you get on your way, we provide live chat support in the app, or you can simply email us
directly at [email protected].

Sign up at www.jibility.com

www.jibility.com © Jibility Pty Ltd 2018

Strategy Roadmap 1-pager
Why, what and how should we achieve
our strategic intent?

Top 5 Challenges

Lacking Digital skills and major mindset shift Manufacturing and logistics processes are labour Products are marketed and sold through traditional Lacking data and advanced analytics capabilities
1 Lacking Digital Transformation leadership 2 required for a Digital Culture
3 intensive
4 retailers
5 for insights and data driven decision making

Top 7 Objectives
Appoint a Digital Transformation Reduce labour intensive effort in Key performance metrics across
Raise Digital competency across Reduce order to dispatch time by Online sales are over 70% of Data is an asset, is managed and
1 Leader within the next three 2 the organisation to at least Level 2
3 manufacturing and logistics by at 4 50%
5 overall sales
6 owned
7 the RedYabber value chain are
months least 60% measured and reported

Roadmap Top 10 Capabilities

3 years
Time Horizon

Digital Leadership
Stage 1 Stage 2 Stage 3 Stage 4 Stage 5

Digital
Transformation Digital Leadership Digital Strategy Digital Awareness (Level Agile Thinking Training Digital Collaboration
Program Appointed Developed, Endorsed and
Communicated
1) Training (Level 2) Training
Production Automation

Customer Experience Customer Relationship Customer Support & Self New Customer
Designed Platform Implemented Service Platform Experience Operating
Customers &
Marketing
Implemented Model Established
Digital Marketing
Management
Digital Marketing Website and Sales Digital Marketing Digital Marketing
Strategy Defined & Platform Implemented Platform Implemented Campaign Kicked Off
Endorsed

Warehousing Operating Warehouse Automation Warehouse Automation Information Security

Model Redefined Pilot Implemented
Order, Fulfillment Management
and Dispatch

Online Order Order Fulfillment

Management System Improved
Implemented

Information Technology
Innovation Management Agile Solutions Delivery Management
Capability Established Capability Established

Production Automation Production Automation Production Automation

Pilot Stage 1 Implemented Stage 2 Order Fulfillment
Products &
Automation

Value Chain Sensors Value Chain Sensors

Pilot Implemented

Customer Experience
Workflow Platform Business Process
Implemented Automation
Implemented

Order Management
Data Management Data Management Data Analytics Platform Data Analytics Pilot Data Analytics Function
Strategy & Governance Platform Implemented Implemented Completed Established
Data Analytics & Established
Data Management

Information Security
Risk Assessment
Information Security
Management
Enterprise Data Management
Established

Cloud Services Cloud Platform RedYabber Systems RedYabber IT

Implemented Transitioned to Cloud Operations Restructured Data Analytics

© Jibility Pty Ltd 2018 Page 1/1