Digital Transformation in Aging Services
Content
1. Purpose of White Paper
The purpose of this paper is to aid LeadingAge members and aging service provider organizations in understanding the concept and importance of digital transformation. Building digital capabilities is important, because the process can transform your organization by streamlining and automating processes, thereby driving efficiencies, reducing burdens, accruing savings, and helping you address workforce issues.
1.2 Executive Summary
This white paper defines digital transformation and its benefits to aging services, then presents multiple pointers on how to achieve this transformation.
Digital transformation is the process and journey of using digital technologies to create new—or modify existing—organizational processes, culture, and resident and staff experiences to meet changing business and market requirements. While technology platforms are a key element, digital transformation is more than installing a single solution. It begins and ends with how you think about, and engage with, residents and staff.
Digital transformation begins and ends with how you think about, and engage with, residents and staff.
Why Digital Transformation Matters
Several factors affecting the industry make digital transformation critical for today’s senior living organizations. Staffing issues are challenging the aging services sector, especially after the COVID-19 pandemic. The amount of data that organizations generate, need, and use is growing exponentially. Demand for bandwidth has kept pace with skyrocketing data needs.
Fortunately, digital technologies have evolved to be much more useful and efficient in supporting processes than ever before, making the situation ripe for digital transformation.
Benefits
Digital transformation is important in aging services because it increases productivity and reduces labor costs, improves the resident and employee experience, and drives innovation. The positive outcomes of this process can be a market differentiator for the organization.
Key Elements
The white paper outlines the elements your organization needs to achieve digital transformation, starting with buy-in from your leadership. The building blocks on the technology end include ensuring you have a strong operational backbone and digital platform. An iterative approach to engaging customers, residents, and employees to gain their insights is important, as is an accountability framework for product managers.
If an organization successfully adopts the first four building blocks of digital transformation, customer demand for new and more-refined offerings eventually will outpace its ability to deliver. Then, developing an external developer platform allows a company to supplement its own offerings with those of partners who specialize in other areas.
Application Areas Primed for Digital Transformation
Several areas are primed for digital transformation, especially in aging services organizations. To guide your organization’s journey, the white paper highlights potential use cases and their potential benefit in these areas: back-office operations, clinical care, resident/client support services, dining services, facilities/maintenance management, and customer relationship management.
Planning For Digital Transformation
The first step in pursuing digital transformation is to revisit your strategic plan and look at your strategic goal from a digital transformation perspective, considering the following questions:
- Can your organization leverage digital transformation concepts, especially automation, robotic process automation, robotics, and other technologies readily available to help you achieve your goals more efficiently and/or cost-effectively?
- If so, what new technologies do you need to consider for each strategic goal?
- What do you need to have in place in terms of digital backbone, infrastructure, and competencies (either internal or outsourced through partners)?
Next, assess the organization’s digital maturity to ensure that all key team members are ready. If the answer is yes, create a governance structure steering committee and other focus committees to support the process.
When it is time for detailed planning and implementation, assemble an implementation team with skills in diverse areas. Lastly, create a structure and process for digital transformation. Involve members of multiple departments and residents in understanding the digital transformation goals and be sure to create an evaluation framework.
The first step is to revisit your strategic plan and look at your strategic goal from a digital transformation perspective.
How to Scale
The white paper concludes with pointers on how to scale your organization’s digital transformation. As in the beginning of the digital transformation process, focusing on the right goals will enable the organization to think differently and scale efficiently.
Often, scaling is misconstrued as digitalizing every part of the business, independently. Instead, building and nurturing a platform to create micro services for external and internal developer platforms that the business can leverage will help scale efficiently.
A smart strategy is to create platforms that can scale not only the infrastructure but also the outcomes. This approach will be easier when innovation and access are scaled across all enterprise processes, not just in IT. In addition, cloud adoption, enablement, and usage effectively aid scaling. Future customers are not waiting for incremental value addition. Rapid value addition is possible only when the backbone is made available and can provide the elasticity needed.
In simple words, scaling efficiently is a combination of a platform ecosystem that enables interoperable services with access to all the stakeholders, providing value-added insights to give an effective user experience. It is an integration of technology, business, and people.
2. Digital Transformation: What It Means
2.1 Definition[i]
Digital transformation is the process and journey of using digital technologies to create new—or modify existing—organizational processes, culture, and resident and staff experiences to meet changing business and market requirements. This reimagining of your business or organization in the digital age is the beginning of digital transformation.
It transcends traditional roles like sales, marketing, and customer service. Instead, digital transformation begins and ends with how you think about, and engage with, residents and staff. As we move from paper to spreadsheets to smart applications for managing our organization, we have the chance to reimagine how we do business—how we engage our residents and staff—with digital technology on our side facilitating and supporting our strategies and operations.
Not engaging staff meaningfully may create perceptions that new technology will replace staff.
2.2 The 3 Ps of Digital Transformation[ii]
Digital Transformation consists of three main elements, collectively known as the 3 Ps: people first, process second, and platform/technology third.
2.2.1 People
People are the first of the three key elements of digital transformation. To have a successful digital transformation journey, organizations need to look at the existing personnel or internal stakeholders, their roles, and their skill sets. Internal stakeholders (senior level executives, managers, care team members, activity directors, etc.) need clarity regarding their roles and responsibilities in any transformation project. Clarity in turn facilitates buy-in, decision-making, technology selection, process deployment/optimization, and recruitment.
Many organizations fall into the trap of concentrating too heavily on technology and processes while overlooking the people involved, which can be detrimental. Not engaging staff meaningfully in digital transformation may create perceptions that new technology and processes are being deployed to replace staff, as opposed to streamlining processes, supporting them in their roles, and reducing their burdens.
Moreover, organizations need to assess their staff’s digital skill set and understanding. Do they currently possess the appropriate experience and knowledge to execute digital transformation? Do they require more training, can they be trained, or should new staff be brought in to achieve the set goals? Do current employees require upskilling, or teaching employees to perform current jobs in new ways using technology? Or do they need reskilling, which involves teaching employees new skills to transition into different jobs and career paths?
The other side of any digital transformation’s “people” category is the external component—residents, customers, clients, and/or supporters such as family members, care partners, and volunteers. As organizations adopt digital transformation, the same process that was applied internally must also be applied externally. This process is about identifying external stakeholders, understanding their needs and how they use the products and services, and understanding how digital transformation changes such as integrating new technology or establishing new workflows will impact them.
2.2.2 Process
A process is a sequence of steps/actions that combine to achieve a specific goal. Process in digital transformation mostly defines the “how.” For example, how do we utilize people and technology to solve the business problem? How do we achieve the desired result?
One of the main objectives of any digital transformation is identifying, analyzing, and improving existing business processes. Process improvement aims to eliminate weak points, inefficiencies, or bottlenecks in business operations to accomplish the following:
- Improve productivity, efficiency, utilization, and quality.
- Reduce operational budget by effectively using assets and resources.
- Eliminate waste and duplication of tasks.
- Reduce friction in business processes.
- Improve the staff, resident, or client experience.
- Reduce process completion time.
Here are some examples of three questions that providers have used to look at process:
- How can we employ digital technology to standardize and automate processes that are repetitive and redundant?
- How can digital technology help us organize data to provide faster, more accurate and more predictive views on our business?
- How do we leverage digital technology to generate and act on meaningful customer insights that can help improve our services?
One of the main objectives of any digital transformation is identifying, analyzing, and improving existing business processes.
2.2.3 Platforms (Technology)
The platform/technology element provides the digital technology tools that people can use to implement the process. Some organizations invest heavily in technology to achieve strategic advantages. The people and process are a secondary priority. After acquiring new technology, they will typically try to fit the people and processes into this new technology framework. However, this approach does not result in the best outcomes. No digital transformation journey can be successful without combining the right people with the right process and the right technology.
2.3 Concepts Related to Digital Transformation[iii]
2.3.1 Digitization
Digitization refers to creating a digital representation of physical objects or attributes. For instance, we scan a paper document and save it as a PDF or other digital document. In other words, digitization is about converting something non-digital into a digital representation or artifact. Computerized systems can then use it for various use cases. An example from manufacturing would be when a measurement is converted from a manual or mechanical reading to an electronic one.
Digitization is foundational. It connects the physical world and computer software. This is what we been doing since the 1960s. Digitization is an enabler for all the processes that provide business value because of the need for consumable data.
2.3.2 Digitalization
Digitalization refers to enabling or improving processes by leveraging digital technologies and digitized data. Therefore, digitalization presumes digitization. In business, digitalization is used to accomplish various goals, such as increasing operational efficiency, reducing costs, minimizing human errors, and enabling data analysis. Businesses can create new revenues and value-producing opportunities through digitalization.
Such example can be seen in the banking industry. Banks have developed online banking systems that allow real-time transfers without the need to go to the bank. Details in a customer’s application forms are digitized and used to allow easy transfers within accounts. Digitalization can ease workflows for both the organization and its clients, increasing efficiency in the business.[iv]
Digitalization increases productivity and efficiency, while reducing costs. Digitalization improves existing business processes but does not change or transform them. It takes a process from a human-driven event to software-driven one.
This is truly a journey, a way of thinking, a culture, and a posture, and not a destination or a once-and-done activity.
2.3.3 Digital Transformation Journey
Digital transformation is really business transformation enabled by digitalization. It goes one step further than digitalization by using digital technologies to create new or fundamentally different business models. The “digital” moniker is a little bit of a misnomer, because the essence of digital transformation is the changing of business processes enabled or forced by digitalization technologies. It is worth emphasizing that this is truly a journey, a way of thinking, a culture, and a posture, and not a destination or a once-and-done activity. Digital transformation continues to unfold because technology, stakeholders’ needs, and business needs evolve with time.
2.4 What Makes Digital Transformation Possible?
In the last few decades, digital technology has progressed exponentially, disrupting lives globally in previously unimaginable ways. Three laws, all exponential in mathematical nature, explain this progress and rapid growth.[1]
2.4.1 Processing (Moore’s Law)
This law says that every 18 months, our computers will have twice as much power to process information. We can achieve this expansion by increasing the number of transistors in chips, changing the way we design chips from 2D to 3D, changing the material we use to make chips from silicone to graphite, or moving toward using quantum computing.
2.4.2 Communication (Butter’s Law)
This law states that the amount of data communicated through a single optical fiber doubles every nine months. There is a variant of this law for other sorts of communication media, whether it be a wireline like ADSL or VDSL or wireless such as 3G, LTE, and 5G.
2.4.3 Storage (Kryder’s Law)
This law states that the amount of data stored per centimeter square of a hard drive will double every 13 months. The trend has recently slowed down to double every 16 or 17 months but remains faster than Moore’s law.
2.5 What Makes Digital Transformation an Imperative Today?
- Staffing issues are challenging businesses in general, and the aging services sector in particular, especially after the COVID-19 pandemic.
- The amount of data we generate, need, and use is growing exponentially[v].
- Digital technologies have evolved to be much more useful and efficient in supporting processes than ever before. A good example is advertising. Digital technology combined with online advertising engines such as Google and Facebook can quickly take in and test a wide variety of photographs, messages, and calls to action. You can arrive at the best-performing combination of content cheaper and faster than ever before.
- Demand on bandwidth is growing exponentially. Nielsen’s law notes that the demand on bandwidth from internet users increases by 50% year over year, making the growth in demand on communications bandwidth also exponential[vi].
2.6 Approaches to Digital Transformation in Aging Services
2.6.1 Employee-Focused Approach
An internal employee approach looks primarily at how to leverage digital technology to enhance employee experience, performance, and efficiencies, especially in back-office administrative tasks that do not necessarily involve residents or clients directly. Examples are automating administrative tasks like claim submissions/resubmissions or using cleaning robots to assist maintenance staff with nighttime cleaning.
2.6.2 Resident/Client-Focused Approach
A resident/client-focused approach looks at ways to enhance and enable new services and offerings to residents/clients using technology to meet or exceed their needs and/or wants. This approach may include a digital platform to enhance resident engagement and connectedness through interactive programing and a virtual portal.
2.6.3 Dual-Focus Hybrid Approach
Some applications of digital transformation, such as introducing telehealth, may entail engaging both staff and residents/ clients in the journey simultaneously. Examples of use cases can be found in Section 6, Application Areas Primed for Digital Transformation.
3. Why Is Digital Transformation Important in Aging Services?
Digital transformation is critical to the future sustainability of aging services providers. It is more than simply keeping up with other sectors or industries; in fact, there are several compelling reasons why digital transformation is so elemental.
3.1 Increases Productivity/Reduces Labor Costs
Providers have long anticipated an increase in the number of prospective clients that we serve. National Investment Center Data suggests that the Baby Boomer generation (1946 – 1964) comprises more than 75 million older adults. It is estimated that as much as 75% of those Boomers battle multiple chronic healthcare conditions.
What has not been clear until recently is that this population bubble sits squarely at an intersection of a national caregiver shortage. The U.S. Department of Labor is projecting that by 2030, there could be as much as a 46% increase in demand for aging services, yet there is a shortage of caregivers across the entire spectrum of aging services. The American Prospect suggests that this surge may create as many as 1 million new home care jobs in the United States. The American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN) projects that by 2030, there may be a shortage of almost 1.5 million nurses. Projections soar to as many as 9 million people by 2030 across the spectrum of care services provided by aging services.
Organizations can leverage digital transformation to dramatically increase efficiencies and create more productivity for roles throughout the aging services spectrum.
The challenge is sophisticated, and the recipe for solving this challenge involves a number of ingredients. Some of the ingredients include things like attracting and retaining staff, creating quality care jobs and career ladders, offering higher wages, encouraging more men to the industry, and re-skilling people from other industries. However, perhaps one of the strongest ingredients is digital transformation.
Organizations can leverage digital transformation to dramatically increase efficiencies and create more productivity for roles throughout the aging services spectrum. This white paper will spell out examples of these opportunities, which include things like self-service opportunities, process optimization, automation, and robotics.
3.2 Improves Resident/Employee Experience
Many providers continue to learn about expectations from some of the youngest workforce members in aging services. The next generation of professionals in our space share some optimistic characteristics. Many of them have a real sense of wanting to fulfill a mission or purpose. Almost all have received some level of post-high-school education, and many have bachelor’s or master’s degrees. These academic experiences are giving workforce members significant exposure to technology, and many workers expect to use technology as they enter our workforce.
Digital transformation creates opportunities for providers to attract and engage with future workforce members in a meaningful way. Digital transformation provides many opportunities for our organizations to gain relevant exposure with future workforce members. Brand, image, and online presence are effective ways to sell our services and recruit and attract future talent. Many other industries are using social platforms like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube. Aging services needs to get very intentional about using these platforms to attract and retain talent.
Once new workforce members have joined our organizations, we need to ensure that we engage them with meaningful work and with technology. New workforce members will quickly identify inefficient processes and become dissatisfied with mundane activities that could be automated. Providers need to become process experts and look for opportunities to automate as many processes as they can to allow staff to practice at the top of their credentials in their role and to fulfill meaningful, gratifying, and mission-based work.
3.3 Drives Innovation
Several aging services providers who have been leading the efforts on digital transformation will attest that digital transformation is a cultural contributor to innovation. Once you get in and break down processes to analyze what is necessary and provide ways to automate those things, it spurs an innovative mindset. Then, many staff members want to look for more opportunities to digitally transform workflows and processes. While digital transformation can be difficult to start, once going it often quickly builds momentum.
Digital transformation will be a differentiator for many aging services providers.
3.4 Market Differentiator
The byproduct of digital transformation will be a differentiator for many aging services providers. Technology-savvy residents and clients are increasingly expecting digital engagement, transparency, and self-service platforms. The residents of today, let alone tomorrow, will anticipate things like resident engagement platforms for digital sign-ups, online orders, online bill pay, and communication with the community. They will also expect basics like high-speed Wi-Fi, cable television, and telephone services.
Many older Americans have already incorporated the use of technologies like voice-driven artificial intelligence (AI) devices such as Alexa, Google, and Siri. They will want to continue to use these technologies if they move into a community setting or when receiving service from an aging services provider in their own home.
Wearable technologies have become very popular among older adults, and future residents will have a desire to share valuable biometric and physical activity information with their trusted providers to collaborate on their health. Communities that can accommodate and foster the use of these technologies will not only benefit from increased marketability, but also become better care and services providers because of the data and insights these technologies yield.
Furthermore, digital transformation can keep staff members who are fulfilled by their work engaged. They will remain devoted to their work if they can communicate and collaborate with their employer and if they have the tools to efficiently do meaningful work and make positive contributions.
4. Prerequisites for Digital Transformation
As with any organizational transformation, some steps should be taken at the journey’s outset. This section highlights the activities that will bring a smoother digital transformation journey and better outcomes.
4.1 Strong Support from Leadership/Board and Long-term Commitment
Any long-term project an organization may undertake—from adding a new clinical product line or expertise, expanding footprint to additional locations, or even implementing a new accounting or electronic medical records system—requires support, guidance, and buy-in from all levels of governance.
Just as a business plan with clearly articulated goals, objectives, and financial projections is good practice for startups, a business plan for digital transformation is also required. Support and guidance from the C-suite as well as the board and committee members will ensure the project is taken seriously, has sufficient resources, and garners a higher likelihood of success.
Support and guidance from the C-suite, board, and committee members will ensure the project is taken seriously.
4.2 Digital-Focused Innovation Culture/Posture
What does it mean to have a digital-focused innovation culture? Does it mean that we digitize every single thing that we do? No. At the end of the day, aging services is about people providing care for people, and no one wants to marginalize that.
Consider the way that a person sits in a chair or stands in front of other people during a conversation: a person’s posture. Organizations can also have a “posture” around digital transformation. This posture will likely look very different for every organization. What is important for one organization may not be as important or elemental for another.
An organization’s digital transformation posture may include a philosophy to innovate, explore new ways of doing things, and evaluate opportunities to migrate analog processes to digital ones with more desirable outcomes, as often as possible. It may include something like “start with digital,” where an organization looks at a process to see if it can be digitized. It may incorporate phrases like “innovation culture,” “lab mentality,” or “not afraid to fail,” suggesting that the organization will try new things to see what does and does not work.
Whatever your digital transformation posture is, the most important part is communicating that posture to the rest of the organization and then practicing that culture consistently.
A current and future-state analysis should be conducted to determine if the organization is positioned for this transformation. Are there systems in place, or on the planning horizon, to move toward a digital innovation culture, or are many business and operational processes based on manual processes and paper flow? Is there a willingness for staff to embrace change, or is there a culture of keeping everything in the status quo?
4.3 Resources
Are the technical, financial, human, and other resources in place and available for this change? Is there a willingness to invest in digital transformation and the many precursors necessary to succeed, as discussed in the previous section?
From a high level, the technical resources should include the following:
- Reliable, redundant, up-to-date Local Area Network (LAN) and Wide Area Network (WAN), including sufficient broadband internet services from multiple carriers via diverse routes.
- Ubiquitous Wi-Fi throughout the community with sufficient spare bandwidth capacity.
- IT Steering Committee to review, vet, and approve technology investments.
- Cyber Security posture to insure a safe and secure data network.
Financial resources include the following:
- Budgeting and funding current IT infrastructure spend and upgrades.
- Commitment from the board and the finance teams to continuously fund digital transformation efforts.
- Fundraising and vendor partnerships to ensure a pipeline of investments and tools.
Human resources include the following:
- Continuous training and investment in all levels of staff across the enterprise.
- Willingness to augment training and modification of job titles and responsibilities as new systems and processes are adopted.
Advanced data analytics capabilities are becoming increasingly important to meaningful digital transformation.
4.4 Strong Digital Literacy and Data Vision
Digital literacy encompasses 21st century skills related to the effective and appropriate use of technology. The American Library Association (ALA) defines digital literacy as “the ability to use information and communication technologies to find, evaluate, create, and communicate information requiring both cognitive and technical skills.”
Using data and data sets, from a single source, and integrated from multiple sources in ways that communicate outcomes and results, is essential to digital transformation. Using data visualization tools such as Microsoft Power BI, Tableau, and others to derive meaning from data is needed during the data transformation journey.
Advanced data analytics capabilities are also becoming increasingly important to meaningful digital transformation. These include AI-augmented applications from robotic process automation (RPA) to predictive and prescriptive decision-making and decision-support tools, to physical robots.
4.5 Process, Starting with Framing Issues You Want to Address
The ability to review and develop protocols for management is of utmost importance. The following definitions help to describe the process.
- Change Management: A systematic approach to dealing with transition or transformation or an organization’s goals, processes, or technologies. A road map toward methodical, documented, and reported change management steps will guide the transformation.
- Project Management: The process of leading a team’s work to achieve all project goals within the given constraints. A PMP – Project Management Professional is an important member of the digital transformation team.
- Knowledge Management: The process by which an enterprise gathers, organizes, shares, and analyzes its knowledge in a way that is easily accessible to staff at all levels. This includes, but goes beyond, data management.
- Risk Management: The process of identifying, assessing, and controlling threats to an organization’s capital, earnings, and projects.
- S.W.O.T. Analysis: A method of identifying strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, both internal and external, to help shape current and future operations and develop strategic goals.
LeadingAge CAST has developed a very comprehensive Strategic IT Planning Interactive Tool. This tool can be used to help develop and/or align the organization’s strategic plan, IT strategic plan, and digital transformation strategic plan to increase the likelihood of success.
4.6 Strong Change Management Capabilities
These include the following:
4.6.1 Strong Communication Help achieve the following:
- Mitigate employee resistance.
- Boost motivation, morale, and productivity.
- Enhance collaboration at every level, boosting program productivity.
- Get higher-quality feedback from participants and stakeholders.
Employees drive every change management program. The better you can communicate your vision, your plan, and your program’s benefits, the more successful your initiative will be.
4.6.2 Strong Leadership
Provide employees with the following:
- Examples to follow.
- A direction to move in.
- A vision and a story to hold onto.
In some cases, different people handle change leadership and change management. In smaller organizations, the same person may wear both hats. Either way, leadership is required to organize employees, mobilize support, and push a project to completion.
Though change is not impossible without vision,
vision defines the direction and purpose of a change initiative.
4.6.3 Strong Vision
A vision that portrays the state after the digital transformation helps:
- Employees see the direction in which they are moving.
- Improve motivation.
- Create a change story to follow.
Change leaders are usually the ones credited with possessing and promoting the vision. Though change is not impossible without vision, vision defines the direction and purpose of a change initiative.
4.6.4 Strong Strategic Analysis and Planning
At the enterprise level, change managers must create a strategy to achieve their vision. Together with executive stakeholders, they must do the following:
- Analyze the organization’s current state.
- Develop a plan that strategically benefits the organization.
- Create a plan for change.
Strategic thinking permeates every aspect of the planning stage. Managers must think strategically about how to communicate with employees, how to create a program that benefits the organization, and how to maximize results with minimal expenditure.
4.6.5 Knowledge of Change Management Principles and Best Practices
Another core skill for change management leaders is simply knowing their discipline, which includes the following:
- Change models and frameworks.
- Group psychology, with a focus on how people undergo transitions and changes.
- Project management and leadership.
On top of these skills, change managers must be intimately familiar with the organization they are assisting. This includes the organization’s history, its culture, and its marketplace, for starters.
4.6.6 Other Soft Skills
Communication is perhaps the most important soft skill for change managers. But it is not the only one. Others include the following:
- Ability to influence others.
- Educational and training skills.
- Problem-solving.
- Working as part of teams.
All these skills will directly impact the results of a change program. A change manager or leader without such soft skills will not gain as much cooperation or support as one who does.
4.6.7 Digital Literacy
Today, digital literacy has become essential for every position, including change management positions. There are several reasons for this:
- Many of today’s change efforts are driven by digital technology.
- Digital technology can improve the results of a change program.
- Digital business models, such as Agile, can improve change program timelines, decrease costs, and get better results.
This is not to say that change managers need to become programmers. Far from it. Change management leaders should, however, understand how digital impacts every modern organization. Those who do will experience greater success than those who do not.
Infrastructure is proving to be elemental as providers adopt digital transformation.
4.7 Robust Technology Infrastructure
Organizations that wish to embrace digital transformation must have a robust technology infrastructure. Most aging services providers have been making modest investments in technology infrastructure for a couple of decades now, and infrastructure is proving to be elemental as providers adopt digital transformation.
Technology infrastructure is what most people think about when they hear the word “technology.” It is servers, networks, switches, routers, Wi-Fi, firewalls, endpoints, and outpoints. Having reliable, redundant, high-performing infrastructure components and teams has become table stakes for aging services providers. Many providers are embracing a cloud-first strategy for infrastructure, moving as many computing resources as possible to the cloud for reliability, scalability, and accessibility.
In order for process automation, robotics, and digital self-service technologies to successfully exist, providers need to have a robust infrastructure in place. Please see CAST’s Strategic IT Planning Workbook for more detailed information.
5. The Five Building Blocks of Digital Transformation
Although other models exist, The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has developed a well-regarded five-factor model that comprises the building blocks of digital transformation. At time of writing, MIT noted that very few organizations had all five building blocks in place. MIT also emphasized that any organization engaging in digital transformation should start small and recognize that this journey takes time.
5.1 Operational Backbone
Jeanne Ross, principal research scientist at the MIT Sloan Center for Information Systems Research, defines operational backbone as the following:
A set of integrated and shared systems, processes, and data that ensures efficiency, reliability, and transparency of operations and transactions. An operational backbone is the underlying foundation of standardized, automated business processes to ensure operational excellence in your core business. The backbone typically incorporates customer resource management, enterprise resource planning, and other enterprise-wide systems and processes. Without an operational backbone, leadership is typically consumed with executing and maintaining core processes, preventing them from developing and commercializing digital offerings. On the flip side, if companies already have a powerful backbone, the other building blocks can build on that foundation.
A strong operational backbone is the key to any successful business, and its reliance on technology is the catalyst for this success. As senior living communities continue to adopt more technology to seamlessly integrate systems and processes, these systems continue to ride on existing in-building telecommunications networks. This adoption leads to higher bandwidth consumption, which can place a burden on existing legacy networks.
A community’s operational technology is only as strong as the network backbone that can support it.
A senior living community’s operational technology is only as strong as the network backbone (or cabling infrastructure) that can support it. This cabling infrastructure is essential not only for mission critical business operations, but also with residents, guests, and healthcare workers who continue to leverage the same infrastructure with new technology applications every day.
Senior Housing News published an article in 2020 titled “The COVID Effect: Technology Adaptation in 2020.” The article describes how technology has changed the aging services industry in the post-COVID world and the top roadblocks to adoption of that technology. The graph below illustrates those roadblocks.
Unsurprisingly, the top roadblocks are bandwidth capability and physical infrastructure of the building. These two challenges really go hand-in-hand, as the physical infrastructure of the cabling limits wireless and wired bandwidth capability in many cases.
Having said that, proper planning is important more now than ever. Replacing existing network infrastructure can be a very costly endeavor. We need to take into account the following:
- The capital expenditure (CAPEX) and operational expenditure (OPEX) considerations of the project,
- Impacts to residents due to construction, and
- Potential lost revenue by taking units out of inventory and closing food outlets.
These additional factors can play a much larger role in the overall cost of the project than just the initial up-front cost of the cabling. With that in mind, there are a few best practices to acknowledge for a smarter technology strategy that will ultimately provide a more-robust operational backbone.
Additional factors can play a much larger role in the overall cost than the initial up-front cost of the cabling.
1. Enable Remote Applications with Long-Reach Connectivity Solutions
Today’s technology demands are testing the limits of traditional Category cable networks. Most Cat6 cabling has distance limitations of 300ft (100m). These limitations result in more in-building telecom closets that require space for network hardware. In many cases, this means repurposing part of a cleaning closet for this space, but what if that space is not available?
Additionally, more communities are adding surveillance around parking lots and building exteriors for safety and mitigating elopement. Without long-reach capable solutions, building owners are faced with space constraints, limited local power, and unplanned connectivity needs that drive up network complexity and deployment costs.
An alternative consideration in these scenarios could be a fiber optical network that has no distance limitations. This alternative extends the reach of the network to deliver data from the main telecom room to each unit as well as those far edges of the network like parking lots and building exteriors.
2. Stay Ahead of Future Technology Needs with a Flexible, Adaptable Network
With new technologies being integrated into aging services at an unprecedented rate, networks that can accommodate these ever-increasing technology demands can help communities evolve as their technology needs change. A 2021 study from Pew Research Center found that over 80% of adults between 50-64, and 60% of adults over the age of 65, own a smartphone.
Increased smartphones and other IP-based handheld devices require a more robust Wi-Fi network. Is your Wi-Fi network flexible and adaptable enough to handle the extra connectivity for residents, guests, and staff?
Deploying a flexible solution can help transform a community’s technology program into a strategic asset, keeping OPEX costs down while at the same time creating additional revenue streams.
3. Expand Technology Plans with Scalable, Future-ready Connectivity
Newer smart technology strategies are built on future-ready infrastructure. Just 10 years ago, Cat5 cable was the most installed cabling, which has bandwidth limitations of 100Mb. Now those cabling infrastructures are legacy and being replaced as demand has surpassed capacity. Cat6 is the most installed infrastructure currently but still has limitations of 1Gig. As we continue to layer in new technologies at an exponential rate, will 1Gig be adequate five years from now?
Implementing an infrastructure that requires costly replacement every five to 10 years is neither forward-thinking nor future-ready. An option that delivers both unlimited bandwidth as well as power over a single cable is composite fiber. A community with composite fiber can layer on additional high-bandwidth-consuming technologies like telehealth, access control, and IPTV with no network bottlenecks or latency.
A community with composite fiber can layer on technologies that need high bandwidth like telehealth, access control, and IPTV.
5.2 Digital Platform
An organization’s digital platform contains all the components that combine to form a company’s various offerings. The components themselves fall into three categories:
- Data Components: Those components designed to collect and interpret data either on their own or as delivered to the operational backbone.
- Business Components: Components used to attract usage and deliver value on the business proposition, including things like request engines, dashboards, rating systems, and so on.
- Infrastructure Components: Generally, components that link together data and business components. The term includes facilitating and controlling access to the components, as well as cloud capabilities.
An example is Uber:
- Data components include customer data (past rides, etc.), driver data (specific rating/ performance), and the algorithm that changes pricing and controls surge pricing.
- Business components include the components that enable customers to request rides, payment processing, the way the map looks (distance to pickup), the component that notifies the driver of a ride request, and the ability to add tip before or after the ride.
- Infrastructure components include, first and foremost, the drivers, their cars, and the roadways, as well as the digital component that apportions processing power, the component that accesses third-party mapping info, and the component that protects customer identity.
The digital platform is also a place where organizations may solicit and capture insights from their customers.
The combination of components and insights can allow organizations to quickly develop and test new offerings with customers. Using customer feedback, organizations can continuously improve and refine offerings within a rapid test-and-learn framework.
While the operational backbone aims to create efficiencies, the primary goal of the digital platform is to create value for internal and external customers. Data generated by the platform interacts with the operational backbone to generate insights. Typically, an organization’s Chief Digital Officer or similar role oversees a digital platform.
5.2.1 Shared Customer/Resident/Employee Insights
An organization’s ability to take in and interpret information about its broad range of customers (including residents, clients, and employees) is essential to developing and continuously improving its offerings in a manner that, more and more, fulfills customer desires. The ability to enter into dialogue with customers, and co-create offerings through test-and-learn cycles, creates sustainable, long-lasting value for the organization.
Effective engagement with customers will tell organizations what they can possibly provide to customers and what those customers are willing to pay for. However, customers often do not know what they want.
Organizations must adopt iterative approaches to engagement. First, organizations will take in insights, generate options, and pursue the options most likely to fit customer needs and desires. Next, the organization either pivots or adopts those test-and-learn cycles that improve the offering over time based on customer feedback.
This process aligns with best practices of human-centered design. These include developing customer personas, which capture demographic and psychographic information, and documenting the customer journey. Also called journey mapping, this process cites every step in a customer’s discovery process from their time of recognized need or want through to the point where they abandon their relationship with an organization.
It is essential to constantly benchmark success in identifying and responding to wants and needs.
Organizations proficient in this methodology often gather insights from the very front of their organizations and keep track of feedback to identify any deviation from established patterns. This tracking can include front line service workers observing new customer behaviors, salespeople hearing new types of questions, and so on.
It is also essential to constantly benchmark success in identifying and then responding to wants and needs. Metrics beyond pure sales include time to market, sustainability of customer relationships, sustained engagement, satisfaction with the service, and net promotor scoring.
5.2.2 Accountability Framework
Many organizations engaging in digital transformation adopt an organizational structure that places total ownership over individual offerings or components in the hands of product managers.
Such managers have autonomy over the way that these components or offerings are designed and presented to customers. They are internal experts that are considered mini-CEOs over the component or offering. However, they have accountability to the following:
- The key performance indicators (KPIs) identified as goals, or drivers of desired business growth.
- Organizational mission.
- Impacts over related components or offerings.
- Customer engagement, satisfaction, and loyalty.
Ultimately, best practices suggest that any offering should be developed and managed by an interdisciplinary team that represents the organization’s key functions. Such an approach has been known to generate more novel approaches to problem solving, as well as the number of possible solutions.
Leadership in this model essentially comes down to two things: identifying and removing obstacles for component owners and coaching them as they encounter issues. This approach includes challenging team hypotheses and underlying assumptions, as well as providing ongoing training, such as in the use of Agile methods and technologies.
5.2.3 External Developer Platform
If an organization successfully adopts the first four building blocks of digital transformation, it will arrive at a point where customer demand for new and more-refined offerings will outpace the organization’s ability to deliver.
Developing an external developer platform then allows a company to supplement its own offerings with those of partners who specialize in areas where the company does not. Without one, a custom-built API would be required for each partner, which would become increasingly time-consuming and risky with the increasing complexity that multiple APIs present.
Digital transformation should not be initiated by building an external developer platform. A prerequisite for building a successful external developer platform is putting the other four building blocks—operational backbone, shared customer insights, digital platform, and accountability framework—in place first.
6. Application Areas Primed for Digital Transformation
This section presents different areas primed for digital transformation in organizations in general, and aging services organizations in particular. Each sub-section will highlight potential use cases and their potential benefit.
6.1 Back-Office Operations
| Business Context | Use Case | Potential Strategic Benefit |
| Accounts payable | Automatic processing of invoices in accounts payable processes. | Better tracking of credit cycles and timely payments improves operating cash position. |
| Reconciliation and closing | Automating the repetitive process of closing. Bank statement processing can be done automatically, with internal validation completed by bots. | Reduces time to close and improves accuracy of accounting processes. |
| Billing | Improving the speed of submitting claims. | Faster billing results in faster cash flow. |
| Reporting | Automating the compilation of reports from multiple data sources. | Reduces time spent generating reports and improves the frequency of reporting. |
| Communication | Improving organizational communication with trigger-based communication sent automatically to necessary stakeholders. | Improves situational awareness and knowledge among workforce. |
| Contract management | Automatic indexing and contextualizing organizational contracts. | Improves management of contractual obligations and their requirements. Manages and ensures compliance with third parties. |
| Candidate recruitment | Web crawling multiple candidate sources for applicable candidates and initiating contact. | Fills positions and builds candidate pipeline. |
| Onboarding | Bot completing all tasks recruiters or hiring manager would have to manually do during the new hire process: sending surveys, booking interviews, processing offer letters, providing information, and more. | Improves the speed and engagement between candidate and the recruiter. Reduces the candidate time to hire by reducing pain points, improving communication, and simplifying candidate requirements. |
| Employee onboarding and offboarding | Automating and securing the process of identity lifecycle management. | Improves employee experience, enhances cybersecurity and compliance posture. |
| Tier 1 support | Smart bots servicing employees for general tasks and information. | Empowers workforce and reduces workloads for IT support staff. |
| System testing | Bots automatically running and validating test cases across systems, as upgrades to Software as a Service (SaaS) systems often require testing for acceptance or adoption. | Ensures operational integrity and reduces workloads for system owners. |
| Business Context | Use Case | Potential Strategic Benefit |
| COVID-19/infectious disease management | Reporting and submission of test data and results of staff and residents. Sending notifications and reconciling testing timeframes and vaccination boosters. | Improves compliance and infection control around COVID-19 and other infectious diseases. |
| Payroll-Based Journal (PBJ) reporting | Capturing Census data and caregiver journal data for submission to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. | Improves accuracy and timeliness of data capture and compliance. |
| Discharge process | Aggregating all necessary information for resident discharge. | Reduces the time staff spend gathering data for discharge. Improves data integrity. |
| Skilled nursing facility sub-acute referral management | Automatically assessing referrals based on predefined criteria. | Improves quality measures and increases referral pipeline with preferred cases. |
| Incident tracking and QAPI reporting | Standardizing and streamlining information capture, automating approvals and reporting. | Saves time, improves quality outcomes, and helps trend data. |
| Business Context | Use Case | Potential Strategic Benefit |
| Resident onboarding | Impacting resident applications, admission contracts, and decision-making through automation | Improves customer experience; improves onboarding cycle and access to data. |
6.4 Dining Services
Culinary operations are an area that can really benefit from autonomous robotics in both front-of-house operations and back-of-house operations. Several robotics solutions can augment the work of staff for self-service options for residents/staff at many communities.
For front-of-house operations, food-running robots have benefited many senior living organizations. With process re-engineering, these food-running robots can augment the work of servers and bussers in a dining room. As a result, these front-of-house staff members can spend more time in their section providing support to a larger number of patrons and tables.
When paired with digital devices for point-of-sale order entry, a community can nearly eliminate the need for servers to go back and forth between the kitchen and the dining hall. The robots can receive food from the kitchen and run it out to the sections or tables, where a staff member can place it on tables for the residents. To further increase productivity, bussers can load up the robots with dirty dishes and linens and send them back to the kitchen for washing.
An online self-service portal for front-of-house culinary operations can also be an incredible way of gaining efficiency using digital transformation. Online portals allow residents the ability to make reservations for seating and to order food online for pickup or delivery. The portals save a lot of phone calls and staff time. They also can help normalize the typical ebb and flow of a dining operation and help the back-of-house see demand for specific products or entrees.
An online self-service portal for front-of-house culinary operations is a great way to gain efficiency using digital transformation.
| Business Context | Use Case | Potential Strategic Benefit |
| Physical Robots | Using food-running robots to improve process for front-of-house services. | Provides efficiency to front-of-house service staff and culinary operations. |
| Online Engagement | Providing an online portal for residents/guests to create dining reservations and order food online. | Alleviates staff time managing reservations, drives capacity restrictions, and automates order entry. |
| Physical Robots | Using robots that can prepare food for back-of-house operations. | Provides efficiency to back-of-house service staff and culinary operations. Provides self-service options to residents and staff. |
| Business Context | Use Case | Potential Strategic Benefit |
| Sanitation and cleaning | Scheduling robotics to automatically clean and disinfect areas. | Improves infection control outcomes. Reduces workforce. |
| Physical facility security | Using security robots and AI powered sensors/cameras. | Reduces workforce and improves security outcomes through intelligent monitoring. |
| Predictive maintenance | Utilizing Internet of Things (IOT), robotics, sensors, and more to get wide view of a community’s data. | Preserves capital investments, improves life of service of industrial equipment, and improves the utilization of a community’s resources. |
| Business Context | Use Case | Potential Strategic Benefit |
| Depositor self-service | Using a self-service portal to automate the collection of information from future residents. | Provides efficiency to marketing/move-in staff from chasing down future residents’ information. |
| Resident background verification | Automating federal offense verification and financial verifications by deploying bots. | Improves customer experience and shortens onboarding cycle. |
| Physical robots | Employing physical robots that can virtually round on campus. | Automates physical space surveillance, and feeds data to security staff. |
7 Planning for Digital Transformation
7.1 Look at Your Strategic Plan and Goals through a Digital Transformation Lens
Revisit your strategic plan and look at your strategic goal from a digital transformation perspective, considering the following questions:
- Can digital transformation concepts, especially automation, robotics process automation, robotics, and other technologies readily available be leveraged to help us accelerate or achieve these goals more efficiently and/or cost-effectively?
- If so, what new technologies do we need to consider for each strategic goal?
- What do we need to have in place in terms of digital backbone, infrastructure, and competencies (either internal or outsourced through partners)?
7.2 Assess the Organization’s Digital Maturity
As discussed earlier, digital transformation will require a digital backbone and an information and communications infrastructure that can support the digital transformation efforts. The digital backbone must support connectivity, sufficient bandwidth capacity for today and the future, and required speeds. Also needed are digital competencies among staff and residents who will carry out, or at least be significantly involved in, your digital transformation journey.
Digital transformation depends on aligning leadership and all key stakeholders.
7.3 Create a Governance Structure Steering Committee and Other Potential Focused Committees
Digital transformation—or any substantive changes that an organization sets out to make—depends on aligning leadership and all key stakeholders to achieve success. In short, the organization’s leaders and stakeholders must be engaged in the adoption of a strategic plan that defines the transformation and how it runs through the organization.
Transformation starts at the top with the board and senior leaders; they set the vision and fix the focus for the remainder of the organization. Senior leaders align the departments to begin the work of actualizing the transformation. The role of directors, managers, and front-line staff is to define and refine transformative ideas and implement transformative changes in the organization.
Collectively, the board and staff depend on one another to effectively plan for digital transformation and implement the changes that secure the organization’s future. Ultimately, digital transformation is embedded in an organization’s culture. Change the culture, and transform the organization.
Below are the structures and roles that can make digital transformation happen.
Reviewing board structure is a key place to start.
7.3.1 The Role of the Board of Directors and Board Committees in Digital Transformation
The board of directors play a critical role in planning for digital transformation, as change begins at the top. Of course, how an organization is structured will determine how leaders will engage the board of directors. Because the types of committees and governing policies shape how a board interacts and fulfills its fiduciary role, reviewing board structure is a key place to start.
When senior managers and directors attempt to lead digital transformation without board consent and involvement, the prospect of success almost always diminishes significantly. It is incumbent on senior leaders to make the case to the board of directors for digital transformation, correlating investment (time or money) to qualitative metrics germane to core business operations, core values, and the overarching purpose of each organization to serve its residents.
7.3.2 Board Structure
A board usually will have several primary committees: Executive, Governance, Strategic Planning, and Finance. Depending on the size of the board and organization, a board may also have Technology, Operations, Development, and Health Services.
Typically, Strategic Planning will be comprised of board members on the Finance, Operations, and Development committees, because strategic planning involves future plans, spending decisions, and revenue planning achieved either through capital campaign fundraising or capital expenditures. Therefore, the Strategic Planning Committee will most likely govern digital transformation.
Details on committee makeup and roles follow.
- Strategic Planning Committee: Ideally, this committee has members from all three Finance, Operations, and Development teams to help ensure the digital transformation fixes real problems, is realistic, and is guided by strong processes while remaining financially viable.Management liaisons work with the board and staff to develop and implement digital transformation plans in alignment with the strategic plan’s goals. The management liaison is also responsible for driving processes to the staff and communicating updates to the Board Committee, which should include reports on successes, challenges, and outcomes.
Logic models are handy tools to manage the digital transformation journey. Commonly used in program development grant models, a logic model defines inputs, outputs, outcomes, and impact.
Logic models are handy tools to manage the digital transformation journey.
- Governance Committee: Among other functions, the committee helps select new board members. It is important to create a board matrix to delineate board talents and knowledge areas, as well as identify knowledge gaps at the board level. A governance committee that selects board members with the wrong skill set (no technology, innovation, or transformation planning skills) will not help the organization achieve success over the long term.
Governance committees also oversee committee charter documents and review and update bylaws, and these documents instill digital transformation into the organization’s DNA and culture. It is imperative to update all committee charters and bylaws for digital transformation.
- Development Committee: This committee will identify revenue opportunities to help underwrite the digital transformation, especially for 501(c)(3) organizations that have a development/philanthropy department. The Development Committee focuses on programs that support residents, such as art or music therapy, financial assistance/benevolent care, or capital development campaigns, to name a few areas.
In most organizations, the development office produces an annual Case for Support to express fundraising needs to prospective donors.
The Development Committee can add digital transformation and innovation needs to its Case for Support. In one example, the Case for Support for the Army Distaff Foundation (ADF) promoted exobionics, tech rehabilitative tools, and other innovative technologies designed to improve the residents’ quality of life.
By including digital transformation in the fundraising program, ADF ensured that the resident population and board were informed and invested in creating a culture of innovation and a growth mindset. In many respects, a development committee is about achieving current and future needs.
7.3.3 Digital Transformation – Supporting the Change in Other Ways
Communications: It is important to embed the key messages of the digital transformation plans into the organization’s story and to intentionally promote and communicate content on the digital transformation across the organization’s communication channels.
Communication channels will vary, but they can be distilled into the following categories: social media, print, web, and events. The communication plan must support the digital transformation plan’s key messages and direct how and when messages are communicated through select channels. The plan also personalizes the digital transformation by creating profiles on use cases, presenting client testimonials, and sharing outcome-based program data.
These key messages, repackaged to apply to prospective residents and differentiate the organization from its competitors, also appear in the sales and marketing materials and online.
Advisory Committees: It may be a good idea to set up a volunteer-based advisory committee to augment the board and management team, depending on the organization’s needs. While the reasons for creating an advisory committee may vary, a few key justifications include the following:
- Advisors can augment boards by filling gaps in institutional knowledge.
- Advisors can add credibility to the organization, especially when advisors are well-known.
The committee’s structure may vary. Including members from academia, business, and planning, and several technology and innovative leaders across a broad section of industries who are well versed in aging services, is recommended.
Forming an advisory committee is a great way for the Development Committee to cultivate prospective strategic partners and corporate leaders without asking them to commit to joining the board of directors.
Strategic partners can help the organization actualize the digital transformation.
7.3.4 Strategic Partnerships
With innovation and the journey to innovate, strategic partnerships will be necessary. Like advisors, strategic partners can help the organization actualize the digital transformation. Universities, other not-for-profits, and tech businesses that work in this space are all part of the road map.
Universities are great research partners. Often supported by grants, universities seek out communities to deepen their understanding of older adults. Experience shows that university students augmented aging service providers’ programs in many ways, such as by conducting surveys and leading focus groups to define and understand needs and proposed solutions. University partners can be added to advisory roles, too. In addition, a community can partner with a university to jointly purse grants.
From a marketing and brand-building perspective, university, nonprofit and corporate partners add credibility to aging services organizations. Listing these partners in communication channels is helpful. You will need to create a memorandum of understanding and/or research agreement. Universities are very well equipped to help your organization create both documents.
7.3.5 Resident Committee
Perhaps the most valuable voices in guiding digital transformation are our clients’ and residents’ voices. Forming a resident technology committee can be an invaluable resource for an organization. Several communities who have already established a resident technology committee have experienced at least three benefits.
Resident technology committees can help the organization evaluate new technology solutions to determine viability and desire among new and future residents. Residents will have plenty to contribute about what is important to them, and this is valuable information as organizations develop strategic and tactical plans around digital transformation.
A resident technology committee can also serve as a technology pilot group for communities. As communities develop or implement new technology solutions, it is sometimes important to have a small subset of the resident population to help test the new technology prior to rolling out to a large group of residents.
Perhaps the most valuable voices in guiding digital transformation are our clients’ and residents’ voices.
Beyond just the testing and feedback from these pioneering residents, the community can benefit when the committee members advocate for the technology. The committee serves as an influencer among fellow residents at the community. Members can influence opinions and build excitement about new technologies, while interacting with peers.
Additionally, the resident technology committee is often able to support fellow residents who may be struggling to adopt or use new technologies. Residents who are a part of the technology committee are often very interested in technology or have a background in technology and have naturally had more exposure to various types of technology. They may already be providing some technology support or assistance for fellow residents who may be struggling to use to technology. A technology background does not need to be a requirement of serving on a resident technology committee, but it will often organically transpire within a community.
7.4 Pull A Digital Transformation Team of Champions
Finally, when it comes to the detailed planning and implementation of digital transformation, you will need an implementation team with several skills.
The chart below highlights the possible roles and responsibilities you may need on your Digital Transformation Implementation Team:
| Role | Responsibility |
| Digital Transformation Lead | – Blend of tech and business background who can interface with leaders internally and with partners. – Ensures sound technical solutions and the achievement of business objectives. |
| Change Champion | – Connects with employees at all levels to advocate for transformation. – Markets and sells digital capabilities both internally and externally. – Effectively responds to change and guides others how to do so. |
| Technical Engineer | – Has a thorough awareness of the entire technology stack available today and can also envision what it should look like in the future. – Good understanding of various technology architectures and integration patterns to leverage existing capabilities. |
| Business Expert | – The subject matter expert on the particular function or process being transformed. – Voice of the business, works hand-in-hand with the technical engineer to make sure business requirements are satisfied. – Owner of defining required capabilities; encourages experimentation and can quickly make decisions on what works and what does not. |
| Data Architect | – Outlines the different use cases for data collection and guides how analytics projects will be implemented across the organization. – Connects data applications with top- and bottom-line business needs. |
| UX Professional | – Ensures technology solutions are developed with the end-user in mind. – Enables adoption by accounting for user experience. |
| Financial Analyst | – Defines business case around digital transformation. – Articulates hard and soft benefits and presents the accountability matrix for how these will be realized and tracked: the Financial Value Framework to measure return on investment. |
| Critical Analyst | – Defines success criteria. – Provides constructive criticism. – Ensures functionality. |
7.5 Create a Structure and Process for Digital Transformation
Task your digital transformation implementation team(s) with the following:
- Identify opportunities to transform, digitize, and automate: Start small to prove theory
- Prioritize opportunities based on objective criteria: flexibility, impact, cost, realities, etc.
- Engage stakeholders in re-designing priority processes for maximum efficiency
- Select appropriate technology solution(s) and partner(s)
- Create an implementation plan
7.5.1 Helpful Tips to Support Digital Transformation
- Include digital transformation on board meeting agendas.
- Review board charters and include transformation, technology, and innovation in the scope of Board Committee charters. If needed, create a new committee to tackle innovation, digital transformation, and forward-looking technology.
- At the strategy level, ensure transformation is baked into the strategic plans; involve Finance, Development, and Operations in the planning process.
- Review organizational chart to determine staff ownership of transformation, innovation, and technology.
- Develop workgroups from among multiple departments to identify problems and solutions that may be resolved via innovation and transformation.
- Add transformation and innovation to the agenda of all standing management meetings to keep the topic top of mind.
- Use communication channels including social, print, and web to promote innovation to external audiences to raise awareness.
- Involve residents in understanding innovation and defining transformation goals; involve residents in committees or establish a new resident/staff committee dedicated to transformation.
Use a logic model to evaluate the impact of your digital transformation efforts.
7.5.2 Digital Transformation Evaluation Framework
Use a logic model to evaluate the impact of your digital transformation efforts. A logic model is a graphic depiction (road map) that presents the shared relationships among the resources, activities, outputs, and outcomes/impacts for your program. It depicts the relationship between your program’s activities and its intended effects.
The logic model shows an implicit “if-then” relationship among the program elements: If I do this activity, then I expect this outcome. Among other things, a logic model helps clarify the boundary between the program’s “what” and “so what”—the changes that are intended to result from strong implementation of the “what.”
A logic model can focus on any level of an enterprise or program: the entire organization, one of its component departments or programs, or just specific parts of that department or a program. Of course, the boundary between “what” and “so what” will vary accordingly.
Logic models differ widely in format and level of detail. Here are some key terms used in logic models, although not all are employed in any given model:
- Inputs: The resources needed to implement the activities.
- Activities: What the program and its staff do with those resources.
- Outputs: Tangible products, capacities, or deliverables that result from the activities.
- Outcomes: Changes that occur in other people or conditions because of the activities and outputs.
- Impacts: [Sometimes] The most distal/long-term outcomes.
- Moderators: Contextual factors that are out of control of the program but may help or hinder achievement of the outcomes.[vii]
7.5.3 Scaling Efficiently [viii]
The ability to scale digital transformation efforts is directly tied to a number of factors:
- The skills, competencies, and experience of your implementation team.
- The foresight to capture all the data needed, and the design of your data structure in a way that allows the flexibility needed in future uses and applications.
- Starting small, failing fast, or showing meaningful impacts that justify the effort and investments made.
- Meaningful stakeholder engagement (staff, residents/ clients).
A digital platform is the underpinning of efficiency in scaling businesses through digital transformation efforts.
Often, scaling is misconstrued as digitalizing every part of the business, independently. Building and nurturing a platform to create micro services for external and internal developer platforms that the business can leverage will help scale efficiently.
For the scale to actualize, such a micro-services-enabled platform should be made available to everyone to create an enterprise-level program model. Anyone using the data and processes these services provide will be part of a digital transformation providing for the desired scale.
While a scalable approach to digital transformation is important, we should note some potentially confusing outcomes in the process:
- The provider may not see returns immediately. The returns are based on the process chosen, the scale, the impact, and the resources leveraged. Some transformation initiatives like RPA may exhibit immediate returns, while the data backbone will deliver gradually increasing and eventually exponential returns.
- The mid- to longer-term returns are high with all approaches and processes.
- Digital transformation and the related scale rely on the operating ecosystem.
This guide presents the need for a platform as a backbone for systems and applications. As discussed throughout, scale and transformation are not about digitizing every process and every step of the business operations in silos. The approach is more holistic. It means process redesign, technology adoption, leveraging data, and analytics for actionable insights and even thinking strategically in scaling the business.
Investment in enterprise technology adoption ensures five-times faster business growth.
A 2021 survey by a leading consulting firm emphasized that investment in enterprise technology adoption ensures a five-times faster growth of business.
Business leaders aspiring to scale have shown consistently high investments in innovation and technology adoption. The pandemic has accelerated these digital investments and enterprise technology adoption, compressing the digital transformation timelines across industries. Long-term care is no exception.
Outcomes along with economic key performance indicators (KPIs) should measure the success of digital transformation initiatives and their scale. Scaling digital transformation will also deliver new and more meaningful end-to-end experiences for all stakeholders.
Aids to Scaling Digital Transformation
A smart strategy is to create platforms that can scale not only the infrastructure but also the outcomes. This approach will be easier when innovation and access are scaled across all enterprise processes, not just in IT.
As was discussed earlier in this guide, cloud adoption, enablement, and usage effectively aid scaling. Future customers are not waiting for incremental value addition. Rapid value addition is possible only when the backbone, discussed above, is made available and can provide the elasticity needed.
A smart strategy is to create platforms that can scale
not only the infrastructure but also the outcomes.
Leveraging cloud at an enterprise level can help scale. Cloud adoption across the enterprise accelerates and efficiently scales a reengineering of processes, tools, and experiences. Cloud adoption is an inseparable component of efficient scaling.
On the same note, it is important to take advantage of the appropriate cloud-optimization levers to fully realize the benefits. Whether it is the surge in demand for services due to the cyclical/sustained increase of consumption or scaling of business services, cloud provides an efficient response to the business necessity to scale.
Scaling Efficiently
In simple words, scaling efficiently is a combination of a platform ecosystem that enables interoperable services with access to all the stakeholders, providing value-added insights to give an effective user experience. It is an integration of technology, business, and people.
Focusing on the right goals will enable the enterprise to think differently and scale efficiently. There are many myths on scaling efficiently. However, companies focusing on optimizing experience, enhancing the services (by redefining the processes suitable to the digital economy), acquiring actionable insights from the available data, leveraging scalable technology, and relying on single source of truth will surely succeed.
Based on data, 84% of companies focused on improving customer experience reported business growth, and they all acquired clear insights from siloed systems by leveraging a scalable platform that consolidated data, processed data, and delivered insights. Scaling encourages collaboration and ensures a single source of truth across business functions.
Scaling digital transformation efforts efficiently means the following:
- A thorough understanding of the business processes,
- External/internal interactions,
- Bottlenecks within the process and easing out those logjams, and
- Leveraging the digital means of the ecosystem by understanding the data from the systems and making informed decisions.
In a way, this journey transforms the providers to adopt a data-driven culture leading to efficiency, engagement, and improvements at scale.
8. Contributors
Workgroup Members
Berry Brunk, Collaborell, Inc.
David Finkelstein, RiverSpring Living
Dusanka Delovska-Trajkova, Ingleside
Fil Southerland, Yardi
James Michels, Army Distaff Foundation
Joe Velderman, Cypress Living
Kevin Stephens, Corning Optical Communications
Majd Alwan, formerly LeadingAge CAST
Michael Hughes, United Church Homes
Rick Taylor, Sentrics
Ryan Elza, Volunteers of America National Services
Scott Code, LeadingAge CAST
Travis Gleinig, United Methodist Communities
Venkat Pydimarri, Caringale Solutions, a cloud business unit of ValueMomentum
Vipin Bhardwaj, NuAlg
Writing Workgroup
David Finkelstein, RiverSpring Living
Dusanka Delovska-Trajkova, Ingleside
James Michels, Army Distaff Foundation
Joe Velderman, Cypress Living
Kevin Stephens, Corning Optical Communications
Majd Alwan, formerly LeadingAge
Michael Hughes, United Church Homes
Scott Code, LeadingAge
Travis Gleinig, United Methodist Communities
Venkat Pydimarri, Caringale Solutions, a cloud business unit of ValueMomentum
Vipin Bhardwaj, NuAlg
9. References
[1] https://digitalschoolofmarketing.co.za/digital-marketing-blog/how-digital-transformation-separates-the-average-from-the-exceptional/
[i] https://www.salesforce.com/products/platform/what-is-digital-transformation/#:~:text=Digital%20transformation%20is%20the%20process,digital%20age%20is%20digital%20transformation
[ii] https://digitaltransformation.org.au/guides/it-management/what-does-digital-transformation-mean-not-profits
[iii] https://www.arcweb.com/blog/what-digitization-digitalization-digital-transformation
[iv] https://www.globalsign.com/en-sg/blog/difference-and-similarities-digitization-digitalization-and-digital-transformation
[v] https://www.statista.com/statistics/871513/worldwide-data-created/
[vi] https://www.nngroup.com/articles/law-of-bandwidth/
[vii] https://www.cdc.gov/evaluation/steps/step2/index.htm
[viii] https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbescommunicationscouncil/2022/11/07/5-ways-to-scale-your-business-through-digital-transformation/?sh=7fe186e01864