The Verdict is in: Digital Transformations Aren’t Going Away

Digital technology’s ever-widening and deepening impact on the way we live is flowing on to the way we work, and the way customers want companies to meet their wants and needs. Competitive pressures mount as rival companies use digital technology’s reach and capabilities to continually chip away at the layers of cost, inconvenience and time that stand between them and their customers. Each innovation rewrites the rules of doing business and becomes the standard for everyone else.

When the old rules can no longer enable the enterprise to compete effectively or efficiently; when even the most change-resistant manager has a hard time denying the need to adapt to the digitally-connected world, it is time to face the digital transformation.

And so the digital transformation project is conceived, then planned, developed and implemented: smart people making the smart decision to reinvent the organisation in order to survive and thrive.

A digital transformation is an extensive, and expensive, undertaking. There is the cost of maintaining business as usual. Add to that the cost of applying technology to develop a new way of doing business. Then add the costs of ensuring customers buy into the change.

As expensive as such a project will be, there is a greater cost. The leakage that can occur as part of the digital transformation can overshadow all other budgeted costs: lost customers or sales; lost organisational knowledge through employee turnover; loss of productivity through worker uncertainty, frustration or skill gaps; lost organisational capacity from disrupted social and operational networks, confused systems, loss of business momentum.

These costs don’t even contemplate whether your digital transformation needs were correctly identified; there is nothing good about the effective implementation of the wrong strategy.

Digital transformation is complex, and so are the factors that lead to success and the causes for their failures. It would be naive (and repeat, expensive) to think otherwise. According to IBM, 84% of digital transformation projects fail, while other experts estimate that 7 out of 8 digital transformation projects go wrong.

There is, however, a way to considerably improve your chances for a successful digital transformation project. Read More…