Spotlight on Deloitte - How partners drive digital transformation and deliver value to customers

As we’ve seen from the previous two features on data and digital transformation ('What does the 'new age' Digital Transformation specialist look like?' and 'The opportunity for the channel in solving the Digital Transformation dilemma'), the biggest challenge organisations face when tackling digital transformation – at least as far as their data is concerned – is getting the executive vision and technological capabilities aligned.

Many organisations either put their data into deep data lakes, but lack the strategic vision to then use that data to execute value-adding disruption, or face an executive team with a grand vision of launching from nothing to a fully transformed environment, skipping the foundational steps in-between.

Tony Trewhella, a partner at Deloitte (an implementation partner of Domo), has been closely involved with helping customers approach transformation in a more measured manner. The solution is in reinforcing to those customers that the iterative approach to analytics is the successful one. In a video interview with Kevin McIsaac, Business Value Consultant, Domo, Trewhella explained the strength of the iterative approach to analytics.

“We use quick time to value [TtV] to reduce the risk associated with transformation,” he said. “We use a lot of showcases, and that is key because that allows us to co-design the solution with our clients. Domo lends itself to that process because the time to value is so quick."

“You can take a concept with your client, design and implement it, and then showcase it back quickly. Through these quick time to showcases, we can work in iterations and get feedback from the client. That then changes the way we design, which, in turn, reduces the risk from the process.”

Trewhella said solutions such as Domo make the technology side of data transformation straightforward for any technology team that understands what it is doing. The value add of an implementation partner like ourselves is in engaging with executives to provide thought leadership, and assist with structuring solutions so they can realise the value quickly and drive the change through the rest of the organisation.

“Transformation is as much about cultural change as it is about technology and systems,” he said. “Without the cultural change the transformation won’t be successful. At best you will only have a partial transformation."

“It’s important the customer goes on the journey and gets to the point of being empowered and enabled early in the process. Decision makers including executives need to get to the point of being self-serving. They need to be able to get their reports quickly, and they need to have access to the latest information. Modern business decisions must be made on current data. Trends are moving so fast that by using a report that was produced a week ago, you could be making wrong decisions."

“There’s inertia that comes with transformation which to overcome lends itself to culture and people change. Technology that is very simple to use, and allows an organisation to start small and expand, breaks down this inertia.”

The future of data

According to Trewhella, many organisations are still stuck in the process of collecting data and storing it in warehouses and lakes, without understanding what to do with it or how to extract real value from it in an agile and timely manner.

“Enterprise data warehouses being the sole source of supported data are a thing of the past,” Trewhella said. “Organisations that are successful with their data are leveraging the concept of data fabrics which sit on top of these legacy data assets, surfacing data for technology in a more agile manner."

“Domo lends itself to this data fabric concept, in that it has a number of connectors that can feed down into the data that sits underneath the data fabric and can deliver information in real time to reports and to dashboards."

“Organisations have more and more data at their disposal, and that has become a problem because bringing the right data together can be an overwhelming task in and of itself."

“Ultimately, the channel partner’s job is to keep a business focused on the outcomes of data transformation, and not just the collection and storage of data,” Trewhella said.

“Organisations always need to go back to what their core business strategy is as it's this core strategy that needs to cascade down into the organisation. So we, as our clients' trusted advisors, look at the organisation from how it needs to operate, the decisions that it needs to make, and how we can bring together people, processes and technologies that work around it,” he said.

To hear more stories like this, and learn how Domo is helping organisations to Reimagine Digital Transformation, head over to our webinar engagement hub Tune into Domo.