Overcoming Obstacles on the Road to Digital Transformation
Digital transformation is becoming a buzzword in today’s corporate world. Post the COVID-19 pandemic, digital transformation has become a necessity for businesses to survive in the new normal. According to IDC, digital transformation spend is predicted to reach $2.3 trillion by 2023. Companies worldwide hope to boost their revenue, efficiency, time to market and overall productivity with digital transformation.
Despite becoming a necessity for most organizations, only a few have achieved actual success with digital transformation. In this blog we look at the most common challenges and pitfalls facing digital transformation efforts and how to avoid them.
- Lack of clarity about the goal: Digital transformation often fails because of unclear goals and objectives. Without clearly defined goals and agreed upon KPIs, companies mostly end up in failure with regard to their efforts.
The key is to develop specific, measurable and achievable goals as part of the strategy towards digital transformation. It should begin at the leadership level and percolate through the organization. All employees must be made aware of the importance of digital transformation and how it aligns with the company’s business goals.
- Lack of support from leadership: Digital transformation initiatives must be taken up at the organization level and not just in individual teams or departments. It requires the involvement and full support from the leadership team.
Leadership vision and strategic support are critical in ensuring that that employees are motivated throughout the digital transformation journey and succeed in their efforts.
- Lack of focus on customer: Customers are the crucial drivers in digital transformation efforts. However, most organizations focus mainly on innovative technologies and ignore the needs of their customers. This often leads to the failure of the initiatives.
For success in digital transformation initiatives, it is very important to develop a customer-centric mindset and consider the evolving customer demands. It is also essential for organizations to include the customers while formulating their digital transformation strategy.
- Technology Adoption: Technology is a great enabler in the path towards digital transformation. However, it includes adoption and implementation challenges that can hinder the progress. Many organizations face issues in technology adoption that prevents them from delivering a complete, consistent and quality experience to their customers.
Businesses and IT need to work together to address these challenges in adopting to new technologies. Business leaders have to become tech savvy and take accountability for decisions pertaining to technology. Likewise, IT specialists need to think like business owners and build a technical architecture that enables innovation in the organization.
- Data and Application Security: In order to be successful in digital transformation companies need to transform their security as well. The increase in cyberattacks in recent times has exposed the vulnerability of organizations to external threats and the need for keeping data and business applications secure.
As part of the digital transformation strategy a sophisticated security policy should be implemented. Issues related to information security and data privacy must be addressed with a focus on making the business safe for customers.
- Improper budgeting: Budget constraints also cause most digital transformation initiatives to fail. Poor planning and budgeting can lead to unexpected costs and resources being used up prematurely.
Proper planning and prioritizing of resources will ensure the success of the digital transformation initiatives.
- Unrealistic deadlines: Digital transformation is a continuous process and is time consuming. Hence, having concrete unalterable deadlines will often lead to the failure of the initiatives.
Instead of having fixed deadlines, it is preferable to set interim goals in order for the digital transformation efforts to proceed smoothly. This will ensure that deliverables are better managed and the process is on track.
Conclusion
As the digital world continues to change and evolve, most businesses are increasing their efforts towards digital transformation. However, they are facing multiple barriers to their success. It is essential to focus on the right path and avoid the pitfalls.
A transformational approach needs to be customer-centered instead of only technology-centered. Similarly, it should be organization wide instead of being limited to a few teams. With the right approach and attitude organizations will be able to successfully navigate the challenges in digital transformation and achieve their objectives.
