Ruffalo Noel Levitz (RNL) has been at the forefront of innovation and engagement in the higher education and non-profit industry for over three decades. The organization has helped over 3,000 educational institutions with their enrollment and retention strategies, in addition to generating over $200 million in annual fundraising for the institutions and foundations they serve. Over the past decade, RNL has grown through strategic acquisition, creating complexity within the operations team, technology stack, and overall ecosystem. As an industry leader in higher education, RNL brought Kader Sakkaria to lead the digital transformation for the organization.
The Challenge of Digital Transformation
Digital transformation is a complex process that involves streamlining and integrating various aspects of an organization’s operations, from people and processes to technology and systems. For RNL, digital transformation was critical in optimizing its operations and technology stack to ensure continued growth and success.
However, digital transformation can be a daunting process for any organization. The process requires a significant investment of time, resources, and effort and involves several challenges, including:
- Resistance to change: people naturally resist change, and digital transformation can create anxiety and uncertainty among employees and stakeholders.
- Limited resources: digital transformation requires significant resources, including skilled personnel, technology infrastructure, and financial investment.
- Complexity: it involves streamlining and integrating various aspects of an organization’s operations, which can be complex and challenging to implement.
- Cybersecurity concerns: as organizations move towards digital platforms, cybersecurity becomes a significant concern, and organizations must invest in robust security measures to protect their data and systems.
Leadership Considerations
Kader Sakkaria joined the team as the Chief Digital and Technology Officer in September 2020, bringing extensive leadership experience in business, IT, and portfolio management from his time at BMO Harris Bank. Together with his team, Sakkaria created operational alignment and streamlined the technology ecosystem to drive effectiveness, efficiency, outcomes, performance, and collaboration. He took several steps to ensure the success of the digital transformation, including:
Aligning the reality and priorities of the organization
The RNL team brought the collective operations and IT/Engineering team together to openly discuss the challenges, needs, barriers, and considerations. They were honest and transparent about the constraints, considerations, and timeline. As a team, they prioritized the strategies and focused on:
- Ensuring the least amount of disruption for their partners
- Driving the greatest amount of performance, outcome, and improvement
- Increasing the level of employee satisfaction and engagement
Auditing the processes, systems, and reporting
The team used internal and external (such as Brillio and PwC) teams to challenge the status quo. They documented the existing process with workflows and visuals to help identify areas for improvement or change. They shared the documentation and outcomes with the combined team to ensure transparency, accountability, collaboration, and continued refinement.
Creating cross-functional teams to expedite innovation and success
The RNL team challenged cross-functional teams to live their values – be dynamic, empowered, and authentic. They gave them the autonomy to make recommendations that informed people, processes, systems, KPIs, and outcomes.
Curating organizational connections, collaborations, and relationships
As situations or challenges arose outside the priorities, they intentionally brought various and differing team members into the conversation. They facilitated connections across multiple teams to infuse differentiated perspectives, expertise, problem-solving skills, and personalities to drive meaningful change and transformation. They leveraged war rooms, as needed, to allow for creativity, challenge, ideation, problem-solving, and focus.
Hosting Show and Tells across the entire organization
The RNL team recognized that their rapid rate of change could create confusion or frustration for other teams. They hosted weekly all-department meetings to give everyone from their collective team, from sales to account management to finance and accounting to human resources and beyond, the information they needed to understand the implications of the digital transformation. They highlighted and celebrated the collective team’s various improvements, changes, outcomes, and successes.
The Lessons Learned from Digital Transformation
Throughout the digital transformation process, RNL’s leadership and teams learned several valuable lessons that can guide other organizations as they embark on their digital transformation journey. These lessons include:
Prioritization is critical
Staying hyper-focused allows everyone to succeed, even when saying no has ripple effects within the organization. Leaders must prioritize their strategies and focus based on shared commitments, such as ensuring the least disruption for their partners, driving the greatest amount of performance, outcome, and improvement, and increasing employee satisfaction and engagement.
Intentional and proactive communication is hard
Communication is key, but ensuring that information is shared and, more importantly, translated in a way that everyone can and will consume it is overwhelming and a full-time job. As leaders, we must be empathetic and thoughtful about how and when we communicate to ensure it lands. We must connect the dots for our teams, especially when asked to multitask in an ever-changing environment.
People make a difference
Everyone wants to be successful, but leaders must remove barriers and help their teams succeed by giving them the support and resources they need and being decisive and honest with decisions. Some people are motivated differently, so taking the time upfront to understand the various teams’ needs, desires, and motivations is crucial. Cross-functionally facilitating relationships and connections helps drive engagement, satisfaction, creativity, friendships, and commitment to a positive and solution-oriented culture. Our teams can help us realize digital transformation; they need space and grace to do it.
The Importance of Digital Transformation
In today’s rapidly evolving business landscape, digital transformation has become more than a buzzword. It’s a critical step for organizations looking to stay competitive and relevant in the digital age. The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the need for digital transformation, forcing organizations to move online and adopt digital technologies to survive and thrive.
Digital transformation helps organizations streamline operations, optimize the technology stack, and drive effectiveness, efficiency, outcomes, performance, and collaboration. It also allows organizations to stay agile, adapt to changing market conditions, and take advantage of new opportunities.
In the case of RNL, digital transformation has helped the organization create operational alignment, streamline its technology ecosystem, and drive collaboration and innovation. By investing in its digital transformation, RNL has set itself up for continued growth and success in the years to come.
Digital transformation is a complex process that requires leadership, strategy, resources, and commitment. Leaders must prioritize their strategies, communicate effectively, and give their teams the support and resources they need to be successful. They must also understand that people make a difference.
