10 Ways to Avoid Digital Transformation Mistakes
Most businesses, 97% in fact*, went through some sort of digital transformation in 2020, and the same number expect that investment to continue in 2021.
However, Digital Transformation is easier said than done, and many businesses have found themselves underestimating the preparation required and the difficulty of the path ahead.
Digital transformation often touches every part of the business, as it aims to access new market segments, solve business problems, improve efficiencies, and deliver a more personalized customer experience. This often involves creating new business models and managing the journey of change.
Before embarking on a digital transformation journey, the organisation should clearly define how their new digital strategy fits into their long-term goals, how it adds to their competitiveness, and what kind of life cycle they should expect from it.
The following 10 considerations may help your organisation to avoid common transformation mistakes;
- Expectations: Does the business have a clearly articulated set of expectations that the digital transformation will achieve, are they realistic, and how will success be measured?
- Customer Awareness: Across the board, consumer behaviour and preferences are changing rapidly now. Rather than assume what your customers want from your business, how they want to engage with you, and what they desire their overall experience to be, has the business conducted appropriate market research recently?
- Strategic Fit: Does the digital transformation and its goals align with the organisation’s competitive strategy? This sounds like a no-brainer, but it’s surprising how many transformations are the result of “change for the sake of change”. A Strategic Gap Analysis or a Roadmapping Analysis can assist the business to ensure it is on the right strategic path.
- Organisational Change Management: Has the business prepared a detailed Change Management plan to help your people understand, prepare for and navigate the transformation cohesively?
- Budget and Scope: Does the transformation strategy clearly set out the scope of the project and the budget? This is essential to not only create, but to consult and communicate it with all stakeholders to ensure you avoid scope creep or unpleasant cost surprises along the way.
- Technical IT Skills: Does the business possess people with the right, up-to-date set of technical IT skills including cybersecurity, technical architecture, enterprise architecture, and advanced data analytics? This could consist of your own dedicated IT Team or external consultants.
- Data Management: Data is the new gold; Its extremely valuable, and it needs to be secured and protected. Its value comes from the insights it provides in understanding your customers preferences, behaviours and motivations. It provides visibility and understanding, allowing the business to make better decisions than your competitors. How will data be gathered, stored, protected, shared, and analysed?
- Business Processes: Has your business documented its actual processes and does it understand them? Are the processes aligned with the current roadmap or do they need to be changed? Is the business disciplined in carrying out these processes? Remember that even the best IT system cannot make up for a poorly disciplined organisation. Technology can help a good business to be great, but it will not help a poor business to be good.
- Lifecycle: Digital transformation is an ongoing journey, not a destination. In other words, has a realistic timeline been set for this phase, and does the strategy anticipate the accelerated and continuing evolution of technology?
- Training: Has the business budgeted for staff training in how to use the new technologies to return the best results, and has enough time been allotted for the training? If the answer is yes, then double it. The number one complaint we receive from organisations after implementing new tech is that they failed to train their people adequately.
Digital Transformation should never be rushed into without considering all of the implications and how the business can extract the maximum use and benefit from it.
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*Software AG (2021) Digital transformation investment will continue in 2021 [online] available from https://www.softwareag.com/en_corporate/company/news/2021/0128_digital_transformation_investment_continues_in_2021.html
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