We're all digital businesses now. Except we're not.

Why? Because digital transformation is a perpetual task. As new technologies emerge, customers' expectations evolve and the market changes, businesses can feel like they're aiming at a moving target and aren't getting anywhere.

If you're a leader accustomed to completing a project and moving on to the next challenge, this can be frustrating. If you're responsible for proving the value of digital investments, it can feel even worse.

After all, there's a lot at stake: according to Statista, global digital transformation spending is forecast to reach $3.4 trillion by 2026. Becoming digital first is big business.

All change

The numbers are big because digital transformation is about integrating digital technology into every single area of the business. That's what digital first means. It's about fundamentally changing the way your business gives its customers what they want. It's also a cultural change, because your entire workforce has to start working in new ways - changing not just how it operates, but also how it innovates and creates.

Some businesses are setting themselves up for this metamorphosis right from the start, with structures and attitudes that support perpetual change.

If you don't have these, you're probably already behind. According to McKinsey, over the past three years "the spread in digital and AI maturity between leaders and laggards has increased by 60%". To catch up, you need to:

• start thinking of digital transformation as a constant journey, rather than a one-off project;
• move away from top-down processes;
• focus on how to take the team with you;
• identify the new skills your business requires;
• be ready for emerging opportunities;
• iterate and scale with agility.

Change is everyone's business

The businesses that are ahead know that transformation can't be an entirely top-down process. C-suite leadership and engagement are critical, to send a clear message that digital transformation is existential: it's about the viability of the business.

But business leaders need to promote change through people from across the organisation who can provide perspective from every angle - from different functions and levels of seniority.

Microsoft, for instance, put the employee experience at the heart of its digital transformation, going as far as describing it as "an obsession". The company introduced measures and tools to get employees across regions, roles and seniority levels involved. Examples range from employee satisfaction surveys to in-app feedback and voluntary employee insider programmes.

Microsoft seems to have recognised that if digital transformation is a continuous process, it also becomes everyone's job. Every member of the workforce needs to get involved.

Not everyone will immediately feel comfortable with the changes, and it is important to offer support to all members of staff - or risk losing people. According to the 2023 UK Consumer Digital Index, 54% of the UK labour force is not able to do all the 20 digital tasks essential for work. One way to support them is by giving them the chance to gain new skills and tackle new challenges.

Where skills and knowledge aren't available internally, recruit new talent to fill any gaps. That may not always be straightforward: according to research from KfW, for instance, a third of German SMEs can't meet their digital skills requirements. In the UK, nearly half of start-ups across the tech industry rank a lack of staff with the right skills and hiring difficulties as their top two concerns. This is an area where SThree can help.

Tried and failed

Also make sure your people are invested in the changes. SThree, for instance, has set up transformation forums where staff from all over the organisation can suggest what the business should do next across multiple platforms and functions.

This kind of initiative makes employees part of the transformation process instead of having change imposed on them from above. That's not all: it can also generate a stream of new ideas and help leaders to get ahead of change.

What happens next is critical. The leading businesses encourage a culture of innovation by showing they can try out new ideas, scale the ones that work well and quickly move on from the ones that don't. Take Google, which by the end of 2022 had dumped no fewer than 267 products it thought could work but didn't - it's happy to try and even to fail.

Stay focused and remember where you're trying to get to

Although digital transformation is endless, it still needs discipline. It's easy to lose focus on long-running projects, but by setting clear targets for every new initiative, measuring performance against those targets and holding people responsible for sticking to schedules and budgets, you can keep your eyes on the prize.

"A change programme needs an overall narrative - the light on the hill that colleagues can aspire to," said John Fallon, who was CEO of educational publisher Pearson during its transformation into a digital-first organisation. "But it also needs to be broken into as many small, specific, practical actions as possible."

Discipline doesn't mean rigidity, though, because it's vital to take advantage of new opportunities as they emerge. The rapid advance of artificial intelligence over the past couple of years is a case in point: the organisations that have led on digital transformation have been quick to think about how generative AI, for instance, could create value for them.

Focus on your business outcomes instead of fixating on a specific technology. Insurer Allianz, for example, saw an opportunity to make its claims process easier using AI; the result was its '60-second claim' service, which enables customers to make a car insurance claim in less than a minute by uploading their photos and documents.

Get more digital with digital

At the root of all of this is agility: to be able to change direction quickly without jeopardising performance or service to your customers. As an agile business you can pivot at speed in response to new opportunities and sudden market changes while still doing what your business does best.

The good news is that the continuous process of digital transformation can be self-fulfilling. Technologies such as AI and cloud computing, for instance, will allow businesses to continually scan their internal and external environments. This will make them more agile, and better at perpetual transformation. How's that for a virtuous circle?

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