Navigating Downtime from Digital Transformation
Downtime is not your friend when it comes to running your insurance agency or any business for that matter. You’re not making any money; rather losing it, wasting time, your customers are not happy, and your staff is at a standstill until you can get back up and running.
Alright, so we all agree that downtime is bad for business.
This brings me to my next point...
Many agency owners believe undergoing a digital transformation project will cause major business disruption and therefore hold off on technology upgrades altogether. However, this doesn’t have to be the case if you can plan and prepare beforehand.
Let’s take a look at how you can navigate downtime from digital transformation projects.
Your mindset plays a larger role in this than you may think. Digital transformation actually refers to the transformation of business and organizational activities, processes, competencies and models to enable organizations to use and exploit digital technologies to improve business processes and outcomes.
Not just the upgrading of technologies and applications itself.
Therefore, off the bat, if you feel like a project is going to cause major disruption, stress, and that it’s not worth your attention or time – you’re right.
Before you undergo any physical changes, you and your staff need to adopt the right mindset. As most projects impact a majority of your staff and anyone that is resistant to the change will not implement the new process or utilize the new tech.
It’s a good idea to get your team excited about the change, and really communicate the benefits to them. Will it make their job easier? How so?
Digital transformation doesn’t just mean get rid of your legacy system, nor do you have to change everything at once.
Start small.
This could be one tool you use, one application, software, program, hardware, etc. – just one change is all you need to get started on your digital transformation journey.
From there you can keep going.
Just getting the first project under your belt is a great steppingstone. You can learn a few things like:
what worked well
what didn’t
what you might improve upon for next time
how to communicate better
was more or less training needed
and so forth
Downtime is extended when there is no communication between you and your staff on the when, what, why’s, and how’s of the incident.
And poorly handled downtime equates to unhappy staff and customers. So, don’t lose a valuable team member or client because of a poorly handled situation.
Communication is what keeps your business alive throughout this time, so don’t lose it. Consider the following in no particular order:
When will you communicate downtime with your customers?
What channels of communication will you use?
Why did this happen?
How will you move forward?
Who owns what process?
Which leads into the next section…you can document all of this in your technology adoption plan, so there will be no question as to what to do and who is responsible for what since it will be documented.
Being prepared is a huge part of a smooth and easy transition when it comes to implementing new tech and just about anything for that matter. That’s because having a plan decreases the likelihood of confusion, chaos, disruption, and lower productivity levels.
Following a plan will let everyone involved know what they need to do and when they need to do it.
Think about these areas when creating your plan or you can follow along and make your plan here.
Your problem
The end-user solution
Testing
Communication strategy
Training
Support
Fortunately, managed service providers (MSPs) are a great asset to help you with your digital transformation project. We’ve been able to help other businesses through these projects, so we’ve got an upper hand when it comes to execution and what has worked well for others or maybe not so well.
With the help of your MSP during a digital transformation project, you can:
provide a better user experience
see faster project completion
have a more cost-effective solution
manage the project better
and more
Learn more on how an MSP can help your agency with new technology here.