7 Digital transformation resolutions for 2023

The real question is: What are they doing with it?

The power of data lies beyond its mere existence. To truly understand the impact data brings, companies must embed it into their everyday culture, use it to make decisions, increase innovation and leverage it strategically to drive transformative change.

As we enter a new year, digital transformation goals are top-of-mind for business leaders — and data is at the core of their ability to achieve results. Gartner reports that by 2025, Chief Data Officers (CDOs) who establish real data value streams will significantly outperform(opens new window) their peers.

As we explore new ways to transform in 2023, what are the key emerging trends and strategies that truly deserve your attention? We’ve identified 7 key digital transformation resolutions to prioritize for the coming year.

In 2023, digital transformation will be about more than just having the right tech stack — it will be about establishing culture.

Companies that work to build an authentic culture of learning, embracing, and utilizing data will be best positioned to transform insights into revenue.

“For many companies, their ability to grow is contingent on having the right data skills. And it's not enough for those skills to be siloed within a 'data team', they need to be spread throughout the business," says Euan Blair, CEO of Multiverse.

The takeaway: a data-driven culture needs to be established at all levels.

Leaders that educate and upskill employees on how to leverage data on a regular basis and build enthusiasm around new data capabilities will build data-savvy organizations, equipped to navigate the challenges and opportunities of the future.

Data literacy — the ability to contextualize data and use it strategically — is a key result and benefit of efforts made around building a data-driven culture. It’s also what enables organizations to make the jump from simply having data to leveraging it strategically.

Forbes named digital and data literacy the top two(opens new window) most in-demand skills for the next 10 years, suggesting companies that can build it among their existing employees are likely to gain a quick competitive edge.

Like culture, data literacy requires employee engagement and building shared language around data.

The ability to make faster decisions driven by data has a proven impact on the bottom line — from identifying revenue generating opportunities via new insights, maximizing the ROI from critical technology investments and reducing consultancy spend by bringing more skills in-house.

Despite clear recognition of the digital skills imperative, the actual skills gap has only been increasing. McKinsey found that an alarming 87%(opens new window) of organizations report they either currently have a skills gap or expect to have one in the next few years.

Why are companies allowing this gap to grow?

Part of it is a perceived digital skills shortage — a simple lack of trained, capable workers to fill data and other digital roles. But a closer look shows that this isn’t the whole story.

A recent Salesforce report found that three-quarters(opens new window) of workers around the world say they’re not equipped for the digital skills businesses need, or for the future of work. And it’s no wonder — while 82% of workers say they plan to learn new skills in the next five years, just 28% are actively involved in learning and training programs today.

The problem is not a lack of employee ability or willingness to upskill, but rather a lack of access to programs that enable them to be successful. In fact, EY reports that ineffective upskilling is the number one barrier(opens new window) to a company’s ability to secure in-demand digital and technology-related skills.

In 2023, it will be up to CIOs, CDOs, and other business leaders to step up their game in this area. One proven way to do it is through apprenticeships — programs that use applied learning to upskill current employees and onboard new talent.

Even companies that are data-driven by nature are finding value in these programs for elevating their capabilities. Consumer trends forecaster WGSN recently partnered with Multiverse to launch their own apprenticeship program, which has had immediate client-facing impacts.

“In terms of retaining clients, identifying and taking advantage of upsell opportunities, the data acceleration program has had a direct impact,” explained Ryan Keane, VP of Data Analytics. “A lot of businesses didn’t realize just how much data and analytics WGSN had available to support their project goals. Once they saw how embedded data was in our forecasting process, it helped us win new business.”

Given the sheer volume, speed, and scale at which we generate and use data today, businesses are increasingly turning to artificial intelligence to realize data’s full value.

AI technology mines and analyzes data to uncover insights that would be impossible to find using traditional methods. Augmented analytics and capabilities like natural language processing ensure companies can pull insights from unstructured and/or non-numerical data for maximum ROI.

Forrester predicts that in 2023, AI will become a board-level topic, with one in four(opens new window) tech leaders reporting directly to their board on AI governance. A critical part of digital transformation will be building the right skill sets across various teams to leverage AI tools and insights effectively.

Scott Francis, Technology Evangelist at PFU America, a Fujitsu company, foresees an interesting use case for AI in 2023 — one in which AI enables greater data lineage and enhances employee skills and training.

“The lack of insight caused by the ‘black hole’ of dark data will continue to plague companies in 2023, including the loss of knowledge every time an employee leaves the company,” Scott noted.

“This knowledge gap will lead organizations to leverage AI to classify employee knowledge, making sure everything is captured and searchable, thus enabling team members and new employees to quickly ramp up rather than starting from ground zero.”

Today we hear endlessly about the customer experience — why it’s important, how it’s changed, the evolving expectations around it, and how to deliver one that consistently wins new business.

But what about other stakeholders?

With any change initiative, a common misstep business leaders make is focusing so intently on the customer experience that they look right past another critically important stakeholder group: your employees.

Communication is key. According to McKinsey(opens new window), businesses with the highest transformation success rates place more focus on engaging employees through the process.

Digital transformation inevitably means great change for employees — many who have spent years or even decades building expertise with certain tools and workflows. Leaders must be sensitive to the impact of this change and build employee engagement by helping them succeed.

The business world is officially moving to the cloud. Long on its way, the pandemic accelerated migration timelines for many organizations — and it’s not slowing down.

Gartner predicts that by 2025, 85%(opens new window) of organizations will embrace a cloud-first principle and be unable to execute digital strategies without cloud-native architectures and technologies. Further, 95% of new digital workloads will be deployed on cloud-native platforms.

The rise of remote work and the new norm of anywhere-access to important data and digital workspaces are just two important reasons why cloud is becoming such an imperative.

Business leaders hesitant to make the jump often have misconceptions about what it means to migrate to the cloud. Multi-cloud and hybrid cloud options allow organizations to maintain the legacy infrastructures they need or take a phased approach to adopting new ones that meet modern business demands.

Cloud computing also significantly levels up a company’s ability to store, manipulate, and distribute data across the organization more quickly, securely, and without geographic barriers.

Looking to the future, Milind Govekar, Vice President at Gartner, put it succinctly(opens new window): “There is no business strategy without a cloud strategy.”

Today, we're more interconnected than ever across internal business units and between organizations. A major advantage to this increased connectivity is a greater ability to collaborate and access different perspectives around any given topic, initiative, or long-term strategy.

Software applications — particularly platform technology solutions — have facilitated this type of ongoing collaboration on a day-to-day basis as employees and teams can work in the same digital space, communicate through its channels, and see new updates and changes in real time.

Perhaps most importantly, collaboration enables a holistic upskilling experience for employees as they learn from each other’s knowledge and skills, maintaining open lines of communication to ask questions, get feedback, and work together on projects to maximize diverse data skill sets.

Facilitating this type of interaction should be a priority for leaders as we enter the new year.

According to business leaders like Will Yang, Head of Growth at non-profit fundraising platform Instrumentl, “the best way to close internal data skills gaps is to be willing to ask for help and learn from others.”

“It's important to be willing to ask for help because the key to closing these gaps is building a culture of learning and sharing,” explained Will. “You can't do that without being willing to share your own knowledge and expertise with others, which means it's not just about finding people who have the skills you need but also working together with them so you can both grow and learn more.”

Most of all, the vision of company leaders is the driving force behind digital transformation.

When time and financial investments are allocated to the right initiatives — building culture, adopting the right tools, and creating a skilled workforce — leaders create organizations that are both equipped for the present and prepared for the future.

Multiverse can be your partner in leveraging apprenticeships to upskill current employees and add new data talent to your company. Our programs are designed to help your organization gain a competitive advantage while maximizing the ROI on your talent investments.

Learn more about our apprenticeship programs or get in touch today to explore opportunities.