Planning the budget for a digital workplace strategy is crucial in getting the stakeholders on board of the digital transformation. Learn the three levels to collaborate on and other tricks of the trade to get to the desired outcome.

People, Process, and Technology

To conduct a successful digital transition, you have to establish the necessary resources on three levels: for tools and services, for the creation of new processes, and for human resources.

Digital Tools

Technology is the most tangible spending in your budget. Though some of your old tools can remain in place as a backup, mobile devices and cloud services have to be calculated with from now on. Note: different workflows might require different devices – field operations are well served even with low cost tablets, while other departments need stronger and more specialized hardware. Get on the same page with IT: show howdevelopment, maintenance, and training costs can be cut with mobility solutions.

Depending on your overall strategy, you can opt for incorporating the employees’ devices within a BYOD policy, or create a new fleet of mobiles that you can more easily control.

The first solution will cost less in the short term but it will require specific management tools (another line in the budget) to take care of the inconsistencies and higher safety risks. The second is a bigger investment in the beginning but it will be easier to develop, secure, control, or update the application that is in the heart of the new work experience.

New Processes

The budget should always reflect the new, desired future processes and not the current ones. You will be surprised how many cases will it reduce your expenses.

An old process, for example, would often involve travel, paperwork, and personal collaboration. When diverted to digital platforms, you can cross these items off your list.

Connected devices and the automation thereof reduce operation costs and improve efficiency. Data loss due to manual processes is taken care of, and digitalization also makes reporting (extracting big data) easier.

You would surely need some resources budgeted for implementing the new processes, such as a minimal training, but they will still better come out of a comparison. Prepare with some data to back up your claims: here are our suggestions.

People and Roles

In accordance with the changed workflows, the working hours of your employees are scheduled is changing.

When planning a digital workplace strategy, you can calculate with increased efficiency and productivity.

Maybe you don’t have to hire yet another three account managers. Maybe you can assign some of the tasks to existing roles without overtime. Maybe you will not have to replace people who leave due to disengagement. In fact, this last argument might be the most important one when talking HR into the digital workplace strategy.

However, you will need an expert team to lead the digital workplace strategy itself: people who will create and implement it, people the other employees can consult if in doubt.

Those Who Search Will Find

If you think your company really does not have the budget to support a digital workplace strategy, think twice:

• Almost two-thirds of the companies plan to increase spending on people globally. (Deloitte)
• Industrial manufacturing companies plan to invest 5% of their annual revenue in upgrading their processes to digital operations. (PwC)
• Of the companies responding to the Global State of Enterprise Mobility Survey in 2016, 50.4% said they plan to invest in mobile application development (Enterprise Mobility Exchange)

Extra tip: To get access to the necessary funds, take your time to prepare with all the metrics you will use to check the performance of the strategy, even across departments.