Business transformation is tough. Adapting the way you work in response to AI advances, supply chain disruption, seismic political shifts, and more can often draw focus and resources away from actually doing the work itself.
The other key characteristic of business transformation: it’s not going away.
Organizations that ignore the need for change find themselves constantly on the back foot, unable to take advantage of new opportunities, and in an endless loop of reactivity.
But even those businesses that know they need to change fall into a common trap: treating “transformation” as a project, something to be ticked off the list as “completed,” never to be thought of again. Until the next system-wide shock, that is.
Transformation as a capability
The organizations best placed for success are those that avoid both these approaches. They succeed by building their transformation muscle—the capacity to run multiple transformations, consistently and concurrently.
Let’s be clear: for modern enterprises, change is not something that happens as a time-limited or even clearly definable event. Change is much closer to an operational reality, something so intrinsically connected to how businesses work that it can’t be separated from decisions, processes, and all the other elements that allow an organization to function.
Assess your organization’s transformation readiness and see how to level up
“Most enterprises run four or more transformations a year. Building a repeatable transformation capability you can strengthen over time makes all the difference,” Dee Houchen, chief marketing officer for SAP LeanIX and SAP Signavio, says. “The capacity to adapt and transform is not just a competitive edge, it’s a basic business requirement. And so, knowing where your transformation strengths and weaknesses lie is critical to ensuring your business can function effectively in today’s complex environment.”
In other words, effective business transformation is just as important to the way a company works as any other aspect you could name. Organizations with the skills and knowledge to transform repeatedly and at scale, and to flexibly apply those skills and that knowledge in different contexts, will be those that survive and thrive.
So how can you determine whether your business has the right transformation muscles?
Assessing your capability
SAP has created a quick and easy online tool that can measure your organization’s transformation capability as it stands right now, so you can make the right decisions to build your business for the future.
Grounded in recent Forrester research assessing levels of business transformation management maturity around the globe, the tool uses this data as a baseline to assess transformation capability across five domains: strategy and leadership, applications and technology, process, data, and people.
Using self-reported information about your business, the tool can take less than 10 minutes to benchmark your capability against peers, as well as pinpoint strengths, gaps, and execution risks. But this is not simply a static information-gathering exercise. The tool can set your baseline, helping determine where your organizational strengths and weaknesses are. It’s up to you to take the next steps.
“The real value of this tool lies in using it to unlock value in your business,” Houchen says. “The baseline is important, but it’s the targeted, actionable recommendations that can really strengthen your transformation capability.”
“The tool provides recommendations across critical areas like executive commitment, strategic planning, technology modernization, process optimization, data management, and organizational culture—and some you can already start putting in place,” Houchen adds. “Within a matter of months, you can build a robust, repeatable transformation capability, or, if you’re more advanced already, continue to strengthen that capability and start to expand the possibilities for value-adding through transformation.”
Building your capability
The transformation maturity assessment tool can also go beyond organizational recommendations and can even provide insights on how you can best improve your underlying approach—the transformation mindset that can help drive future success. The tool can help you explore critical components like:
- The role of strategic commitment in enabling transformation
- Opportunities to modernize your technology foundation
- How processes support value-driven execution
- The best ways to manage transformation data
- How organizational culture supports empowerment and adaptability
“Using this tool helps ensure your readiness to navigate the complexities of modern business, turning business transformation from a project into a part of the operational fabric of your organization—a repeatable, scalable competitive advantage,” Houchen says.
Try the business transformation capability assessment tool for yourself.
Lucas de Boer is a marketing execution senior specialist at SAP.
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