3 Reasons Why Digital Transformation Continues to Fail and How to Remedy Them

What is Digital Transformation?

It is the process of creating or changing business operations by incorporating digital technologies. Digital transformation has evolved from being a buzzword to a concept that is crucial for business growth and success. The COVID-19 pandemic was a wake-up call for many organizations to fast-track their digital transformation initiatives to enable their businesses to operate online and their employees to work from home. Nevertheless, Digital Transformation in industries continues to stall. A study by Everest Group asserts that 78% of businesses fail to achieve value from their digital transformation initiatives. You are probably in this boat. Wondering why despite your efforts, you never seem to get it right?

In this article, we are going to look into why digital transformation continues to fail in many enterprises and how you can improve its success rate.

1. Lack of Clear Goals

Several initiatives fail because enterprises get into the digital transformation haze without setting any clear goal. For example, at some point, you could have gotten excited about how certain digital transformation initiatives are working for company x. Without too much thought, you have replicated the initiatives but without similar success. Sorry to burst your bubble. What works for one business may NOT necessarily work for your business. It is therefore paramount to identify exactly what your objectives for digital transformation are. Do you want a new website? Do you want to automate your processes? Do you want to improve the customer experience?

Lack of clearly defining your aims for digital transformation lets you venture into multiple strategic initiatives with no direction and no focus. What do they say about a jack of all trades? Master of none. Once you understand what your goals are, you can create a roadmap to get you there. Set initiatives and action plans that will ensure you arrive at your destination. With a clear-cut road map, you will track your progress and have a visual picture of your digital transformation journey.

Digital transformation will gradually happen for your business if you:

• commit to your set goals and initiatives,
• embrace personal ownership of the transformation process and,
• believe that change is possible.

2. Deficient Expertise

‘A chain is only as strong as its weakest link.’ Each employee’s input is very essential for business growth. If your employees do not have the right skill set or the right motivation, your business is prone to fail. Digital transformation initiatives necessitate digital understanding. Not bringing in people into your organization who have digital skills is one of the many reasons for digital transformation failure in organizations. You are probably thinking, why not just work with my current employees in this endeavor?

Well, Einstein has an answer for you. ‘Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.’ I am not insane; you are not insane. By creating a digital transformation team with the right skill set as per your initiatives, even the sky will not be your limit. The team will be very well versed with the initiatives so much so that they can pinpoint pitfalls before you get to them. This will SAVE you a whole lot of financial and emotional strain.

Besides, who else to trickle down expertise to the rest of the organization other than your very capable digital transformation team?

The digital team will work with your current employees who understand your business as well as your customers to achieve the digital transformation goals.

3. Not Transforming the Organization Culture

Experts agree that an enterprise’s culture has the ability to make or break digital transformation strategies for any organization. Company culture is cultivated around common goals, mission, expectations, values as well as the physical environment. A rigid company culture that is resistant to change presents a lot of bottlenecks to the digital transformation quest, which increases the chances of a digital transformation failure.

Each and every member of your organization should be at par with your digital transformation goals and work towards being part of the change. They should embrace the novelty and be willing to upskill whenever they are required to. I admit it, I too love my comfort zone. Once your employees understand that growth zones and comfort zones are mutually exclusive, they will gradually accommodate the idea of digital transformation.

Any change management begins at the top. Senior managers should be aligned with the organization’s digital transformation in aspects such as the budget, KPI as well as prioritization.

Once you clearly articulate and speak of the goals of the digital transformation and how it will benefit the organization and its employees, chances are high that you will onboard several members into the endeavor. The agility of the company culture is what you are looking for. Adlib Software transforming the way industries look at their business, with Intelligent Data. Adlib’s content intelligence cloud solutions boost digital transformation, drive automation and spark innovation. Owing to the fact that digital transformation entails alliance among different entities in an organization, business cultures that embrace collaboration and change are the ones that will succeed. With employees that are aligned with the company’s goals and values, it will be a whole lot easier to achieve digital transformation. This is literally taking the path of least resistance.

Conclusion

Today, there is more risk of your business not going digital as opposed to the risk of your business failing. And you really don’t have to look too far for an example. The cessation of movement brought by the COVID-19 pandemic was a huge plague for offline businesses. We have all been victims, one way or another. One of the globe’s highly ranked shoes and clothing companies, Nike, is an example of a good digital transformation success story. That is what digital transformation will do to your business. You, just like Nike, can harness the power of digital transformation and scale your business if you go in armed with the right tools and mindset.