What It Takes To Become a Leading Digital Transformation Consultant: The Experiences of Lydia Miller

This story is curated by Annie Clain who is into marketing research, the rapidly changing business environment and the swift adoption of digital technologies in the business world is not only an opportunity but also a major challenge as in-house teams may not have the experience or time to meet the digitization goals. This is where Digital Transformation Consultants can help the organization overcome challenges by establishing digital strategies and implementation of digital technology across the enterprise.

What is Digital Transformation Consultancy

We are sifting through digital technologies and the competition is getting more fierce. However, most organizations are lacking either awareness, expertise, or the manpower to complete their digital transformation. Therefore 70% of digital transformations fail, most often due to resistance from employees.

This is why the experiences of Lydia Miller, who is currently a Senior Director and leader for digital strategy and growth analytics at Tata Consultancy, North America, is so exceptional; In a mostly male-dominated industry, she not only shows outstanding promise, but her journey is also just as remarkable. With a sense of mission and determination, Miller has paved her way to leave her mark in her field of expertise. Having struggled with personal strife and breaking through the traditional gender and familiar conventions of her hometown, Lydia, refused to compromise and has several impressive achievements.

Lydia Miller’s Story

An Industrial engineering graduate from M.S.Ramaiah College in Bangalore India. Lydia has always been passionate about developing solutions rather. This is why she worked hard to secure a job at Intel, which she cracked and was among the only two of 10000 students to get into Intel. Her passion for developing solutions came to use here rather than industrial engineering per se and she was soon promoted from an Analyst position to project manager. After working for several years at Intel, she finally moved to Tata and has since been part of the company. She had started working at TATA as a project manager in 2008, and she soon found herself working across several industries ranging from banking financial services, retail, manufacturing, CPG, and government. She worked on these projects for about `12 years and is currently a leader for the digital consulting practice at TATA.

Over the years, she has also developed a keen passion for using blockchain technology in various sectors. The talented consultant had been accepted at both MIT and Stanford University for her MBA program. However, she chose to stick to MIT. “The MIT Sloan MBA has been an engineer's dream, helped open doors and allowed me to make connections through alumni and the neighbouring Harvard university where one could cross-register for classes,” said Miller, who has also been a judge at International business Awards, American Business Awards and Women in Business awards, and Stevie Awards for Customer satisfaction. With such extensive experience and a list of achievements, Lydia, an entrepreneur within an enterprise, has made a name for herself in a male-dominated field. Lydia has proven that through personal sacrifices, willpower, and hard work - anything is possible.

Tips on how to implement Digital transformations successfully

Lydia explains that digital transformations use digital technologies to accelerate business activities and make them more competitive,

According to her, 87 percent of companies across the world tend to go through digitization to improve their business processes, competencies, and even their business models. For anyone who is considering to make digital transformation a priority, here are three tips that Miller considers as thumb rules:

Make a well thought out decision

Many businesses just want to jump on the bandwagon without actually taking the time to consider which part of their business process requires the transformation the most. “You need to prioritise which process requires transformation the most. It should not be an impulsive move, just so that you have exactly what your neighbor has. No two companies are the same, so when planning a digital transformation give yourself time to think which business process requires it the most and start with it on a priority basis,” she says.

Stick to your budget

There is no point going beyond your budget as a digital transformation could include a lot of things and can turn out to be quite expensive. So there is no point going overboard.

As, although it is important to invest in technology-- Invest wisely in the right things

Focus on technologies that drive growth

One thing every business owner should know is that any technology focused on data analytics, integrated platforms, machine learning, and artificial intelligence will be key drivers of growth for business shortly. With digital transformation, you can measure nearly everything, so you should back up every decision with data and analytics moving forward. “ Over 80% of the Fortune 500 enterprises are already implementing machine-learning-related use cases to their study and decision-making processes as AI has the potential to become one of the most disruptive forces in the IT world.

Final Thoughts

Becoming a successful digital transformation consultant requires not just putting in the work but also the ability to understand digital technologies and how they can benefit the company. More than the level of education or the field of study it is the zeal and passion to work with and across different technologies.