Artificial intelligence has accelerated digital transformation across almost every sector, but it has also created a new challenge for business leaders: knowing where to begin. As organisations rush to adopt AI, automation and new digital platforms, many still start with the technology rather than the customer need, employee reality or business outcome the investment is meant to improve. Digital transformation consultancy DY|DX believes reversing that order leads to better decisions, less waste and stronger long-term results.
Working with two very different businesses – mobile network operator, Cell C, and global retail solutions group, Smollan - DY|DX applied the same underlying principle: understand what customers and employees actually need first, and only then determine how technology can best support them.
“The biggest mistake organisations make is assuming that digital transformation begins with technology. It does not,” says Nevo Hadas, partner at DY|DX. “Too often, businesses automate outdated processes, invest in features customers never asked for or digitise inefficiencies that already existed. That creates unnecessary cost and complexity before the project has even begun.
“Our experience across industries has shown that meaningful transformation starts with people. Customer research helps define the experience a business needs to create, while employee insight reveals the internal friction preventing that experience from being delivered. Sometimes transformation needs to begin with a conversation before any digitisation.”
According to Hadas, the organisations succeeding with AI and digital transformation are not necessarily those investing the most, but those making the clearest decisions about where technology can genuinely improve customer, employee and commercial outcomes.
“The goal is not simply to digitise what already exists and make it faster or more efficient. It is to leapfrog to a new, higher quality, outcome that is 10x better than what we could do before.”
For Cell C, DY|DX led a service design and discovery process focused on both the people the business exists to serve and the employees responsible for serving them. Rather than beginning with the capabilities of a particular platform or vendor, the process mapped how customers engage with the business, what they need at different moments and how Cell C’s employees experience the systems and processes supporting those interactions.
The discovery process identified opportunities to simplify customer journeys, reduce operational friction and create greater consistency across Cell C’s customer-facing and operational environments.
This included ensuring employees have the tools, information and processes needed to deliver a more seamless experience, whether customers engage through the contact centre, retail stores or back-office functions.
Lana Strydom, executive head of digital transformation at Cell C, says the decision to begin with discovery reflected the company’s commitment to proactive, customer-led transformation. “We wanted to ensure that the services and systems we develop reflect how our customers engage with us and how our teams need to support them. Beginning with people gave us a clearer view of the experience we want to create across our different channels before making decisions about the technology required to deliver it. This is about building for continued growth and ensuring that our investments create practical value for both customers and employees.”
The Cell C discovery work was supported by customer research conducted with specialist UX research partner Mantaray, ensuring recommendations were informed by observed behaviour and operational experience rather than internal assumptions alone.
While the Cell C work focused largely on a customer-facing service ecosystem, DY|DX applied the same human-centred methodology to an operational environment at Smollan. DY|DX worked with Smollan to redesign its existing image-recognition management process, an important component of the company’s retail execution and insight capabilities.
The process spans teams in South Africa and India, with work moving across geographies, functions and operational hand-offs. Rather than treating the image-recognition technology as a system to be optimised in isolation, DY|DX worked with the employees responsible for managing it to understand how the process operated in practice.
Through service design and collaborative co-design workshops, the team examined where hand-offs created delays, where duplication occurred and which workarounds employees had developed over time. These insights informed practical improvements that could reduce friction immediately while creating a roadmap of future enhancements that will transform the process.
This flexibility was important. Rather than designing a rigid future-state process around today’s technology, the work focused on creating an operating model capable of evolving as AI tools, workflows and business requirements change.
Technology then became the enabler of a better process rather than its starting point. The result is a more coherent operating model, designed to improve the flow of work and give teams in both countries a more practical foundation from which to manage the image-recognition process.
“At Cell C, the method was applied to the experience customers see,” says Hadas. “At Smollan, it was applied to the operational machinery customers rarely see.
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“The context changes, but the method does n bbbot. You first understand how people need to work, where friction sits and what the business needs to achieve. Only then do you design the process and technology around that reality. That also gives the organisation the flexibility to adapt as technology changes.”
The Cell C and Smollan engagements reflect a wider shift taking place across South African business, where organisations are increasingly recognising that digital transformation delivers most when it is treated as a business strategy rather than a technology programme. For DY|DX, that shift represents both a validation of its approach and a significant opportunity.
Strydom concluded; "Our journey as technology-enabled connectivity platform, supported by digital, data and customer experience transformation is not only about technology. It is about creating connected, data-driven and customer-centric experiences that strengthen trust, improve service and position Cell C for future growth."
"South Africa has always had to do more with less, that constraint has made us smarter about where we invest. Human-centred design isn't a luxury here but rather it’s how you avoid waste you can't afford."
For more information on DY|DX and the services offered, head to the website.
