Despite significant effort and team mobilization, many digital transformations fail to deliver the intended outcome for the business. Below, we outline the four main reasons for these shortcomings and propose our solutions: 

Reasons for failing to reap benefits:

Reason #1 – The business asked IT/R&D to lead the digital transformation! They tend to delegate too much, especially accountability, governance, and budget. Oops! So, step by step, the digital transformation for the business deviates from the main goals, and it becomes a technical solution with some business impacts. What is being discussed in meetings? Are they talking about interface, settings, or batch? Can you relate? Sure… You lived it, haven’t you? 

Reason #2 – Teams underestimate the complexity of the execution and the impact on their business. “This is a piece of cake.” “We just have to do this and that… easy”. This reason is amplified by the fact that the modern solutions are sold to be more plug-and-play, w/o dev. So, the allocated resources and the plan are not strong enough to deliver the value. The consequences are delays, additional costs, and poor outcomes. And, of course, a difficult journey! 

Reason #3 – Lack of communication and misalignment of goals between all stakeholders, especially for large business and digital transformations. It brings egos to the middle of the table, making it harder to succeed and add value. So don’t forget the reason for change and keep a constant monitoring of these goals. 

Reason #4: Conflicting priorities and too many projects at the same time. The mouth is bigger than the belly. So, the roadmap isn’t realistic, and teams are overwhelmed by balancing daily operations and multiple projects. I’ll let you imagine the outcome. 

How we tackle it and make you succeed:  

To address these challenges and ensure successful digital business transformations, we apply these principles when driving the transformations for you (part of our SAIL methodology). We recommend you apply these as well: 

• Set a governance to ensure business takes the leads and IT participates. They lead the steering committees and keep the power to decide and arbitrate at all stages of the program. 

• Ensure that the impacts on all areas of the business are understood and we develop mitigation measures and estimates to address them all, not just the IT side. 

• Capture all the benefits for customers, businesses, and individual employees. 

• Ensure change leadership is in place to ensure everyone adopts and understands the changes, with a business focus. 

• Built a roadmap and an execution plan based on resource capabilities 

• Ensure the primary business goals are defined and stay at the top of mind throughout the steps.  

• Ensure that the priorities, goals, and objectives of all involved are defined, aligned, and are going in the same direction. 

Whatever your size and your industry, we are committed to resolving these issues and helping our clients extract maximum value from their transformations. Whether assessing, executing, or stabilizing transitions, we stand ready to guide you toward transformative success. 

Ready to get started? Book a call with us today.