While to some organizations, digital transformation is about technology first and foremost, for Innovapost, winner of this year’s DX Award in the Large Public Sector category, the foundation stone is change – having both the vision of what you want to become and the courage to do whatever it takes to make it happen.
Only a few short years ago, Innovapost, the Information Technology Shared Services provider for the Canada Post Group of Companies, including Canada Post, Purolator, and SCI Group, was seen and used primarily as a service provider and order-taker rather than a strategic lever in the success of Canada Post.
Since 2018, however, things have changed dramatically.
According to President, CEO and Chief Digital Officer Franco Chirichella, the transformation began with an acknowledgement that the organization was not in sync with other parts of the Canada Post Group of Companies.
Said Chirichella: “We had to make sure we were aligned to the goals and the objectives of the member companies. That sparked a transformation that touched every aspect of our business, from how we deliver to moving to a more agile approach to our HR functions, or finance functions, and essentially everything in between.”
From DX day one, Innovapost was focused on knocking down barriers and becoming more agile. At this point, technology entered the discussion.
“Thinking ‘Hey, we want to be agile and nimble and deliver quickly,’ we focused on the technologies that could help us,” said Innovapost Technology & Information Lead Nish Anjaria. “To become more agile, we had to think about cloud technologies. The DevOps technologies that helped us become more agile and nimble are not maintained or managed within silos; they are cross-functional and highly transformational platforms.”
For Innovapost Business Solutions Delivery Lead Dan Michelone, embarking on a digital transformation required not just one or two groups but the entire organization to band together. “No transformation can be successful otherwise. After we got buy-in from all our executives, every business unit was engaged. It was important to explain it to our people – to help them understand why transformation was so critically important for us.”
Getting on the transformation path has helped Innovapost set new goals and priorities.
“True transformations never really end,” said Chirichella. “This journey really allowed us to focus on some key parts of our business and introduce some new elements. We’re now focusing on six key priorities to guide us through 2022, with the focus of better strategic alignment to member companies.”
Chirichella accepted the award on behalf of what he called “750 passionate employees.” He said that although transformation has come with sacrifice, and the company has faced a number of challenges along the way, “it is so satisfying to be on the other end of that and see that all that hard work and dedication paid off.”
