Choosing Where Transformation Actually Matters.

Leecox Omollo
Oct 16, 2023
3 min read

Updated: Jan 31

Most organizations agree that digital transformation matters. What is far less clear is where to focus limited time, capital, and leadership attention to produce meaningful results.

The challenge is not a shortage of opportunities. It is abundance. Nearly every part of the organization can be digitized, automated, or modernized in some way. Without clear choices, transformation efforts tend to spread thin—creating activity without corresponding impact.

Effective transformation begins with focus. Specifically, it requires leaders to decide which parts of the business deserve attention now, and which should wait. In practice, those decisions tend to fall across five distinct areas. The question is not whether all five matter, but which are most relevant given your customers, operating model, and constraints.

1. Creating Digital Products and Services

In some organizations, transformation fundamentally changes what is sold.

This may involve fully digital offerings, digitally enhanced versions of physical products, or hybrid experiences that blend the two. These efforts are often complex because they affect revenue models, customer expectations, and internal capabilities simultaneously.

Key questions for leadership include:

Are you creating new products, or adapting existing ones?
Should digital experiences replace physical ones, or selectively augment them?
Which aspects of the product benefit from digitization, and which do not?
How easily can customers move between digital and non-digital experiences?

Not every product benefits from becoming fully digital. In many cases, restraint and selectivity matter as much as innovation.

2. Enabling Digital Channels For Selling

For many organizations, transformation focuses on how customers discover, evaluate, and purchase products or services.

Digital channels—from eCommerce platforms to partner marketplaces and subscription models—have expanded rapidly. While this creates reach, it also introduces complexity across pricing, fulfillment, data, and customer experience.

Leadership decisions in this area include:

Which channels are aligned with customer behavior and brand expectations?
Where does owning the channel matter, versus partnering?
Should customers move seamlessly across channels, or be intentionally segmented?
What operational and data complexity do these choices introduce?

Channel expansion without integration discipline often creates friction rather than growth.

3. Enabling Customer Self-Service

A significant share of customer interactions remains routine and predictable: account access, order status, renewals, basic configuration, and replenishment.

Well-designed self-service can improve convenience for customers while freeing internal teams to focus on higher-value work. Poorly designed self-service, however, simply shifts frustration from employees to customers.

Important considerations include:

Which customer interactions are appropriate for self-service?
Should the emphasis be on responding to inbound requests or proactive outreach?
How will self-service integrate with customer data and human support?

Today’s automation and AI tools expand what is possible, but effectiveness still depends on data quality, clarity of ownership, and thoughtful design.

4. Digitizing Customer Support And Engagement

Not all customers prefer self-service. High-value customers, complex use cases, and technology-averse users often expect high-touch engagement.

For these segments, transformation is less about automation and more about enabling employees—with better information, clearer workflows, and faster decision support.

Leadership questions include:

Which customer-facing processes truly need digitization versus simplification?
Where does process redesign matter more than new systems?
How can teams be empowered to resolve issues without unnecessary escalation?

Digitizing inefficient processes rarely improves outcomes. Improving how people work often matters more than the tools they use.

5. Optimizing Internal And Back Office Processes

Some of the most impactful transformation opportunities are also the least visible.

Recurring customer complaints often originate in internal processes—order fulfillment, billing accuracy, inventory management, data quality, or exception handling. Improving front-end experiences without addressing these foundations typically moves problems rather than solving them.

Key considerations include:

Which internal processes create the most downstream friction?
Where do data inconsistencies drive cost, delay, or customer dissatisfaction?
Are back-office systems enabling the business, or constraining it?

Transformation that ignores internal foundations is difficult to sustain.

Choosing Where To Focus

These five areas are not mutually exclusive, and most organizations will address all of them over time. The real challenge lies in prioritization and sequencing.

Transformation efforts are most effective when leaders: